Quote :

"Cheney: WMD or not, Iraq invasion was correct Vice president says ‘we would do exactly the same thing’ regardless of intel By Alex Johnson Reporter MSNBC Updated: 2:25 p.m. ET Sept 10, 2006 President Bush would have ordered an invasion of Iraq even if the CIA had told him that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction, Vice President Dick Cheney said Sunday. In the build-up to the U.S. invasion in 2003, Bush and other administration leaders argued that Saddam should be removed from power because he had stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and was actively seeking to build a nuclear weapon. Subsequent investigations concluded that he did not have such weapons, and in an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Cheney acknowledged that, “clearly, the intelligence that said he did was wrong.” Asked by “Meet the Press” host Tim Russert whether the United States would have gone ahead with the invasion anyway if the CIA had reported that Saddam did not, in fact, have such weapons, Cheney said yes. “He’d done it before,” Cheney said. “He had produced chemical weapons before and used them. He had produced biological weapons. He had a robust nuclear program in ’91.” The U.S. invasion “was the right thing to do, and if we had to do it again, we would do exactly the same thing,” he said. U.S. will being tested Cheney also said he was wrong when he said shortly before the invasion that U.S. forces would be “greeted as liberators.” Instead, more than three years later, violent resistance to the U.S.-backed government in Baghdad continues, and more than 2,600 U.S. service members have been killed. “No doubt, we did not anticipate that the insurgency would last this long,” Cheney said. The United States must stay the course, however, because while the situation is “difficult,” it is significantly better, he said. Cheney acknowledged opinion polls that show that a majority of the U.S. public believes Iraq is a more dangerous threat than it was before U.S. forces invaded. “The people obviously are frustrated because of the difficulty, because of the cost and the casualties, but you cannot look at Iraq in isolation,” he said. “You have to look at it within the context of the broader global war on terror. ... If Saddam Hussein were still in power, we would be in a vastly worse position.” Should the United States pull out of Iraq, Cheney said, the governments of Iraq and Pakistan, which he said had staked their futures on the U.S. commitment, would conclude that “the United States hasn’t got the stomach for the fight. Bin Laden’s right, al-Qaida’s right, the United States has lost its will and will not complete the mission.” U.S. faces long haul in Afghanistan In neighboring Afghanistan, meanwhile, a U.S.-backed government is facing its worst surge of violence in the nearly five years since the United States booted out the militant Islamic Taliban government, and Cheney said Western forces would likely be fighting a nationwide insurgency for “some considerable period of time.” Appearing on “Meet the Press” on the eve of the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States, Cheney similarly defended the U.S. military performance in Afghanistan, contending that “we are much better off today because Afghanistan is not the safe haven for terrorism that it was five years ago.” Insurgent leaders there are proving unexpectedly dangerous because they have changed their tactics, abandoning direct attacks on military units in favor of a guerrilla-style hit-and-run approach, he said. The new approach makes it vital that the American public remain committed to the U.S. operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, Cheney said, because the insurgents are willing to absorb heavy losses in a long battle of attrition. “They can’t beat us in a stand-up fight, but they’re also convinced they can break our will,” Cheney said. He acknowledged that U.S. and Afghan forces, now joined by NATO forces, were “still in the fight for Afghanistan” almost five years after U.S. forces invaded to remove the Taliban for harboring al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks. NATO said Sunday that 94 militants were killed in the Panjwayi and neighboring Zhari districts overnight, raising the toll from a counterinsurgency operation now in its ninth day past 420. Six NATO soldiers and 14 members of the British crew of a reconnaissance plane have also died. Meanwhile, in eastern Afghanistan, a suicide bombing killed three people Sunday, including the governor of Paktia province, and wounded three others, police said. The U.S. military said Saturday that a suicide bombing cell targeting foreign troops was operating in the capital, Kabul. The warning came two days after a car bomber rammed into a U.S. army convoy near the U.S. Embassy, killing 16 people, the worst such attack in the capital. Other topics In the hour-long interview, Cheney also: Said he still disagreed with the Supreme Court’s decision in June that the administration overstepped its authority in holding suspected terrorists without trials or the protections of the Geneva Conventions. He would not discuss specific treatment of detainees but said information gleaned from interrogations “helped us prevent attacks against the United States.” Refused to criticize plans by Republicans to spend millions off dollars on negative campaign ads against Democrats. “I hope our guys have good, hard-hitting advertisements. Certainly, the opposition does,” he said. He predicted that Republicans would keep control of both House and the Senate. Called his former chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, who is awaiting trial in the CIA leak case, “a good man ... entitled to a presumption of innocence.” Cheney would not comment on what his own role in that case may have been, saying he was likely to be called as a witness in Libby’s trial. Said that he had not been hunting since a Feb. 11 hunting trip in Texas when he accidentally shot lawyer Harry Whittington in the torso, neck and face but that he intended to go hunting again. “I don’t know that you ever get over it,” he said. “Fortunately, Harry is doing very well.” "

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14767199/

9/11/2006 12:36:41 AM

in all seriousness, do you expect him to say "we were wrong" while he's still in office?

9/11/2006 12:41:03 AM

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"we would do exactly the same thing’ regardless of intel"

this type of rationale is what scares me the most

9/11/2006 12:46:15 AM

I'm really tempted to do that "Cheney: Quail or not, shooting Harry was correct" parody thread.

9/11/2006 12:58:59 AM

I watched the entire interview. He did a relatively good job, hes been known to crash and burn on tv. Admitted he was wrong, couple of times.

9/11/2006 1:02:26 AM

^^

9/11/2006 1:06:23 AM

He actually said he doesnt regret the descision to fire.

9/11/2006 1:48:35 AM

Wait, you mean people didn't know this before we invaded? It was pretty clear when they first came into the whitehouse that the Iraq invasion was foreign policy priority #1. They were fortunate that 9/11 gave them carte blanche to go ahead with the invasion.

9/11/2006 2:57:17 AM

^ Exactly. The Zionists in his cabinet (Pearle, Feith, Wolfowitz, Pipes, et al, even Netanyahu) were itiching to attack Iraq to eliminate a threat to Israel, and they are the ones who pushed the idea and prepared reports encouraging The Chimp to attack Iraq. This is a known fact.

Quote :

"“The people obviously are frustrated because of the difficulty, because of the cost and the casualties, but you cannot look at Iraq in isolation,” he said. “You have to look at it within the context of the broader global war on terror. ... If Saddam Hussein were still in power, we would be in a vastly worse position.”"

Wait, is he still saying that Saddam was spreading terror???

And what about the fact that terrorist attacks have FUCKING SKYROCKETED after the US attacked Iraq?

He should be hung.

9/11/2006 3:15:42 AM

Hanged, not hung.

That used to get me too.

9/11/2006 6:23:16 AM

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"And what about the fact that terrorist attacks have FUCKING SKYROCKETED after the US attacked Iraq?"

I don't doubt he knows that they have increased. The question is whether or not that increase is temporary.

9/11/2006 6:47:23 AM

If Iraq hadn't become so screwed up in the post-war, I would have agreed with Cheney.

9/11/2006 11:16:50 AM

^ your name fits you well then

9/11/2006 11:28:16 AM

Feel free to elaborate on why.

9/11/2006 11:35:00 AM

because of the justification for it. even if iraq hadn't become so cumbersome and we were in and out in 30 days, there was no justification for being there.

what cheney basically said was "you know what, even if we knew that there was no connection, no weapons, no anything to provoke us into war with them, we still would have invaded"

if you don't have a problem with our elected officials acting in this way then you are a deaf/dumb/blind follower

[Edited on September 11, 2006 at 11:43 AM. Reason : jank]

9/11/2006 11:42:30 AM

I think you associate the Iraq war too much with Bush.

Imagine if you were magical leader of the world in 2000, does Saddam Hussein really need to be in power? Yeah, we helped put him there, but he screwed up (which we also helped a little), but just because we screwed up before doesn't mean we should keep screwing up by letting a dictator run a country. We were obligated at some point to un-do our mess up. It's unfortunate that idiot Bush and his idiot friends had to be the ones to take the initiative, but if they had succeeded, then it would have been good.

Also, leaders some times have to do unpopular things. If Jesus became president, but no one knew (and he wasn't allowed to tell), and he wanted to remove Saddam, and knew of a way to do it without screwing up, he wouldn't be able to, due to the nature of our political system. He would have to either just do it, or find some specious evidence to allow him to trick people in to letting him do it, but it would have been the right thing to do.

Quote :

" there was no justification for being there. "

Actually, there was some justification. On the list of things we could fix in the world, Iraq was about half-way, but it's better than doing nothing.

[Edited on September 11, 2006 at 12:09 PM. Reason : ]

9/11/2006 12:08:35 PM

The covert assassination of Hussein, or covert support--read: committed covert support--of an overthrow of his regime wouldn't have bothered anyone so long as it couldn't be pinned on us for a few years.

9/11/2006 12:24:42 PM

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"Iraq was about half-way, but it's better than doing nothing."

i understand this argument but it doesn't hold considering the rest of the situations in the world we should/could help

9/11/2006 5:05:52 PM

That doesn't mean though that Iraq was wrong no matter what. If it was a good outcome, it would have been right.

9/11/2006 6:58:54 PM

^ so are you justifying randomly attacking countries and remaking them, and if the outcome is good, then we can say, well it was right to do it???

9/11/2006 7:09:08 PM

look, just because the us picks on your countries doesnt mean you have to take it out on us

9/11/2006 7:35:09 PM

^^ Well, it wouldn't be random, and i'm not "justifying" it, but if I were president, I would keep my options open.

9/11/2006 10:06:59 PM

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"Cherokee: i understand this argument but it doesn't hold considering the rest of the situations in the world we should/could help"

Few could argue with this.

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"moron: That doesn't mean though that Iraq was wrong no matter what. If it was a good outcome, it would have been right."

What if--purely speculatively, and hypothetically speaking--the invasion of Iraq and subsequent botching of the occupation (presumably due to poor pre-war intelligence estimates or planning) is what precluded, or at least catalyzed the political and economic marginalization of the United States by Russia and China?

I'd find it hard to defend an argument that suggested the Iraq War hasn't politically empowered Iran, and given its radical leader an economic opening option it didn't have before. A new trading partner. This of course empowers it to afford nuclear materials, and the capacity to pacify its population who largely disapprove of the regime.

How has that happened? How could our military and political leadership have allowed that result? These aren't the same morons who vote, people. Not the people you'll be referring to in unison in a few months as the lowest rungs of society--the typical American voter. No, they are presumably the most qualified people in the United States to be making these decisions and implementing policy that is adaptive to the political environment. Yale and Harvard graduates. West Point graduates. Double-doctorate types who understand that the present is the result of a long history, and that terrorists are more complicated than the grossly undernuanced effigies many of us have inherited as mental reference diagrams from the little scientific material made available to us about them. How could this come about?

I'd agree with the jist of the article I posted weeks ago in the "America: Politically Marginalized by Globalization?" thread. The political collaboration of Russia and China to consolidate and control oil interests and use oil-rich nations to politically marginalize our capacity to effectively prosecute the War on Terror established in the article represents a fairly solid justification that, at best, the implementation of the plan for Iraq has put the United States in a diplomatically and militarily vulnerable position--incapable of projecting the capacity to jump into an open conflict with a force that fights with some success (enough to claim victory) against our second strongest ally in the world. And stated enemy of every enemy we demonize today with the exception of Kim Jong Il.

The long range consequences of being unable to aid Israel into an unambiguous victory empowered an already powerful enemy in Hezbollah, and through them their direct financiers and providers of weapons and intelligence: the state of Iran, could prove more dire than we can currently predict. Unlike, Saddam Hussein, I doubt Iran's president would hesitate to cooperate with Al Qaeda in any capacity Osama Bin Laden wanted. They could also be mollified by an unaided strike against Iran by Israel. What would follow such a strike at this stage in the War on Terror is anybody's guess, but I doubt it's pretty for anyone involved, especially on our side of the pond.

Whether with direct strikes here or with indirect strikes devolving the fight over there into a civil war--despite the rhetoric to the contrary--we'll feel the effects here at home. Suffice it to say that much at least. (To be clear for any who are curious, I don't have any specific information about anything and think the effects are years off...this is all speculation, a healthy habit for intellectual exercise.)

I'm not sold we should be so quick to presume it'll be a good outcome for us. The outcome of the Civil War wouldn't be predictable, and sending more troops--if it is to be done at all--should be done NOW. Under absolutely no forgiveable circumstances should this request be ignored until November. How long it takes to either decide to draw U.S. forces out, or send more U.S. forces in will tell you a lot about how good of an outcome it will be for us. For better or worse.

[Edited on September 12, 2006 at 12:26 AM. Reason : ...]

9/12/2006 12:23:48 AM

I think it's likely that regardless what we do, Iran would have gotten nuclear weapons anyway. We can kill the current leader, but the people of Iran, I think, will pressure their new leader, US installed or not, to pursue the nuclear weapons. As things are now, they aren't really a direct threat to us, its Israel they're after, and us by association. And i'm probably going to get flamed for this, but if they do get a nuclear weaponed, it could help to stabilize the region. Their leader, IIRC, has a PHD in nuclear engineering (or some type of engineering). Despite his Mel Gibson-esque comments about Israel, I bet he knows the power and repercussions of using a nuke. At the very least, and to the best end, it would give them an excellent bargaining chip to reach relatively peaceful compromises with their neighbors, as well as Israel and the US. It's well known that US's oppressive military strength is a good way to stay on top, but this is a double edged sword when other people realize it too.

But... with Hezbollah catching a second wind, that even takes a little pressure off of us because it makes it more clear that a purely military solution doesn't exists to Israel's situation, where it seems historically this is how we and them reacted to the conflicts.

The empowering of Russia and China (and India even) is also something that we couldn't prevent without horribly fascist and unsustainable practices. The USes power is at the very least undergoing a "correction" and it doesn't make sense to try and grasp to what we had to the dying end. The recent oil price "fiasco" is a sign of this. We should and have to recognize that the other major countries are going to catch up, and we can either start another World War (which I bet we could win), or try and use our economic and cultural influence to at least break even in the long term.

In the long run, a stable mid-east (the oil center) is best for everyone, especially us, for various reasons that revolve around oil and energy and trading. It would have been awesome if stuff in Iraq worked out, because in the medium and long term, that would have helped things greatly. Basically, our supply of oil would be more stable, we'd have had a fairly large, wealthy, and arab ally in the region, and a new generation of friendly, hardworking, proud people to work with.

None of that happened though, and it looks like it might become another Afghanistan or Palestine-type of state. But IF it had worked, it would have been awesome and more than "just" another democracy. Iraq really does hold a fairly enticing geographical location.

It seems to me that the world is quickly heading to a situation where shit is going to hit the fan, or we find some way to level ourselves out. If Bush were to continue on his current track, it would lead the shit-hitting-the-fan route, which is not something I want myself or future generations to have to suffer through (actually, I wouldn't mind living through it, but most other people would).

9/12/2006 1:06:41 AM