That was then, this is now, we suppose.
Dick Cheney, in 1994 (see short video at right), said “we got it right” by deciding not to invade Iraq after the liberation of Kuwait in ’91, since “for the 146 Americans killed in action, and for their families — it wasn’t a cheap war.”
“[I]n an effort to get Saddam Hussein, [the question for the President] was how many additional dead Americans is Saddam worth?” Cheney is seen answering the question at the time: “Our judgment was, not very many, and I think we got it right.”
Apparently, the worth of Saddam has increased since ’94, to at least 4,000 dead Americans and still counting.
But, as we said, that was then, and this is now. So flip-floppery doesn’t matter, even though he predicted back then that “if we’d gone to Baghdad we would have been all alone. There wouldn’t have been anybody else with us…It’s a quagmire if you go that far and try to take over Iraq.”
Smart guy. He should have listened to him.
Text transcript of the short interview is below, courtesy of Editor & Publisher….
DICK CHENEY: No.
Q: Why not?
CHENEY: Because if we’d gone to Baghdad we would have been all alone. There wouldn’t have been anybody else with us. There would have been a U.S. occupation of Iraq. None of the Arab forces that were willing to fight with us in Kuwait were willing to invade Iraq.
Once you got to Iraq and took it over, took down Saddam Hussein’s government, then what are you going to put in its place? That’s a very volatile part of the world, and if you take down the central government of Iraq, you could very easily end up seeing pieces of Iraq fly off: part of it, the Syrians would like to have to the west, part of it — eastern Iraq — the Iranians would like to claim, they fought over it for eight years. In the north you’ve got the Kurds, and if the Kurds spin loose and join with the Kurds in Turkey, then you threaten the territorial integrity of Turkey.
It’s a quagmire if you go that far and try to take over Iraq.
The other thing was casualties. Everyone was impressed with the fact we were able to do our job with as few casualties as we had. But for the 146 Americans killed in action, and for their families — it wasn’t a cheap war. And the question for the president, in terms of whether or not we went on to Baghdad, took additional casualties in an effort to get Saddam Hussein, was how many additional dead Americans is Saddam worth?
Our judgment was, not very many, and I think we got it right.
This video could have really helped in 2004.
I’m sure the CMSM KNEW about this video, but didn’t show it for the 2000 election. Instead, they pushed the fabricated “Gore said he invented the internet”.
Cheney was so wrong back then, huh? I mean look how good the neoCons think the surge is going!
And, urge the neoCons, look how well things have gone for 5 years. The Iraqis have purple vote dye on their fingers for heaven sake.
And now Cheney believes that 911 changed everything, including what he said about Iraq. How fanciful.
He drops in and out of reality like the Flip Flopper In Chief himself.
They both have liemes disease.
Wouldn’t it be interesting to see a side by side current interview with Cheney stating no one could have foreseen, blah blah blah…? I’m sure there must be one somewhere.
BTW, I did find this quite easily :
http://thinkprogress.org/2006/0...violence-iraq/
and there appears to be a CNN video but this is vitiated here:
http://www.thehollywoodliberal....ency-strength/
Well, I assume that his opinion changed in the 9 years between 1994 and 2002/2003 due to 1) Islamic terrorist groups hitting us at home and then expressing a desire to do more damage, and 2) every single intelligence agency in the world believing Saddam had nukes and was prepared to use/share them.
Seems pretty obvious to me – it would cause me to revist my belief as well.
Really what it means is that they knew the mayhem it would cause and desired that outcome. In brief, high crimes and misdemeanors.
Nine years of inflation evidently devalued an American life to a disposable level.
Kman #6
You said “it would cause me to revist my belief as well” (emphasis added).
In other words even if nothing “on the ground” in Iraq had materially changed after Cheney said “it” and before Cheney / Bush invaded Iraq, even if the Iraqis had nothing to do with 911, and even tho the status quo in Iraq was strategically the same, your opinion of how a war there would progress would change?
And the result of your changing your mind would of course mean that and Iraq invasion, occupation, and “conversion of Iraq into an american style democracy”, would be easy? Your mind controls reality so that if you change your mind reality likewise changes to accomodate your mind?
That, I suppose, explains why you neoCons interpret the Iraq news to be good, and why you watch faux snooze. This “bad is good” hypnosis is the result of the neoCon’s own fantasies and their own wildly inflated egos.
Oh I am not saying you cannot change the world, you certainly have done that.
It is just that when people comment on those changes by saying “you are doin a heckuva job”, it is no longer a compliment.
BTW, Cheney was correct the first time, but does not seem to have gotten anything correct since. I think liemes disease has finally rendered him functionally unconscious.