Yesterday morning's shootout: Gingrich-Cheney vs. Ridge-Powell

Yeah, I know. There's nothing like wasted breath, which is how talk radio and Fox News regard reason. But of course Ridge knows that too, so he'll be neither surprised nor disappointed this week when his Sunday morning call for civility is rewarded by shrill denunciations and judgmental hogwash.

But Ridge didn't stop there. In a further pursuit of moderation and thus "Dick Who-ism?" he delivered an unambiguous "yes" to John King's question, "You disagree with Dick Cheney then?" -- that is, that President Obama is making us "less safe"?

No hesitation, no equivocation -- "Yes, I disagree with Dick Cheney," he said -- and although he instantly disagreed with Obama, too, Ridge's direct assault on his former boss was a vivid declaration of the GOP's internal war.

Meanwhile, fellow moderate Gen. Colin Powell was launching a second front on "Face the Nation." Addressing specifically the topic of Guantanamo's closing but in general the issue of Obama's national security measures, Powell said, "I think we need to kind of take the heat out of this issue." In service of that admonition he repeatedly noted to the immoderates that it was President Bush -- not President Obama -- who first expressed the desire to shut down Gitmo.

Also noteworthy -- indeed, headline-worthy, I thought -- was Powell's intimation that as secretary of state he possessed only Nancy Pelosilike knowledge of waterboarding.

"I think it was unfortunate," said Powell, "but we had a system that kept that in a very compartmented manner. And so I was apart [sic] that these enhanced interrogation techniques were being considered."

The man was secretary of state and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, for heaven's sake, yet worked in a "system" devised by Bush-Cheney that kept interrogation techniques of terrorist suspects "compartmented" from key players -- or in other words, a system that kept its own highest officials in utter ignorance.

Again, seemingly for emphasis, possibly as politically volunteered corroboration of Pelosi's out-of-the-loop contention, and quite probably because Bob Schieffer shockingly failed to connect the controversial dots: "We were aware that these techniques were being discussed," Powell reiterated. "And we were aware that legal opinions were being given that said they met the standard of the law."

Nothing more.

Also "unfortunate" was that Newt Gingrich was busy being shrill and judgmental on "Meet the Press" just as Powell was sitting with Schieffer, so the former speaker of the House could not have known about and therefore righteously denounce in a timely fashion Powell's shadowy suggestion that the Bush administration was bent on internal deception, let alone full disclosure to some mere minority-party member of some no-account Congressional committee.

But in Newt I have faith. He'll get around to it. Then we'll all be a bit safer in Newt's world, which is good, because we decidedly are not in President Obama's.

How could we be? I mean, Mr. Gingrich yesterday, with his customary intellectual integrity, laid it starkly on the line: "The question comes right down to, as Vice President Cheney said this week, what's your highest priority? Is it to defend America and protect American lives, or is it to find some way to defend terrorists and to get terrorists involved in the criminal justice system?"

Actually, Newt, that should be "higher" priority, but who am I to quibble with such a Big Idea Man or take lightly such an honorably offered clear choice? Ya got me, Newt. I gotta go with defending America and not the terrorists. Damn you're good.

Still, Gingrich's arguments weren't really with me or mine. Increasingly they're with his own party, whose internally opposing armies are being formed and the battle lines drawn. It's too early to slap down any confident bets on the emergent victor, but if I were a hunch-player I'd have to go with the Gingrich camp.