Dick Cheney in Australia he gave an interview to the national ABC network's PM program Feb. 23, in which he invoked Anglo racial solidarity in the most blatant terms—and raised the threat of a new Caliphate stretching from Spain to Indonesia. The PM headline, actually not quoting Cheney verbatim, invoked a "terrorist caliphate." The relevant passage follows.

First, narrator Louise Yaxley notes that Cheney said the requisite nicities about Prime Minister John Howard.

LOUISE YAXLEY: Not surprisingly he's also had warm words for the US-Australian alliance.

DICK CHENEY: We were born in the same era, sprang from the same stock and live for the same ideals. Australia and America share an affinity that reaches to our souls. Over time that deep affinity has grown into a great alliance.

LOUISE YAXLEY: He's told his Australian audience it's vital to keep up the fight.

DICK CHENEY: The business of our alliance goes forward and it begins with the fundamental duty to protect our people from danger. Having stood together in every major conflict of the last 100 years, the US and Australia now stand together in the decisive struggle against terrorism.

And it is they, the terrorist, who have ambitions of empire. Their goal in the broader Middle East is to seize control of a country so they have a base from which they can launch attacks against governments that refuse to meet their demands.

Their ultimate aim, and one they boldly proclaim, is to establish a caliphate covering a region from Spain, across North Africa, through the Middle East and South Asia, all the way around to Indonesia. And it wouldn't stop there.

Dick seems to be getting this angle from the National Intelligence Council, or maybe from Daniel Pipes.

See our last posts on Dick Cheney, Islamophobia and the struggle within Islam.