I honestly don't know if I could reason with John Bolton

Markos Molitas essentially thought I was naive. Bolton would seem to miss the point entirely, based on this:

Perhaps most importantly of all, Cheney knows that the personal attacks on him, as offensive as they are, in reality constitute stark evidence that Obama and his supporters are simply unable to match him in the substantive policy debate. An old lawyers’ cliché says: “If the law is against you, pound on the facts; if the facts are against you, pound on the law; if the law and the facts are against you, pound on the table.” Obama and his supporters are doing the political equivalent of continuous table-pounding, because that’s basically all they have to offer.

I see nothing but policy criticism of Cheney, with personal attacks to boot. The difference is that Cheney's response seems to be that anything short of what he wants will risk American lives. That's a personal attack, nothing more or less.

I do think Cheney has good motivations. I just don't understand how he thinks we'll have anything close to decent intelligence capabilities with a consensus that we're the bad guys. Public diplomacy matters; it's the difference between a tip and a car bomb.