Um...

Dick Cheney believes that the War in Iraq is partially responsible for the fact that we haven't been hit in five years by Al Qaida. Based on what? The fact that the Al Qaida in Iraq organization has grown from a non-entity to a menace responsible, directly or indirectly, for 90% of the suicide attacks in Iraq?

"Iraq was a safe haven for terrorists, it had a guy running it who had started
two wars, who had produced and used weapons of mass destruction. Taking down
Saddam Hussein was exactly the right thing to do," he said.
"It's also, I
think, in part responsible for the fact that we haven't been hit again in nearly
five years. That's no accident," Cheney said.
"The fact is, we've taken the
battle to the enemy. That's been the key to the safety and security of the
American people these last few years, and we need to continue to do it," he
said.
"There have been attacks all over the world, in London and Madrid and
Bali and Istanbul, as well as New York and Washington; that the key to our
success to date has been to actively and aggressively go on offense," he said.

What train of though is he trying to follow here? There's so many non-sequitors I feel like I'm getting whiplash just by reading it. Cheney establish that Saddam Hussein is A Bad Guy. Then jumped to 9/11 and how we have not gotten hit in 5 years without bothering to acknowledge that the enemy we took the battle to wasn't the enemy that hit us on 9/11. Furthermore, there's some consensus that the London and Madrid attacks were in part precipitated by England and Spain's involvement in the Iraq War. In fact, there was much nasty "surrender-monkey" talk over the fact that Spain elected an anti-war candidate (who probably would have won anyway) in the wake of the attack. Now somehow that attack is being used as evidence of the success of our "active and aggressive" policy? Was there anything the real world could have thrown at Cheney that would have caused him to reconsider his reasoning? I'm sure if there had been no terrorist attacks after 9/11, he would have crowed that the invasion was a smashing success. But then again, if there had been many attacks, he would have similarly considered himself vindicated for correctly assessing the threat. It is often said that the definition of insanity is to repeat the same course of action over and over and expecting a different outcome. Perhaps there should be a corollary that it is equally insane to attempt to explain away any number of outcomes with the same reasoning.