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theducksQ: 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.
***
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BEsZMvrq-I
You gotta admit, Cheney was eerily accurate.
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.
***
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BEsZMvrq-I
You gotta admit, Cheney was eerily accurate.
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(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-14 07:08 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-14 10:36 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-14 12:52 pm (UTC)And I'm sick of hearing about this movie from 1994. People are calling Cheney a hypocrite now, instead of acknowledging that people OMG CHANGE THEIR MINDS in a span of 10+ years.
Just sayin'.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-14 01:26 pm (UTC)But for governments to change positions on something, it should be more than just a person's whim. One has to ask, what significant acts of aggression did Iraq undertake in the interceding period to justify this change? The Whitehouse says they had nothing to do with 9/11, sure, they broke the no-fly zone enough to deserve bombing back in 1998, but even that wasn't too serious.
See, a suspicious person like me thinks they were at least partially pushed into it by the powers of industry. 'sup military-industrial-prison-complex. I don't for one second think leaving Saddam in power would be been a great idea, but I think, perhaps, in retrospect, it would have been better for everyone than what's going on now.