Is this the mission? (Warning: Please do not watch the following video if you cannot handle reality.)

Does this man know what the mission is?

BLITZER: But there is a terrible situation there.

CHENEY: No, there is not. There is not. There’s problems — ongoing problems — but we have, in fact, accomplished our objectives of getting rid of the old regime…

BLITZER: And…

CHENEY: … and there is a new regime in place that’s been there for less than a year, far too soon for you guys to write them off. They have got a democratically written constitution, the first ever in that part of the world. They’ve had three national elections. So there’s been a lot of success.

We still…

BLITZER: How worried are you, Mr. Vice President…

CHENEY: We still have more work to do to get a handle on the security situation…

BLITZER: How worried…

CHENEY: But the president has put a plan in place to do that.

BLITZER: How worried are you of this nightmare scenario — that the U.S. is building up this Shiite-dominated Iraqi government with an enormous amount of military equipment, sophisticated training, and then, in the end, they’re going to turn against the United States?

CHENEY: Wolf, that’s not going to happen. The problem is you’ve got…

BLITZER: They’re very — very — warming up to Iran…

CHENEY: Wolf…

BLITZER: … and Syria right now.

CHENEY: Wolf, you can — you can come up with all kinds of what- ifs. You’ve got to be 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. We’ve got 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 than the United States will validate the terrorists’ 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…

What is the United States doing in Iraq’s civil war?