shetline
09-30-2004, 08:47 AM
At least, that's what he was saying back in 1992...
In this seattlepi.com article (http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/connelly/192828_joel29.html), then-Defense Secretary Cheney is quoted as saying:
I would guess if we had gone in there, I would still have forces in Baghdad today. We'd be running the country. We would not have been able to get everybody out and bring everybody home.
And the final point that I think needs to be made is this question of casualties. I don't think you could have done all of that without significant additional U.S. casualties. And while everybody was tremendously impressed with the low cost of the (1991) conflict, for the 146 Americans who were killed in action and for their families, it wasn't a cheap war.
And the question in my mind is how many additional American casualties is Saddam (Hussein) worth? And the answer is not that damned many. So, I think we got it right, both when we decided to expel him from Kuwait, but also when the president made the decision that we'd achieved our objectives and we were not going to go get bogged down in the problems of trying to take over and govern Iraq.
Whaddya mean, Dick? We're you trying to tell the world back then that we'd be better off with a brutal dictator in power!? That the world wouldn't be a safer place without him?
The irony is that, if we were going to get rid of Saddam anyway, 1992 would have been a much smarter and safer time to do it that 2003, and we wouldn't have made so many enemies out of the Shiites who rightly felt betrayed when we left Saddam free to slaughter them in droves after we encouraged them to rebel against Saddam.
In this seattlepi.com article (http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/connelly/192828_joel29.html), then-Defense Secretary Cheney is quoted as saying:
I would guess if we had gone in there, I would still have forces in Baghdad today. We'd be running the country. We would not have been able to get everybody out and bring everybody home.
And the final point that I think needs to be made is this question of casualties. I don't think you could have done all of that without significant additional U.S. casualties. And while everybody was tremendously impressed with the low cost of the (1991) conflict, for the 146 Americans who were killed in action and for their families, it wasn't a cheap war.
And the question in my mind is how many additional American casualties is Saddam (Hussein) worth? And the answer is not that damned many. So, I think we got it right, both when we decided to expel him from Kuwait, but also when the president made the decision that we'd achieved our objectives and we were not going to go get bogged down in the problems of trying to take over and govern Iraq.
Whaddya mean, Dick? We're you trying to tell the world back then that we'd be better off with a brutal dictator in power!? That the world wouldn't be a safer place without him?
The irony is that, if we were going to get rid of Saddam anyway, 1992 would have been a much smarter and safer time to do it that 2003, and we wouldn't have made so many enemies out of the Shiites who rightly felt betrayed when we left Saddam free to slaughter them in droves after we encouraged them to rebel against Saddam.