A Deep And Dark Obsession

Holy crap. Folks, this is more than run-of-the-mill fear mongering. This is psychotic paranoia. LATimes (05.27.07):

"With the Bush administration laboring to persuade skeptical Americans to stick with its war effort, Vice President Dick Cheney delivered a graphic warning Saturday about the high stakes of the ongoing conflict in Iraq.

'Al Qaeda's leadership has said they have the right to 'kill 4 million Americans, 2 million of them children, and to exile twice as many and to wound and cripple thousands,' ' Cheney told graduates in a commencement speech at the U.S. Military Academy."

Cheney delivers warning on Iraq war

"'Their cruelty is not rebuked by human suffering, only fed by it,' Cheney said. Yet, he said, they "demand the protections of the Geneva Convention and the Constitution" when captured."

"'America is fighting this enemy in Iraq because that is where they have gathered…. And we are there because the security of this nation depends on a successful outcome,' Cheney said."

So, uhhh, just how many of "this enemy" are we dealing with here? A year ago, the number was "thought to be in the thousands", and that things were going well enough that "Iraq's national security adviser flatly predicted that Zarqawi's group, al-Qaeda in Iraq, is at 'the beginning of the end.'"

In December, the Pentagon said that the "Mehdi Army has replaced al-Qaeda in Iraq as 'the most dangerous accelerant' of the sectarian violence plaguing Iraq for nearly a year".

The locals up in Anbar hate al Qaeda's guts even more than they hate us being there.

In fact, al-Qaeda in Iraq is by far and away al-Qaeda in name only. They don't give a shit about Osama.

Al-Qaeda in Iraq is 90% Iraqi, and its "aims are likely to remain focused on the struggle against the Shiite majority in Iraq, U.S. intelligence officials said."

Long and short? Old Dick may be more than just a bit off his rocker. And that, friends, is truly frightening.