Hello all.
First diary so if it sucks let me know and I'll delete it. I did a search for "cheney" and didn't find this.
I found the video clip over at This Modern World.
It's an interview from 1994 in which Dick Cheney explains why actually invading Iraq and deposing Saddam Hussein would be a very, very bad thing to do.
His observations on the subject are very insightful and I have to say that he is absolutely right.
He explains that invading Iraq would cause that country to splinter into factions, would cost too many American combat deaths and would lead to America being involved in a "quagmire".
From the transcript.
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 Iranian would like to claim, 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.
He uses some good logic and is quite convincing. I didn't know he had it in him.