"Splatter Boy" Dick Cheney

Last night at a dinner for the Conservative Political Action Conference, Dick Cheney threw some more stuff against the wall to see if it would stick. The Bush people used to say that an American withdrawal would lead to an al-Qaida takeover in Iraq. But that didn't prevent increasing majorities of the American public from supporting withdrawal. So Dick Cheney's been trying out a new line. Now the problem is that an American withdrawal would free up al-Qaida fighters to go to Afghanistan, undermine the Musharaff government in Pakistan, and put pressure on the Arab oil monarchies.

Given how disconnected he was from any reality, Cheney might as well have added "and a partridge in a pear tree." Al-Qaeda in Iraq is only one of the many Sunni insurgent groups fighting against the American occupation of Iraq. Unless an American withdrawal from Iraq serves as a much bigger stimulus to al-Qaeda recruiting than the original invasion, al-Qaeda doesn't have anywhere near enough fighters to engage in a region-wide campaign to undermine Arab governments.

But reality has never been the point with Cheney. During the lead-up to the Iraq invasion, Cheney shifted back and forth from themes of Saddam cooperating with al-Qaeda to Saddam acquiring nuclear weapons, the Niger yellowcake accusation, "knowing" where WMD's were hidden, etc. Cheney could have cared less whether any of this was true. The point was to keep war opponents on the defensive by continuing to splatter new accusations against the Saddam Hussein regime into the media.

This worked in 2003 when the Bush administration still had a lot of credibility. But the story is different now that the war in Iraq has been lost and the vast majority of the American public is looking for an exit. Liberal/left blogger Glenn Greenwald is just speaking the broad public view when he characterizes Cheney an "increasingly embittered and reckless." But Greenwald is mistaken. Cheney isn't any more embittered and reckless than he was at the beginning of the Bush administration in 2001. The only change is that Cheney's "splatter-boy" tactics no longer have any credibility with the public.