It wasn't much of a fight. The flashy newcomer against the grizzled veteran. Platitudes versus facts.

After a muddled and unconvincing teleprompter reading about terrorism by Barack Obama at the National Archives, former Vice President Dick Cheney gave on the most cogent analysis of the war on terror during a speech at the American Enterprise Institute.

If this had been a boxing match, "it would have been stopped in the first round," says Investor's Business Daily.

In other words, Cheney took inexperienced and naive Obama to school.

From the IBD editorial:

For those with short memories, Cheney talks of being hustled into a bunker on 9/11, where he got "word of the crash in Pennsylvania, the final phone calls from hijacked planes, the final horror for those who jumped to their death to escape burning alive."

"I'll freely admit," he says, "that watching a coordinated, devastating attack on your country from an underground bunker at the White House can affect how you view your responsibilities."

That is a sane, grown-up response — not a lawyerly response premised on the trendy idea that, somehow, we are to blame for the attacks, that America, as some on the left have said, "had it coming."

When called upon, President Bush and Vice President Cheney took their responsibilities seriously. They made tough decisions to keep us safe from the predations of terrorists whose ultimate goal is to murder our people and destroy our civilization.

Read the full editorial, "A War Defended," at the newspaper's Web site.

Read the full text of Cheney's speech, in which he also exposes Nancy Pelosi as a liar, at The Weekly Standard Blog.