Cheney on Invading Iraq - 9/14/1992

Then-SecDef Dick Cheney explaining why *not* to invade Iraq.

But let's assume for the moment that we would have been able to do it — ... Then the question comes [of] putting a government in place of the one you've just gotten rid of; you can't just sort of turn around and walk away — you have now accepted the responsibility for what happens in Iraq. What kind of government do you want us to create in place of the old Saddam Hussein government? Do you want a Sunni government, or a Shi'a government or maybe it ought to be a Kurdish government, or maybe one based on the Ba'ath Party or maybe some combination of all of those? How long is that government likely to survive without U.S. military forces there to keep it propped up?

If you get into the business of committing U.S. forces on the ground in Iraq, to occupy the place, my guess is I'd probably still have people there today instead of having been able to bring them home. ... The bottom line question for me was: How many additional American lives is Saddam Hussein worth? The answer: not very damn many.

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• Dick
• Cheney
• Iraq
• 1992
• Clairvoyance

[shimmerfawn]

Dick.

[baronofhawkland]

wow...he actually made sense back than. The years must have gotten the best of him, because based on his latest action, he obviously went fuck nuts...

[Hperman09]

@acheybrenda We didn't support Saddam until after the Iranian revolution and Iran alliance with the USSR. We see Iraq as part of the Cold War arena and tried to make Hussein allied with the West which backfired. Also we didn't put Saddam in power.

[acheybrenda]

@Hperman09 But we did sponsor and help Saddam once he came into power. There are pictures of some of the Bush Admin. shaking hands with Saddam.

[Hperman09]

@GuzzyVision Iraq was actually one of the terrorist state sponsors. Saddam give money to the PLO and among others to attack Israel and American interests aboard. During the 2003 invasion of Iraq, U.S. Army Special Forces founded one of the world largest terrorist training camps since the fall of the Taliban in 2001 Afghanistan - Ansar al Islam.

And no we did not put Saddam in power during Iran-Iraq War. You're dead wrong and a liar. He actually came into power by himself in 1979.

[kirkfisher2005]

only what you want to hear, of course this turned an easily fixable Iraq into a decade long intervention in saudi, kuwaiti, turkish, and israeli affairs and no-fly zones to keep the bombs droppin and that oil poppin. Until a decade later at his behest, we entered that insane plot to the very end. A fraud and a war criminal

[Tsnore]

Richard In-saney apparently used to be sane.

[Tsnore]

What happened to Richard Bruce Insaney from that time until he fully took the foreign policy portfolio from Mush in 2002? According to Colonel Larry Wilkerson, it was the result of "a lack of adult supervision," and that this was the true Dick.

[mt22201]

This video should run on a continuous loop in Cheney's prison cell for the rest of his life.

[cashfire2003]

After listening to this speech it all makes sense. The time wasn't right. 2003 we were more capable then ever.

[Explosivehippo]

This really just blows my mind.