Cheney Planned Invasion of Iraq Before 9/11

I’m glad that Think Progress still has the stomach to watch Chris Matthews. They say Chris Matthews revealed that a well-placed source told him Cheney planned on invading Iraq as soon as he was elected Vice President:

Let me not let one guy off the hook here, that’s Cheney, Bob. I talked to someone last night who knows better about this than anybody — off the record — who told me the first thing Cheney wanted when he got the vice presidency, during the transition of 2000, what he wanted was not a briefing on the world, all he wanted to know about, where do we stand in Iraq? He was keyed on that decision from day one, long before 9-11, and it certainly looks like these guys weren’t surprised by the decision to go to Iraq. They had it in their mind ahead of time.

This is consistent with previous reports from Paul O’Neil and Richard Clarke.