It was wrong for Republicans to say Democrats hoped the nation would lose the war in Iraq under President Bush, and it’s wrong for CIA director Leon Panetta to mind-read Dick Cheney as wishing for a terrorist attack under President Obama:

The Central Intelligence Agency typically fights distant enemies, but on May 21st its leaders were preoccupied with a local opponent. A few miles from the agency’s headquarters, which are in Langley, Virginia, former Vice-President Dick Cheney delivered an extraordinary attack on the Obama Administration’s emerging national-security policies. Cheney, speaking at the American Enterprise Institute, accused the new Administration of making “the American people less safe” by banning brutal C.I.A. interrogations of terrorism suspects that had been sanctioned by the Bush Administration. Ruling out such interrogations “is unwise in the extreme,” Cheney charged. “It is recklessness cloaked in righteousness.”

Leon Panetta, the C.I.A.’s new director—and the man who bears much of the responsibility for keeping the country safe—learned the details of Cheney’s speech when he arrived in his office, on the seventh floor of the agency’s headquarters. An hour earlier, he had been standing at the side of President Barack Obama, who was giving a speech at the National Archives, in which he argued that America could “fight terrorism while abiding by the rule of law.” In January, the Obama Administration banned the “enhanced” techniques that the Bush Administration had Wapproved for the agency, including waterboarding and depriving prisoners of sleep for up to eleven days. Panetta, pouring a cup of coffee, responded to Cheney’s speech with surprising candor. “I think he smells some blood in the water on the national-security issue,” he told me. “It’s almost, a little bit, gallows politics. When you read behind it, it’s almost as if he’s wishing that this country would be attacked again, in order to make his point. I think that’s dangerous politics.”

Despite the weasel word “almost,” Panetta is clearly suggesting that Cheney wants the country to be attacked. It’s a vicious smear that was immediately endorsed by Josh Marshall, who wrote a post titled “Not ‘Almost’” that begins with the line “It’s about time someone said it.”

The problem, of course, is that Cheney has never stated that he “wish[ed] that this country would be attacked again” — the reason that Panetta resorts to mind-reading. The best Think Progress could do in a post supporting Panetta’s accusation is to quote Cheney stating that Obama is “making some choices” that “raise the risk… of another attack.” Cheney may be right or he may be wrong about the consequences of Obama’s policy choices, but he has every right to express concern about the risk of another attack without being smeared as “wishing” that one will take place.

Update 6/15 1:46 PM: Pot/kettle alert — Marshall’s site criticized John McCain’s campaign for suggesting Democrats want the US to lose in Iraq.

Update 6/16 11:37 AM: Panetta’s spokesman is trying to walk back what his boss said:

“The Director does not believe the former Vice President wants an attack,” CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano said in a statement to CNN. “He did not say that. He was simply expressing his profound disagreement with the assertion that President Obama’s security policies have made our country less safe. Nor did he question anyone’s motives.”