The latest (official) incarnation of the Evil Caliphate is contained in a Joint Chiefs of Staff briefing, which posits that the U.S. enemy in the Long War is made up of at least 12 million Muslims who want to establish an empire to battle the United States. The briefing was reported by the Washington Times. An excerpt:

The briefing was prepared for Rear Adm. William D. Sullivan, vice director for strategic plans and policy within the Joint Staff, which is under Marine Corps Gen. Peter Pace, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman. Adm. Sullivan used it to deliver a lecture in January to a national security study group at Mississippi State University.

Bin Laden, the Joint Staff paper says, wants to "expand the Muslim empire to historical significance." And Iraq "has become the focus of the enemy's effort. If they win in Iraq, they have a base from which to expand their terror. ... Extremists now have an Emirate in Iraq that serves as a base of operations from which they can revive the Caliphate [Islamic rule]. ... Baghdad becomes the capital of the Caliphate. The revived Caliphate now turns its attention to the destruction of Israel."

Adm. Sullivan's briefing contains a map that shows the bin Laden-style caliphate conquering North and East Africa, the entire Middle East and Central and South Asia.

To me it sounds like the Protocols of the Elders of Islam. It’s nonsense, of course. As I’ve been writing for years now, the people we are fighting in Iraq are Baathists and former military officials and Sunni tribal and clan leaders, not Caliphate-mongers and bin Laden’s cronies. Is Adm. Sullivan’s intelligence that bad?