What Last Throes?

The vice president, Dick Cheney, in spite of evidence, in spite of the testimony of his own military commanders

Top Commander Says Insurgency Still Strong

continues to insist that the Iraqi insurgency is "on its last legs", "in its last throes", "there is no guerilla war".

Its kind of reminiscent of

William Buckley
in the time of Vietnam, who for years cited the evidence of

Captured Enemy Documents

to claim that the VC (Viet Cong, for the young among you) were in their last throes. It seemed unlikely at the time, and history has shown it to be wrong at the time. In fact, the successor to the leader of the VC was just in Washington DC, meeting with the President. Something I don't believe Bill Buckley has managed lately.
The last time Buckley's column cited the captured enemy documents, his column was followed (in the Los Angeles Times, anyway) by one of my all time favorite columns by Art Buchwald. In Buchwalds column, he interviewed the manager of North Vietnams Captured Enemy Document Factory Number 1. The poor manager was in a terrible state. It seems the demand for Captured Enemy Documents was surging, as more and more US officials and newsmen wanted them, while at the same time the US military kept bombing his factory and shutting down production. He was talking to Buchwald in hopes of getting him to intervene with the military so that they'd stop bombing his factory, which had by that time assumed a critical function for North Vietnam, as their primary source of foreign money and was also critical for the US, as providing propaganda cover to keep the war going.
I think it was too much for Buckley, and he went on to other things, like going sailing.
A good thing, in my opinion.
Perhaps Dick Cheney has been reading some of those old Captured Enemy Documents. Or, since we have progressed a great deal since the 1970's, we are getting our information directly from Captured Enemies themselves. Note: We do not torture them; we aren't like that, we don't do that, and if we do, they deserve it anyway.

Abu Graib - Model of American Military Justice
Its more important to believe everything your President tells you than the evidence in this picture, no?