Dick Cheney isn't Vice President any more, but the New York Times is still treating his comments as so newsworthy they must be presented without rebuttal. The Times devotes 558 words to Cheney's appearance on CNN yesterday - 501 of which are devoted to simply quoting or paraphrasing Cheney. The 57 words that weren't devoted to amplifying Cheney's arguments didn't include even a word of rebuttal:

Since taking office, Mr. Obama has reversed many of the policies championed by Mr. Cheney in his eight years of serving under President George W. Bush. Mr. Obama has announced plans to close the detention camp in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, within the year, suspended military trials for terrorism suspects and prohibited the interrogation practice known as waterboarding.

That's it -- those are the only words in the article that were spent on anything other than simply telling readers what Cheney said. There was no effort to present the other side, or give readers any indication of whether what Cheney said was true, or misleading, or incomplete.

For example, The Times quoted Cheney saying of fighting terrorism: “Up until 9/11, it was treated as a law enforcement problem ... You go find the bad guy, put him on trial, put him in jail. Once you go into a wartime situation and it's a strategic threat, then you use all of your assets to go after the enemy. You go after the state sponsors of terror, places where they've got sanctuary. ... When you go back to the law enforcement mode, which I sense is what they're doing, closing Guantánamo and so forth, that they are very much giving up that center of attention and focus that's required, and that concept of military threat that is essential if you're going to successfully defend the nation against further attacks.”

Seems like that would have been a pretty good opportunity to point out that critics have said Cheney's administration didn't actually find the “bad buy” (Osama bin Laden) in part because they gave up “that center of attention and focus that's required” by going to war against Iraq.