From a Frontline Interview, with Richard Cheney, Secretary of Defense, after the 1991 Gulf War:
Q: What was your advice to the President?
Cheney: I was not an enthusiast about getting US forces and going into Iraq. {snip}
I felt there was a real danger here that you would get bogged down in a long drawn out conflict, that this was a dangerous difficult part of the world. {snip}
You're going to find yourself in a situation where you've redefined your war aims and now set up a new war aim that in effect would detract from the enormous success you just had. {snip}
Now you can say well you should have gone to Baghdad and gotten Saddam, I don't think so. I think if we had done that we would have been bogged down there for a very long period of time with the real possibility we might not have succeeded. -Cheney
Oh pray tell!
More Cheney:
Maybe it's part of our national character, you know we like to have these problems nice and neatly wrapped up, put a ribbon around it. You deploy a force, you win the war and the problem goes away and it doesn't work that way in the Middle East it never has and isn't likely to in my lifetime. {snip}
... and for us to have done what would have been necessary to get rid of him--certainly a very large force for a long time into Iraq to run him to ground and then you've got to worry about what comes after. And you then have to accept the responsibility for what happens in Iraq ... It would have been an all US operation, I don't think any of our allies would have been with us, maybe Britain, but nobody else. And you're going to take a lot more American casualties if you're gonna go muck around in Iraq for weeks on end trying to run Saddam Hussein to ground and capture Baghdad and so forth and I don't think it would have been worth it. I think the, the decision the President made in effect to stop when we did was the right one.
Funny... the president popped this question at his press conference yesterday (Thurs. Aug 9, 2007)
.......h[space]ttp://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/08/20070809-1.html
"The first question one has to ask on Iraq is, is it worth it?" -Bush
First question, Mr. president? Apparently, as Mr. Flip-Flopper rolled out the oil-reserve maps at the energy meeting (a decade after his Gulf War quotes) ... he decided it was!
Feigned concern for the:
-Four million Iraqis [who] can't afford to eat enough
-70 percent of Iraqis [who] don't have clean water supplies, a 20 percent increase since 2003.
-28 percent of children [who] are malnourished, a nine percent increase since the invasion in March 2003.
-92 percent of children [who] have learning problems that stem from the constant fear they live here in Iraq.
-More than two million people [who] are internally displaced in Iraq.
-Another two million [who] have fled, most taking refuge in Jordan and Syria, both now unwelcoming.
[hat tip, to bloggeress Leila Fadel]
That’s about 30% of a country’s entire population, who don’t have food ... have fled ... or been killed.
[As a sidenote] president bush also claimed in his presser, that:
"after-tax income has grown by an average of more than $3,400 per person since I took office." -Bush
Anyone who’s taken stats, knows this is a blatant misrepresentation. An "average", weighs the 2% who have incomes in the millions [billions?] WiTH the 98% of income earners, who make peanuts. (Did YOU see a $3,400 income increase, since Clinton years? ...unlikely.)
Well ... his 'base' have reaped $10’s-of-thousands (even million$).
While our infrastructure collapses ...labraries are closing ...Natl Guard/Reserves (and their equipment) are bogged-down in Iraq ...our treasury is sacked ...on-and-on.
It might be interesting to view Bill Moyers' Journal, Friday, August 10, 9:00pm (or Saturday, August 11, 2:00am) "Impeaching President Bush and Vice President Cheney." (You might have to snoop around, for your channels and times...)