ON NOT BEING CHURLISH

I suppose it would have been churlish of Cheney to mention yesterday, at his speech at the Reagan library, Reagan's withdrawal of marines from Beirut in response to a terrorist bombing, or the shortsightedness that Reagan showed by funding radical fundamentalist groups that would develop into al-Qaeda, or the massive support that the Reagan administration gave to Saddam Hussein -- at the very same time that Hussein was using chemical weapons on the battlefield and in attempts to murder and intimidate domestic populations (recall that Donald Rumsfeld was special envoy from Ronald Reagan when this famous picture was taken). As Cheney himself said yesterday, though: "The President always casts the deciding vote."