You've Got to See This
Video of Dick Cheney in 1994 talking about what would have happened if we had invaded Baghdad. It would've been a quagmire, he said.
Transcript courtesy of Editor & Publisher:
Transcript courtesy of Editor & Publisher:
Q: Do you think the U.S., or U.N. forces, should have moved into Baghdad?
A: No.
Q: Why not?
A: 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.
posted by JimK at 9:26 PM
5 Comments:
Thanks Jim, that's some juicy stuff!
Just so you know, I posted that on Soulforce and Pam's House Blend earlier. I gave credit and linked back to here though too. :)
I can't wait to see how they try and spin this one.
It's going to be fun watching how they spin this one too.
WASHINGTON (Aug. 13) - Karl Rove, President Bush's close friend and chief political strategist, plans to leave the White House at the end of August, joining a lengthening line of senior officials heading for the exits in the final 1 1/2 years of the administration.
A longtime member of Bush's inner circle, Rove was nicknamed "the architect" by the president for designing the strategy that twice won him the White House.
Bush was expected to make a statement Monday with Rove.
"Obviously it's a big loss to us," White House deputy press secretary Dana Perino said. "He's a great colleague, a good friend, and a brilliant mind. He will be greatly missed, but we know he wouldn't be going if he wasn't sure this was the right time to be giving more to his family, his wife Darby and their son. He will continue to be one of the president's greatest friends."
Since Democrats won control of Congress in November, some top administration officials have announced their resignations. Among those who have left are White House counselor Dan Bartlett, budget director Rob Portman, chief White House attorney Harriet Miers, political director Sara Taylor, deputy national security adviser J.D. Crouch and Meghan O'Sullivan, another deputy national security adviser who worked on Iraq. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was forced out immediately after the election as the unpopular war in Iraq dragged on.
Rove is expected to write a book after he leaves.
"He's been talking with the president for a long time - about a year - regarding when might be good to go," Perino said. "But there's always a big project to work on, and his strategic abilities - and our need for his support - kept him here. He said there's never a good time to leave, just the `right' time."
So where was this clip being shown during the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq? So much for the idea of a liberal media bias at CNN, NBC, ABC, and CBS.
Today the official count of American war dead in Iraq stands at 3699. Saddam surely was not worth that many of our fellow citizens. The neocon blunder into Iraq has unleashed a civil war there. May God help us.
"A local CBS affiliate who called Vice President Cheney's office asking why Cheney said in 1994 that the US should not invade Iraq actually got a reply.
"He was not Vice President at the time, it was after he was Secretary of Defense," a spokesperson told CBS 5 San Francisco. "I don't have any comment." "
http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Cheney_shrugs_off_1994_remarks_about_0816.html
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