Post #100

Subject: Dick Cheney has been a Nut since ’97! :p

http://www.newamericancentury.org/statementofprinciples.htm

… from 1994:

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So you think the U.S. or U.N. forces should have moved into Baghdad?

DICK CHENEY, FUTURE VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: No.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Why not?

CHENEY: Because if we had 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. And under 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, 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 for the west. Part of eastern Iraq the Iranians would like to claim, fought over for eight years. In the north, you have got the Kurds. 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 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,

(END VIDEO CLIP)

… from “’Hardball’ with Chris Matthews,” Friday, August 17, 2007. My responses and additions – in [brackets]….

MATTHEWS: OK. Now we know we had 9/11 subsequent to that. But the points that he made had to do not with the world situation the United States faces, Melanie, but with the situation in Iraq as it’s likely to take place, as it has taken place once we attempted to occupy.

MELANIE MORGAN, RIGHT-WING NUT AND RADIO TALK SHOW HOST:: OK. Well, let me just first of all say that Dick Cheney of September 10th was different one that of September 11th. And you glossed over that very quickly.

[What a load! Dick Cheney was obsessed with Saddam on 9/10 – 9/11 just gave him an excuse to take out the bad man. So what if he had to lie about the actual connection between Saddam and Osama?]

MATTHEWS: But Iraq was Iraq.

MORGAN: We have had 3,000 American lives lost as a result of.Islamic terrorists who attacked us in this country.

MATTHEWS: I knew you would say that. How does that relate to how the outlook in Iraq was the same then as it has turned out to be now? He had it right about Iraq. Iraq didn’t have anything to do with 9/11.

MORGAN: We have had some very serious things take place. We are in Iraq for the right reasons. We are trying to stop the spread of the Islamic terrorism.

[Uh, how does that work? Ann Coulter said in my Post #95 that you beat fanatics by destroying the societies that produce them. Wasn’t the lead 9/11 hijacker from Egypt? Wasn’t most of the 9/11 hijackers from Saudi Arabia? Isn’t Al-Qaeda alive in Pakistan? And we are destroying our military in Irag? How is that stopping the spread of Islamic terrorism?]

CRAIG CRAWFORD, MSNBC ANALYST: Well, I do think there is an 9/11 component. Let me just attempt this explanation, is one I’ve heard from sympathizers to Cheney, is that he really came to believe after 9/11 that our more pacifist policies, not going after Hussein, pulling out of Lebanon in the Reagan administration, had led to emboldening terrorists and led to 9/11. Therefore he was….

MATTHEWS: Right. But how did going back into Iraq lessen the emboldenment?

CRAWFORD: I think he, what has been explained to me is he believed that it was time to show great strength, and preemptive doctrine meant a lot to him, that going into Iraq would send a signal knot rest of the world, other countries harboring terrorists, and how tough we would be.

[No, Cheney and his pals had a get-Saddam mindset BEFORE 9/11. Yes, we’ve sent a signal…. * sigh *]