Dick Cheney's Logic

I watched Wolf Blitzer interview American Vice President Dick Cheney last weekend. There were lots of things the Vice President said that really puzzled me so I've asked my friends and colleagues to explain the Cheney logic. None of them were able to come up with a satisfactory response so I thought I'd ask you to help me out.

Here's Cheney's response to questions about the failed strategy in Iraq.

Wolf, you can come up with all kinds of what-ifs. You've got to deal with the reality on the ground. The reality on the ground is, we've made major progress, we've still got a lot of work to do. There are a lot of provinces in Iraq that are relatively quiet. There's more and more authority transferred to the Iraqis all the time.

But the biggest problem we face right now is the danger that the United States will validate the terrorist strategy, that, in fact, what will happen here with all of the debate over whether or not we ought to stay in Iraq, with the pressures from some quarters to get out of Iraq, if we were to do that, we would simply validate the terrorists' strategy that says the Americans will not stay to complete the task --

Do you see my problem? Is he saying that we can't stop killing Iraqis and destroying their country because that's what the terrorists want? Is he saying that once he and Bush make a bonehead mistake they can't reverse course because they've got to show those terrorists just how pigheaded they can be?

Is there a rational argument in there that I'm missing?

Someone else seems to have a problem with Cheney Logic ....