Good news! According to Dick Cheney, we've finally turned the corner in Iraq.
Really?
In fact, we've turned so many corners, that we're now going in circles.
The man who claimed WMD existed when they didn't, now claims the insurgency doesn't exist when it's actually all over the place.
The man who didn't have a lot of cajones when he was called on to fight had quite big ones last night -– Memorial Day no less -- when he told Larry King that the insurgency is "in the last throes."
Tell that to the 31 people who were killed and the 108 who were wounded in yesterday's daily suicide bombing (this one in Hilla).
Or to the 700 people that have been killed since Iraq's new government was announced just a month ago.
Of the 27 months of this war, May now ranks as the 7th deadliest for our troops. It's the fourth bloodiest month since April 2004.
We (including the Iraqis) should all be so lucky as to have a pair of Chickenhawk Cheney's rose-colored glasses (and, of course, his security detail).
He also went on to say:
"America will be safer in the long run when Iraq and Afghanistan as well are no longer safe havens for terrorists or places where people can gather and plan and organize attacks against the United States."
Yeah, sure, that's true. What he leaves out is that Iraq wasn't a safe haven for terrorists before we invaded, and it wasn't organizing attacks against the U.S.
So "when do we leave?" Larry King asked.
"We'll leave as soon as the task is over with," the Vice President replied. "We haven't set a deadline or a date. It depends upon conditions. We have to achieve our objectives, complete the mission."
In other words, we have no plan. We'll leave when we finish. Or more accurately, Cheney and Bush will decide to leave when they have decided we're finished -- which, trust me, will have a lot more to do with political realities at home than military realities in Iraq.