The guy in charge

Josh Marshall opines about Scooter's boss, "Shooter" Cheney:

Okay, it seems we need more updates on why Dick Cheney is too dangerously incompetent to have in any position of authority, let alone the vice presidency. You'll see for instance that this morning Cheney showed up in Islamabad warning President Musharraf that al Qaeda is "regrouping" along the Pakistani border. Musharraf must be a little confused since, didn't we sign off on the armistice his government signed with the jihadists and their protectors just a few months ago?

More to the point, last week Cheney claimed that Nancy Pelosi's position on Iraq would validate al Qaeda since al Qaeda's goal in Iraq is to show that our will can be broken. Reed Hundt chimed in and pointed out that it's far more likely that al Qaeda's goal is to bait us into ridiculous and unwinnable wars that will sap our military strength and financial power.

Now, as it happens, in response to Reed's post, commenter Tom Hilton flagged this passage from the article James Fallows wrote last year in which he wrote ...

Documents captured after 9/11 showed that bin Laden hoped to provoke the United States into an invasion and occupation that would entail all the complications that have arisen in Iraq. His only error was to think that the place where Americans would get stuck would be Afghanistan.

Bin Laden also hoped that such an entrapment would drain the United States financially. Many al-Qaeda documents refer to the importance of sapping American economic strength as a step toward reducing America’s ability to throw its weight around in the Middle East.

In other words, the actual intelligence we have about what al Qaeda wants -- not the usual stuff Dick Cheney makes up or gets from Ahmed Chalabi or his butler or whoever -- suggests we're playing right into their hands.

How many American deaths is this goof responsible for? And who in this country has done more to advance the al Qaeda agenda and make the US more vulnerable to attack?

Cartoon credit Cagle Cartoons.