After ranting about this Cheney quote for a few days (if I remember correctly), Chris Matthews finally read it as it was almost surely meant—a warning about the wrong response to a terrorist attack, not a warning that we will get hit again if Kerry is elected. Kudos to Matthews for correcting himself. The bit from the transcript:
“SHOW: The Chris Matthews Show Various Times NBC
September 12, 2004 Sunday
MATTHEWS: Let’s take a look at how Kerry’s handling or not handling this
question. He looks indecisive on Iraq; he also has a problem with reliability.
The question started, as we know, as Cokie said, over Vietnam and over his
anti-war activities after coming home. And this week, the vice president
carried that attack on his unreliability even further.
Vice President DICK CHENEY: It is absolutely essential that eight weeks
from today, on November 2nd, we make the right choice. Because if we make the
wrong choice, then the danger is that–that we’ll get hit again, that we’ll be
hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States
and it will fall back into the–the pre-9/11 mind-set, if you will, that in fact
these terrorist attacks are just criminal acts and that we are not really at
war.
MATTHEWS: When I first heard that, I thought he was saying if Kerry wins,
we’re going to get attacked. I looked at it again today, this morning, and I
said, `Wait a minute. What he’s really saying, if you listen carefully, is we’ll
get attacked again. Anybody can get attacked again, that danger is there, and
these people will react in the old time way of saying we’ve got some criminals
out there we got to catch, not recognizing this movement of war against us.’”