“Dick Cheney did it.”

No matter who says that, where, when or how, the liberal reaction is always the same. The crowd goes wild.

But what is it exactly that Dick Cheney did this time?

To understand what Dick Cheney allegedly did this time, one must first confront what Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi assuredly did several months ago. She got her political witching britches tied in a hard knot when she tried, in several progressive iterations, to deny being briefed by the CIA way back when on enhanced interrogation techniques, or “torture” if you believe Dick Cheney did it with former President George W. Bush pouring the water and tipping the board.

Pelosi’s credibility meltdown did not help – no, not at all – multiple plans for putting multiple former Bush Administration and intelligence agency officials before multiple “Truth Squads” to answer for their crimes against terrorists. When Pelosi added that, oh by the way, the CIA lies to Congress a lot, she helped even less.

That little outburst even forced Leon Panetta, President Obama’s newly minted CIA Director, to publicly defend the Agency against the she snake of the forked tongue.

For Congressional investigations of the aforementioned crimes against terrorists to move forward unfettered by Pelosi’s prior knowledge and very likely encouragement of the CIA practices, she would have to be rehabilitated.

But how?

Panetta would provide the pathway that he had previously blocked. In the course of his briefings on CIA activities, he came upon some classified stuff which had not been disclosed to Congress, and he promptly stopped that stuff. He then went immediately before Congressional intelligence committees and said he’d stopped the stuff that Congress hadn’t been told about, and it was bad stuff indeed.

According to news reports, Panetta learned about and stopped the really, really bad stuff on June 23 and briefed the committees on June 24. Had he waited just a wee bit longer than 24 hours to run to the Hill, even cynics such as we would be hard put to say he was doing anything more than exercising his authority and his judgment – and covering just his own personal ass.

But then, on June 26, just 48 hours after Panetta briefed the committees, seven Democrat House members, Pelosi courtesans all, wrote to Panetta, telling him that he had briefed the committees on some really, really bad CIA stuff that had been withheld from Congress.

Now why, some who are unschooled in the serpentine ways of Washington may ask, would such a letter be written to someone who knew exactly what he had said just 48 hours earlier in classified briefings? Because the letter wasn’t for Panetta, it was for leaking to the media.

And leak it did.

In the first round of media reports, the CIA was up to some really, really bad stuff, subject undisclosed, because the letter writers couldn’t reveal the subject of classified briefings, all the while knowing that a gaggle of someone elses would do it for them, increasing interest in the story as it progressed.

The second round of media reports began to ice the cake. It was, of course, Dick Cheney who ordered the CIA not to brief Congress on the really, really bad stuff the CIA was up to, subject still, at that point, undisclosed.

Wild speculation followed: Was the CIA going to plant a bomb in Queen Elizabeth’s hat? Sabotage donut factories in Canada? Plant 16-year-old female operatives in Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi’s bedroom? Overthrow the government of New Zealand and blame Iceland?

OMG, how evil could these people really be? Evil instigated by Dick Cheney, of course.

The third round of media reports (which we are still in) began to describe the indescribable.

Following a “presidential finding” issued in 2001 by President George W. Bush, which was briefed to Congress, the CIA had been developing, in fits and starts, plans that never became operational to kill or capture al Qaida leaders. That’s it. That’s the subject of the latest Washington imbroglio, details being filled in daily.

Some Americans with sufficient memory will recall, of course, that to kill or capture al Qaida leaders was something of a national mandate following 9-11. We recall a certain Presidential candidate repeatedly blaming President Bush for not having done so.

The difference between current, ongoing efforts and the CIA planning is that the latter was to have been up close and personal, using specially trained field teams, as opposed to armed drones being flown over the nether reaches of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

However it is done, to kill or capture leaders of al Qaida has been, is and will be until accomplished, in this country’s national interest. It is not in the national interest, and is, by any definition, a disgrace, that such furor over planning that never went operational has been unleashed in an effort to rehabilitate Nancy Pelosi and haul anyone before “Truth Squads” for political purpose.

But that’s where we are. And that’s where we’re going to be until the American people decide that a government of, by and for adults is a better government.