From the Cleveland Plain Dealer's editorial page today. I'm putthing it in this post because of McCain's stance on the war.

On Iraq, Cheney grunts his indifference
Sunday, March 30, 2008Dick Feagler Plain Dealer Columnist

The other night on TV, somebody asked Dick Cheney about the fact that almost 80 percent of Americans are against this war.

Cheney said: "So?"

That amazing response got very little play on the nightly news. "So?" About a war? His war?

"So?"

No. You have to do better than that.

I've seen my share of cold fish sending kids off to die. But when the polls objected to that sacrifice, I never heard anyone answer the anguish with a word like, "So?"

Does Cheney really feel he can't explain the unreasonable Iraq war? Other than to say, "So?"

When the public who trusted his administration risk their children and their money to finance a bloody war which has led us to the brink of bankruptcy and now quiz him about it - is his answer, "So?"

Since by now we know that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, is his answer, "So?"

Since by now we realize that Iraq is cleft by a civil war between Sunni and Shiite Muslims, who, as I write this, are firing at one another, is his answer, "So?"

Since now there is obviously no easy way out of this war he plunged us into - a war that he predicted would be over years ago because we would be greeted as liberators - if we ask him, "What happened?" is his answer to be, "So?"

When we were told that the horrendous cost of this war would be paid for by the oil reserves in Iraq, and now we see that it costs us a fortune to fill our gas tanks, is his answer, "So?"

When we finally have come to realize that Iraq is complex, and that we didn't understand the Muslim forces at war with each other, and that we had no way to soothe their ills, and that we didn't know what the hell we were really getting into, is his answer, "So?"

Now that we have taken an American army, the best on earth, and stretched it to the point that it is close to being fractured; now that we have taken our reserves - and that is what the word meant: reserves - and put them on the front line of a ceaseless war with no notion of when they will ever return, is his answer, "So?"

Now that we are losing Afghanistan, the hotbed of al-Qaida where America and the world was unified when it came to invading something - now that we are losing that, is his answer, "So?"

Now that this total lack of foreign policy has made us a pariah around the world, and little by little, the so-called coalition of the willing are pulling out, including the Brits, is his answer, "So?"

Now that the U.S. economy has failed in part because we have borrowed money from countries that saw the ditch we were digging and decided they could make a buck off the fact that we are in hock, is there a question there? And his answer is, "So?"

Now that we have no credibility left in the world, we have shunned the U.N., the countries that used to respect us are fleeing from us and cutting their own deals around us, is his answer, "So?"

When the vice president of the United States is faced with a simple question about how most of this country has turned against this ill-fated enterprise, the best answer he can come up with is, "So?"

The best thing that has happened to Cheney and President Bush is the rotten economy. It has taken our eyes off the ball. Otherwise, we would wonder why we are mired in a war that has lasted longer that World War II without any clear-cut victory and is robbing our children of their lives and their economic birthright.

Cheney is engineering this war drawing on his military experience, which consists of five Vietnam-era draft deferments.

He has done all he could to avoid serving the men and women he has sent to fight, and that explains his answer. That's why he can say, "So?"

What he was really saying was, "No skin off mine."