Once again, ol’ Cheney comes out and wows me with his bullheadedness and, well, complete lack of sense. Speaking on the Iraq Fiasco, the Veep spun his usual yarn, ridiculing democrats and telling us all why the President’s plan is perfect. And, as usual, he did so without anything resembling a desire for bipartisan cooperation.

A defiant Cheney said Sunday that majority Democrats have offered no credible alternative to Bush’s revised war strategy. Cheney said withdrawing from Iraq would mean giving in to al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and other U.S. enemies.

The two-prong assault. On one hand, say they don’t offer alternatives, which nicely paints them as the “party of obstruction”, but that hinges on immediately discounting the alternative they DO offer as quitting, accepting defeat, cutting and running, etc.

It’s a fun way of blockheadedly refusing to accept any advice about anything. Try this the next time someone is giving you pointers on whatever you’re doing that day. As soon as you paint the alternative as crazy or otherwise unusable, that leaves you free to insult the offerer or said alternative because they don’t have any ideas.

Bush employed this strategy well a few days ago, actually.

“Members of Congress have a right to express their views, and express them forcefully,” Bush said. “But those who refuse to give this plan a chance to work have an obligation to offer an alternative that has a better chance for success.”

See? Discount the alternative and then insult the opposition for not having any MORE alternatives. Back to Dick.

“You cannot run a war by committee,’’ the vice president said.

Debatable. But what you CERTAINLY can’t do is run a war by politics, which for some reason our president seems hell-bent on doing. Bush has done everything he can to use minimum force and cut taxes while the war is going on, bending over backwards to make the war “palatable”.

When his generals said several hundred thousand soldiers, he sent 250,000. When they said the war would cost a few hundred billions, they insisted it would be somewhere between “free” and “less than those fancy organic eggs”. When the violence gets bad and, if a troop is necessary at all it’ll have to be a giant one, he puts in enough troops to bring levels up to where they were the last time nothing improved.

In a few months, after nothing has gotten better, we’ll see a new plan. One that likely involves more troops. Mark my words.