It's not unpatriotic to wonder why the president lied

Slate - Chatterbox -- "How," Cheney asked indignantly, "could any responsible leader have ignored the Iraqi threat?" This is an odd question to raise when there's growing doubt that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein posed any immediate threat to the United States (as opposed to the Iraqi people, who of course suffered horribly under his brutal regime). Cheney cited the prewar National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq's "weapons of mass destruction" (click here to learn why this catch-all phrase, and its abbreviation, "WMD," are useless propaganda terms), which contained "consensus judgments of the intelligence community" that Saddam had chemical and biological weapons and would likely have a nuclear weapon within a decade. But allied forces in Iraq haven't managed to find any chemical and biological weapons. The "consensus judgments," to which even Chatterbox subscribed, appear to have been wrong. (For the most plausible explanation why the weapons weren't there, read Bob Drogin's excellent cover story, "The Vanishing," in the July 21 New Republic.) And while Saddam no doubt was trying to acquire nukes, it was never clear that—even without a war—he would still be around in 10 years.

Why did Cheney give the AEI speech? Chatterbox suspects Mary Matalin (a former Cheney aide who's helping the White House handle Yellowcakegate) advised him that the best defense was a good offense. By portraying curiosity about Yellowcakegate as unpatriotic, Cheney probably hoped to shake the inquiry off his tail.

And a lot more material depicting Cheney at the center of yellowcakegate.