Irony alert: Dick Cheney, on Iraq

Thanks to my friend Kim, who e-mailed me the MoveOn.org link, here's Dick "Dick" Cheney, speaking about whether or not the U.S. should have "moved into Baghdad" during the first Gulf War. The video is a little over a minute long.

As you watch and listen, bear in mind that the interview was conducted on April 15, 1994. Pay close attention to "Dick's" reasons for his answer.



Here's a transcript, for those who can't see the video:

INTERVIEWER: Do you think the U.S., or U.N. forces, should have moved into Baghdad?

CHENEY: No.

INTERVIEWER: Why not?

CHENEY: Because if we'd gone to Baghdad, we would have been all alone. There wouldn't have been anybody else with us. It 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 into Iraq and took it over, and 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 in Iraq, you can easily end up seeing pieces of Iraq fly off. Part of it, the Syrians would like to have to the west. Part of eastern Iraq, the Iranians would like to claim -- fought over 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've threatened the territorial integrity of Turkey. It's a quagmire, if you go that far in trying to take over Iraq.

The other thing was casualties. Everyone was impressed with the fact that 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 and took additional casualties in an effort to get Saddam Hussein, was how many additional dead Americans is Saddam worth? And our judgment was: not very many. And I think we got Iraq.

Hey, that guy really knew what he was talking about, didn't he? I mean, he got everything almost exactly right! Boy, 2000s "Dick" could learn something from 1994 "Dick," eh?

It's sad that he didn't, and hasn't, and everything he predicted has come to pass.

UPDATE (9:52 am 8/16/07): I knew I should have posted this as soon as I got the e-mail yesterday. I feel unbelievably stupid now ... I didn't watch The Daily Show last night, and I understand this video was shown there, and now on C-SPAN today.

Well, if nothing else, maybe the transcript will be helpful for someone ...