The Vice President of the United States Grampa Dick
"Chilblainy" Cheney continues to live in a fantasy world of world conquest and imaginary "standing up" of Iraqi security forces. Here is what he said yesterday to Jim Lehrer, and I quote:
I think we're making progress against the insurgency. I think we have been now -- I think we'll look back several years from now and see that 2005 was really a turning point, in the sense the progress we made both in terms of training Iraqi forces, because we've now got a large number of Iraqis taking the lead various places around the country from a security and military standpoint,
Gen. Peter Pace, who should know, gives a different story, BELOW....
Here is Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Peter Pace's story, also from yesterday, as
told to the Senate Armed Services Committee; in fact, ITS THE SAME STORY HE TOLD 5 MONTHS AGO::
Pace said only one Iraqi army battalion is capable of fighting without U.S. help.
Hmm. Let's see: if we want to calculate from this "progress" exactly when the Iraqi army will be totally "standing up" we can just extrapolate this line with zero slope to infinity....hmm....I am getting the result of
NEVER. And of course, if and when they stand up, we may discover
they're actually INSURGENTS. Durn it....
but ... Grampa Dick, that loveable old storyteller, goes on:
Q: you drew a lot of heat and ridicule when you said eight months ago, the insurgency is in its last throes. Do you regret having said that?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: No, I think the way I think about it is as I just described. I think about when we look back and get some historical perspective on this period, I'll believe that the period we were in through 2005 was, in fact, a turning point; that putting in place a democratic government in Iraq was the -- sort of the cornerstone, if you will, of victory against the insurgents.
Just for your info, Grampa Dick is changing his story a bit (of course, he may not be totally aware of things): here is what he told Larry King and millions of Americans in 2005, and it had nothing to do with elections:
But I think the level of activity that we see today, from a military standpoint, I think will clearly decline. I think they're in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency. We've had reporting in recent days, Larry, about Zarqawi, who's sort of the lead terrorist, outside terrorist, al Qaeda, head of al Qaeda for Iraq, may well have been seriously injured. We don't know. We can't confirm that. We've had reporting to that effect.
So I think we're making major progress.
I do look forward to Dickie's next television interview, and I just hope it's with Oprah, if you know what I mean. In the meantime, until we're sure that Gramps is "compis mentis", I might suggest pinning a contact phone number to Grampa Dickie's shirt before he is let out in the morning. (tip of the hat to ThinkProgress on this.)