Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Holy Quagmire, Dickman (I mean, Batman)!!

A friend just forwarded this link to a video of Cheney talking back in 1994 about why Bush Sr. was right to NOT go to Bagdad and Saddam. Check it out! Oh, and his last statement?

And the question for the president, in terms or whether or not we went on to Bagdad and took additional casualties in an effort to get Saddam Hussein, was how many additional dead Americans was Saddam worth? And our judgement was, not very many, AND I THINK WE GOT IT RIGHT...
"And I think we got it right..." Wow! Bit of a different person from the egomaniacal nut case we have as VP now, isn't it? I just wonder what changed in the ensuing years to cause him and his boss (or is it the president, and his boss Dick?) to change the attitude to the point where they lied to the American public about the "WMDs" and started a war has cost nearly 4000 American casualties and left the US friendless and without worldwide respect. Wow.

2 comments:

Steve Rosenbach said...

Hello Reb AKO!

With respect, I think you are reacting viscerally but not logically to this video.

In 1991, everyone in command thought that Saddam Hussein would not be in power for very long. Even by 1994, this was true - we thought sanctions and inspections were working. We didn't learn until about 1995 that we had completely missed Saddam's nuclear program, despite the best inspections possible, led by Dr. David Kay. The only reason we found out was that 2 of Saddam's sons-in-law defected.

Of course, the BIG difference between 1994 and 2003 is 9/11. This turned theoretical threats quite a bit more real.

You might benefit from reading "The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq", a 2002 book by Ken Pollack http://www.amazon.com/Threatening-Storm-Case-Invading-Iraq/dp/0375509283

Pollack held several key postions in the CIA and the NSC during the Clinton years. He is a Brookings scholar and not a water-carrier for Bush/Cheney. But his well-though-out and carefully footnoted book came to the same conclusion, for much the same reasons, as did Bush some months later.

Borrow the book from the library- you owe it to yourself - I normally don't make these suggestions to people who are so sure of the "Bush lied" meme, but as a fellow Jew, I feel I owe it to you.

B'shalom,
SteveR

Am Kshe Oref - A Stiff-Necked People said...

Ok. What Nuclear program? Israel bombed the hell out of their nuclear reactor in 1981 and they never started another nuclear program.

NO WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION HAVE BEEN FOUND IN IRAQ. PERIOD. END OF STORY!!

This book is outdated. It was published in 2002. The case to invade Iraq was wrong. I think you need to slightly update your information.

The invasion of Iraq was WRONG and perpetrated under false pretenses.