Curses! ... foiled again.

Wondering what was behind that recent foreign swing by tough-talking Veep Cheney? Tom Blackburn's on it:

Giving press briefings in disguise should have given Mr. Cheney the chance to be talking about something else when the Libby verdict came in. The jury failed him, though, by taking too long. He got home ahead of the verdict.

He made news abroad. He threatened North Korea, with whom President Bush just made a sort of deal: "The regime in Pyongyang has much to prove." He threatened Iran: The president hasn't "taken any option off the table."

Those were blasts at the Axis of Evil. The world is used to them. But Mr. Cheney went on to threaten China, whose recent activities are "not consistent with China's goal of a peaceful rise."

That's a pretty sassy way to talk to nuclear power with a large military Establishment that, unlike ours, is not tied down in a foreign country policing a civil war and staving off admissions of error by the politicians who sent it there. Mr. Cheney's tough talk might be more credible if the muscle to back it up weren't getting sore in a war of the administration's own making.