not rooting? not encouraging?

So, the idea is that Dick Cheney isn't really hoping that the United States will be attacked, again, so as to justify the illegal and inhumane treatment that the Bush Administration used to get information from people they believed had it (or, as some people would have it, to get false information about an Al Qaeda-Iraq connection out of people who could credibly be characterized to know of such a thing).

Some people believe that this is a set up: Cheney comes out and says that the Obama administration is "dismantling" the structure that "kept us safe" after the attack on September 11 in the hopes that "if it happens" it will be a boon to Republican electoral fortunes.

Does Cheney hope that will happen?

The other theory is that Cheney is selling the "we got useful information out of torture" idea as a prophylactic against indictment and conviction (of himself and those who, apparently, followed his orders) for the illegal program, or selling that idea so as to influence public opinion.

I don't know what, if any of these things, Cheney has in mind. It's entirely possible that he really believes what he is saying and he is trying to influence decision making to stop what he sees as eroding our security structure. Less likely things have, in my experience, turned out to be true.

But I do know this. If the parties were reversed, here, the entire right wing chorus would be singing in four part harmony about how comments like these were going to encourage those attacks and make them more likely to succeed in the same way disclosing blue prints of nuclear power plants would.

Cheney's remarks, made by an Al Gore, would be said to be telling the "enemy" that we are weak and vulnerable and therefore are encouraging (I believe the word the right favors in such situations is "emboldening") them to take a crack at an attack.

Remarking that a Republican administration was acting in such a way as to endanger national security would be called "treason" if it were done by a Democrat or non-partisan person.

How do I know that? It's not like I have to speculate. That's what they said, and the people who read their talking points in the media, said any time anyone objected to or ever questioned something proposed (or done in secret) by the Bush/Cheney administration.

No Lily, here.