Liberal College Kid

A video has recently surfaced of an interview Dick Cheney gave in 1994 regarding Iraq and the Persian Gulf War. The person conducting the interview asked if it would have been wise to move US troops into Baghdad to take down Sadam then. Here’s what Cheney said in response:

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.

Amazing how things change isn’t it? Mr. Cheney, listen to yourself and pull out now.

Here’s the video:

So what changed in the mind of the Vice President? Clearly September 11, 2001 had nothing to do with Iraq or Sadam so what on Earth changed in Cheney’s mind? This administration led us into a war that they nearly 10 years beforehand to be flawed. Cheney said it would be a quagmire and that we would be there alone. His prediction is almost ominous in its accuracy and yet he helped lead us into a military occupation he knew would not be successful and would cost American lives. This is an oppurtunity for this administration to save a little bit of face and get out of the war that Bush will be forever remembered for.
I can’t wait to hear what Cheney will say in response to this video, probably something along the lines of “I don’t recall.” But for now at least; Liberal College Kid Agrees with Dick Cheney