“For at least six years, as I’ve become increasingly frustrated by the Bush administration’s repeated betrayal of constitutional — and conservative — principles, I have defended Vice President Cheney, a man I’ve known for decades and with whom I served and made common cause in Congress. No longer.

I do not blame Dick Cheney for George W. Bush’s transgressions; the president needs no prompting to wrap himself in the cloak of a modern-day king. Nor do I believe that the vice president so enthusiastically supports the Iraq war out of a loyalty to the oil industry that his former employer serves. By all accounts, Cheney’s belief in “the military option” and the principle of president-as-decider predates his affiliation with Halliburton.

What, then, is the straw that causes me to finally consign a man I served with in the House Republican leadership to the category of “those about whom we should be greatly concerned”?

It is Cheney’s all-too-revealing conversation this week with ABC News correspondent Martha Raddatz. On Wednesday, reminded of the public’s disapproval of the war in Iraq, now five years old, the vice president shrugged off that fact (and thus, the people themselves) with a one-word answer: “So?”

‘So,’ Mr. Vice President?” (Washington Post op-ed)