Incidently, that curious little Secretary seems to be fascinated with the phrase "Henny Penny, the sky is falling", from the revered literally masterpiece "Chicken little".

On the testing of nuclear weapons:

There are other things that come along where people, especially in Pete's shop that look at problems. They look at problems and they find that a country, pick one, most from the terrorist list are buried deeply buried under ground. They have tunnels and tunnels and tunnels. They look at a problem of how do you deal with it. So these people without worrying about all the frivolities and all the henny penny the sky is falling and do exactly what they're supposed to do. They screw their head into the problem and figure out more ways to do things. And one of them may be a deeply penetrating capability.

On the Pentagon's Office of Strategic Influence debacle:

And then there was the office of strategic influence. You may recall that. And "oh my goodness gracious isn't that terrible, Henny Penny the sky is going to fall." I went down that next day and said fine, if you want to savage this thing fine I'll give you the corpse. There's the name. You can have the name, but I'm gonna keep doing every single thing that needs to be done and I have. That was intended to be done by that office is being done by that office, NOT by that office in other ways.

On the 'liberation' of Afganistan:

Well, my goodness, democracy is untidy. Freedom is untidy. Liberation is untidy. It's a very good thing that's happened in Afghanistan. And all of this 'Henny-Penny the sky is falling, and isn't it terrible?' is nonsense.

On the treatment of prisoners of war from Afghanistan:

Well, I guess I think the truth ultimately wins out, and the truth of the matter is, they're being treated humanely. And the people down there are fine young men and women and the commanders are talented and responsible people. And the work that's being done to create facilities that are appropriate is moving forward with dispatch. And I think that the American people will see that, and indeed, I think the people of the world will. You know, it's perfectly possible for anyone to stand up and say, 'Henny penny, the sky is falling, isn't this terrible what's happening' and have someone else say, 'Gee, I view with alarm the possibility that the sky is falling.' And it gets repeated. And then some breathless commentator repeats it again, and then it goes on for three days. Now, does that make it so? No. At some point, does the air come out of that balloon? You bet.

On the war on terrorism:

It's not against a religion or a people, but it's against terrorists. The link to the weapons of mass destruction, without saying the sky is falling, without henny penny, we're all going to be blown up, we told the truth. The truth is that if you've got terrorist networks that are global and if they're well financed and if they can plan something like this, and if they have relationships with countries that have weapons of mass destruction, it does not take a leap of imagination to suspect that at some point terrorist networks conceivably could get their hands on those weapons and we have to recognize that and we have to behave in a way that recognizes that.

After reading this fable, the source of the Secretary's obsession with it is obvious to me. He is Henny Panny incarnate. Going on and on about the imminent danger that desolate nations in faraway countries pose to the US. That the only way to stop the sky from falling is to invade them. One after the other.

Or maybe he is Foxy Loxy. And we are the stupid chicken that he dupes. And devours.