First It Was “So?” — Now It’s “So What?”

Most Americans remember with incredulity and disgust Dick Cheney’s arrogant and condescending answer when he was asked what he thought about polls that indicated two-thirds of Americans believed the war in Iraq was not worth fighting, that the cost in lives was not worth the gains.

Cheney responded with one single word!

“So?” the vice president said.

Eight months later, that callous quote was preserved by TIME in the most recent issue as one of the “Top 10 quotes” for 2008.

Had TIME waited just one more week they could have included yet one more infamous quote by this administration. It is not much longer than Cheney’s “So?”, but it is just as damning.

Yesterday, after the lame duck president artfully ducked two size 10 shoes hurled at him by an Iraqi journalist, he sat down with ABC’s Martha Raddatz for an exit interview in Iraq. When Bush claimed that one of the major theaters against al Qaeda turned out to have been Iraq, Raddatz corrected him “But not until after the U.S. invaded.” Upon which Bush said, “Yeah, that’s right. So what?”

Bush then went into his tired denials of the facts, which are: that there was no al Qaeda presence in Iraq before Bush invaded that country; that Saddam Hussein viewed Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda as threats that he would have never tolerated in Iraq; and that al Qaeda’s emergence in Iraq is totally attributable to Bush’s invasion and occupation of that country.

Although not as short as Dick Cheney’s “So?”, no doubt Bush’s “So What?” will go down in the annals of the “legacy” of this administration as one just as offensive and contemptuous as Cheney’s “So?”