Cheney's Logic Isn't

Talking Points Memo summarizes nicely both Dick Cheney's capacity for lying--virtually limitless--and the administration's understanding of the terrorist threat--microscopic AND myopic.

The real question -- the one on which there may be said to be a true debate--is whether the terrorist networks are truly independent actors or whether they cannot subsist without states backing them, whether they are in fact the pawns of states.

The Bush approach has been fundamentally the latter one--a belief in the continuing centrality of states as the actors in international affairs. Thus, the focus on taking down states as a means of combatting al Qaida. The contrary approach is one that actually focuses much more on the terrorist networks.

To which I'll add only that any discussion of terrorism that focuses solely on the Middle Eastern variety is, in a word, racist. While seeking to determine who's the swarthiest Arab of them all, Orcinus continues to remind us that the term "terrorist" also encompass right-wing militias of the type that Timothy McVeigh identified with. And, we STILL have no arrests in the matter of the anthrax letters--or even a clue as to who mailed them. What DO we have? A nifty color-code Alert of the Day--oh, did anyone check to see if this might have been raised in light of the attacks in Spain? I didn't think so...