Contrary to a recommended diary, Dick Cheney was not the target of an assassination attempt on Tuesday. The claim that this is an assassination attempt was made by the Taliban. US military officials have denied this claim and a spokesperson has called the allegation "absurd".
According to the Kansas City Star:
U.S. military officials, however, dismissed the Taliban's claim that Cheney was targeted. They said the only reason Cheney was still at the base at the time of the attack was because bad weather had prevented him from leaving the night before.
And an article in USA Today:
Militants have suicide bomb cells in Kabul, just 30 miles south of the large U.S. military base at Bagram, said Col. Tom Collins, the top spokesman for NATO's International Security Assistance Force.
"We know for a fact that there has been recent intelligence to suggest that there was the threat of a bombing in the Bagram area," Collins said. "It's clear that there are suicide bomber cells operating in this country. There are some in the city of Kabul."
Tuesday's bombing killed about 20 Afghan civilians, a U.S. soldier, a U.S. contractor and a South Korean soldier outside Bagram while Cheney was meeting with officials inside the base, an attack the Taliban claimed was aimed at Cheney but which officials said posed no real threat to the vice president.
The attacker never attempted to penetrate even the first of several U.S.-manned security checkpoints at Bagram, instead detonating himself among a group of Afghan workers outside the base.
"The Taliban's claims that they were going after the vice president were absurd," Collins said.
So why would anybody take the "assassination attempt" for granted?