Thursday, September 30, 2004
Cheney Changed His View on Iraq
Back in '92, then Secretary of Defense Cheney (to Bush '41), defended the administration's decision to withdraw from Iraq, arguing that it'd be too tough to re-build the country and not worth the effort. Huh? Wonder what changed his mind? Oh, I remember. 9/11 changed everything. We're going to take the war to the terrorists, not wait for them to come here. What's that, you say? Iraq had no ties to the jerks who murdered thousands on 9/11? No matter. Still, Iraq is, as President Bush calls it, "the central front on the war on terror." I'm not sure why. I'm not sure any thinking person thinks so. It may be the central terror training camp these days with the alarming insurgency, but that's not the point of this post.
But way back when, there was a time when Cheney was a smart man. This is what he had to say then:
"And the question in my mind is how many additional American casualties is Saddam worth? And the answer is not very damned many. So I think we got it right, both when we decided to expel him from Kuwait, but also when the president made the decision that we'd achieved our objectives and we were not going to go get bogged down in the problems of trying to take over and govern Iraq."
John Edwards picked up on this and said this today: "When he was asked why they didn't finish the job in Iraq . . . he talked about the enormous danger and risk of getting bogged down, of having to govern the country. Of the casualties that would be incurred. To use some of the same language these people have used against John, he was against getting bogged down in Iraq before he was for it."
He was against it before he was for it. Yeah, that's it.
But way back when, there was a time when Cheney was a smart man. This is what he had to say then:
"And the question in my mind is how many additional American casualties is Saddam worth? And the answer is not very damned many. So I think we got it right, both when we decided to expel him from Kuwait, but also when the president made the decision that we'd achieved our objectives and we were not going to go get bogged down in the problems of trying to take over and govern Iraq."
John Edwards picked up on this and said this today: "When he was asked why they didn't finish the job in Iraq . . . he talked about the enormous danger and risk of getting bogged down, of having to govern the country. Of the casualties that would be incurred. To use some of the same language these people have used against John, he was against getting bogged down in Iraq before he was for it."
He was against it before he was for it. Yeah, that's it.
