Faced with the employment numbers, Cheney chose to ignore them. Instead, he defended the budget deficits -- which, of course, have almost nothing to do with the economic downturn.

"There's something that's more important than the specific numbers you're talking about," he told King. "Eight months after we arrived we had 9/11. We had three thousand Americans killed one morning. ... We immediately had to go into wartime mode. ... We had major problems with respect to things like Katrina. ... All of these things required us to spend money."

"Stuff happens," Cheney summarized," and an administration has to be able to respond to that -- and we did."

9/11! 9/11! 9/11! It's like a reflex with these guys -- back them into a corner and they throw 9/11 at you. In any case, I think defending the Bush admin's economic performance is a futile effort -- that ship has sailed.