Republicans made good on their promise to “Swiftboat” Hillary Clinton on Monday, deploying their most practiced liar, Vice Pres. Dick Cheney, to go on CNN and insert into the record a falsehood about the contents of a letter Clinton wrote to the Pentagon in May, falsely claiming that Clinton “demanded” to see Pentagon plans for leaving Iraq. The truth is, Clinton simply sought assurance that contingency planning was underway.

Clinton responded by challenging Pres. Bush “set the record straight” on the role of Congress in oversight.

Unfortunately, on the day after Cheney’s intentional lie made a little news, cable news began its full-time coverage of the freeway bridge collapse in Minneapolis — and after today, Congress is heading into a month-long recess. Still, all eyes should be on the Clinton campaign to see if they will respond more forcefully to GOP Swiftboating in the 2008 campaign than the John Kerry campaign did in 2004.

On Monday, in what appears to have been a carefully calculated move, Cheney chose a soft target — “Larry King Live” on CNN — as the platform for his Swiftboat attack on Clinton, knowing full well that King would allow him to get away with deceiving his audience. Cheney arrived for the interview with the lie pre-scripted and ready to go:

KING: A member of the Department of Defense sent Hillary Clinton a letter saying she should not criticize because it helps the enemy. Do you agree with that letter?

CHENEY: It didn’t say she should [not criticize]. She was demanding the plans for withdrawal from Iraq. And…

As noted, Sen. Clinton “was demanding” no such thing. Here’s the text of her letter to the Pentagon in May:

Given the express will of the Congress to implement a phased redeployment of United States forces from Iraq and the importance of proper contingency planning to achieve that goal, I write to request that you provide the appropriate oversight committees in Congress – including the Senate Armed Services Committee – with briefings on what current contingency plans exist for the future withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq. Alternatively, if no such plans exist, please provide an explanation for the decision not to engage in such planning.

The seeds of many problems that continue to plague our troops and mission in Iraq were planted in the failure to adequately plan for the conflict and properly equip our men and women in uniform. Congress must be sure that we are prepared to withdraw our forces without any unnecessary danger.

True to form, Larry King ignored Cheney’s false statement about the Democratic frontrunner, and gave Cheney the opportunity to characterize the Pentagon’s outrageous letter in response to Clinton — which was written by Eric Edleman, a longtime Cheney henchman — as “a good letter” and, what the heck, to compound his lie about the senator:

KING: Do you agree with that letter?

CHENEY: I agreed with the letter Eric Edelman wrote. I thought it was good letter.

KING: So you should not call for the plans for withdrawal?

CHENEY: No. There is an important principle here, Larry, and that is a debate over what our policy ought to be, perfectly legitimate. What we don’t do is we don’t get into the business of sharing operational plans; we never have, with the Congress….

But to get into the business now where we have got all of these contingencies, we always have got a lot of contingencies, where we are going to start shedding those to respond to political charges, such as those that Senator Clinton made, I think would be unwise.

What Clinton “charged” the administration with was incompetently planning and abysmally executing the war. But these are not simply partisan “charges,” but rather the consensus assessment widely held by pols in both parties.

Even before Cheney’s false statements, the “liberal media” got the gist of Clinton’s letter wrong too — so wrong in fact that either the reporters had not bothered to read it, or they too were deliberately lying:

The New York Post, for example, reports that Clinton is “demanding the U.S. military whip up plans for withdrawal from Iraq,” while the Associated Press maintains that Clinton “urged the Pentagon to start planning now for the withdrawal of American forces.” ABC News’ Jake Tapper also has a piece up on the network’s Web site headlined “Clinton Demands Pentagon Plan for Withdrawal.” Over at the New York Times’s “The Caucus” blog, Kate Phillips says that “The letter from Defense Undersecretary Eric Edelman was in response to Senator Clinton’s request in May for the Defense Department to draw up proposals to get the troops out of the battlefields.”

Clinton was scheduled to go on CNN Tuesday, the day the bridge disaster occurred, and certainly the disaster has muted coverage of her response. However, the action she has taken so far seems promising:

Clinton fired back Wednesday in the letter to Cheney, saying she had never sought specifics of troop movements and was, in fact, getting a briefing from Edelman on the subject Thursday.

“I feel it is necessary to respond to several comments and inaccuracies you put forward,” Clinton wrote, noting that she had also received a conciliatory letter from Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

“Your comments … have left me wondering about the true position of the administration. Therefore, I am writing to President Bush asking that he set the record straight about the administration’s position regarding the role of Congress in oversight of the war,” she said.

A public feud with the Pentagon generally and Cheney in particular may help Clinton among Democratic primary voters still uneasy over her 2002 vote to authorize the invasion of Iraq.

That last statement reflects the conventional wisdom inside the Beltway. In reality, sensible Democratic voters are less concerned about Clinton’s 2000 war vote than they are about finding a candidate who will neutralize the GOP’s Swiftboat-style lies and smears and put them on the defensive. Believe it or not, it has happened before, and not that long ago — 1996.