You can either watch the 1 minute video below or read the transcript below the jump. There is nothing I can say that will be more damning than what Mr. Cheney says himself regarding the outcome of an Iraq invasion.
Transcript:
[interviewer]: Do you think that US, or UN forces, should have moved into Baghdad?
[Dick Cheney]: No.
[interviewer]: Why not?
[Dick Cheney]: Because if we’d gone to Baghdad we would have been all alone, there wouldn’t have been anyone else with us, it would have been a US occupation of Iraq. None of the Arab forces that were willing to fight with us in Kuwait were willing to invade Iraq. Uh, 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 can very easily see pieces of Iraq fly off. Part of it, uh, the Syrians would like to have to the west, part of eastern Iraq the Iranians would like to claim, uh, they fought over it for eight years. In the north you’ve got the Kurds, if the Kurds spin loose and join with the Kurds in Turkey, then you’ve threatened the territory and integrity of Turkey.
It’s a, it’s a quagmire if you go that far and try to take over Iraq.
And then there’s the casualties. Uh, everyone was impressed with the fact that we were able to do our job with as few casualties as we have. 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 was Saddam worth?
And our judgment was, uh, not very many and I think we got it right.
End Transcript. Tweet
