Redstate

That 1994 was pre-09/11/2001.
The world changed then, and old nostrums like the one the lefties are re-re-re-raising simply do not hold.
I wonder why this video is so popular now. I have seen it off and on since late 2002 or so.
Certainly it would be worth asking the VP himself why he changedhis mind.

the money quote for me:

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.

We are NOT alone in Iraq now. We had MANY allies that engaged Iraq with us. Where Cheney DOES have a point is in suggesting no ARAB allies. I spit and choke on the word "quagmire" because of all the political implications and connotations vis a vis Viet Nam, and the shirt-tearing screamers who will inevitably come in here and start shouting everyone down about being right, and this being Bush's war, and impeach them all...but we'll suffer the fools when they do.

Cheney was right in 94 about the one thing that makes him right today-Iraq's neighbors would have been very pleased to divvy up the remnants of a deposed Saddam's Iraq so long as they could sit back and pat each other on the backs that they had no part of tearing it up in the first place.

What we have NOW is a quagmire of ours AND their making-us trying to keep her intact and rebuild and shore up (and struggling at best to do these things)...theirs in chipping away at any successes we might enjoy that will keep Iraq in small pieces long enough for us to get chased out by our own political re-election machines.

I say, for the record, our real quagmire is right here on American soil, right up there on Capitol Hill. Congress has just as much of THIS country to redistribute to their power bases as Iran, Syria, Turkey, and Saudia Arabia has to redistribute to theirs.

haystack's 12th:
Conservatives (and Presidential Candidates especially) shall offer no aid and comfort to the opposition in times of legislative conflict (and ensuing political campaigns).

Quagmire is an emotional term that fits a predetermined desire; to further support their position the war in Iraq is not winnable and even Cheney knew it. In spite of all that knowledge he went forward. What could be his underlying compulsion? I don’t know we will leave that up to the reader. Oh please, this is just more ridiculous patronizing nonsense from E & P. They must really be getting desperate since this video has been circulated before.

What they count on is an emotional response that never careens into a brief intellectual examination. Here it is in a sentence; the circumstances in GW I were vastly different, in the intervening period Iraq became more belligerent/dangerous and September 11th brought about new realities regarding world threats.

They should do some real work and ask the VP about his current thoughts rather than drum up dated video. What a bunch of embarrassing, lazy propaganda.

"Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori"
Contributor to The Minority Report

and Cheney is no different. Give the man credit. There was a lot of pressure to complete the job in the first Iraq war, to remove Saddam. But the Saudis did not want Saddam gone. They wanted a crippled Saddam, but one still strong enough to stop a very aggressive Iran. The thought was that Saddam could be contained, but he would still be able to stop an invading Iran.

The results were pretty horrendous. The US apparently invited the Shi'ites to rebel, and then abandoned them when they did. Ditto the Kurds. Saddam's revenge was brutal.

So what does that have to do with Cheney? The Bush I administration was searching for a reason to accept the realpolitik of the situation, and settled on Vietnam as the Model. Cheney was a loyal soldier. He was asked to support the decision to stop before victory, and he did, like a lot of others in the Bush I administration.

Cheney is a politician, and he shouldered the burden of supporting the Bush I decision, which was more than just a decision of Bush I. No one today, including Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi, would jeapordize our flow of oil. Okay, so Obama might, until his advisors showed him that he was committing political suicide.

The left will attempt to make much hay over the situation, but again, a new realpolitik is in play here. The threat is not just to the flow of oil, but to American lives. Maybe we should have bit the bullet in 94 and finished the job. Maybe the results would have been worse. Hindsight is not always 20/20.

...all kinds of criticism of G.H.W. Bush for not taking Saddam down at the time. In fact, I'm sure that's why Cheney was asked this question in 1994. In fact, it came from many on the left-hand side of the aisle.

Those are the quotes that I'd be interested in seeing -- the Congressional experts (Kerry? Kennedy? Biden? who else?) from the mid-90's who thought leaving Iraq when we did was a mistake.

It's such a fine line between stupid and clever. - David St. Hubbins

Too bad he didn't listen to his own advice.

This pisses me off. I saw the report on CNN. CNN is a biased attack dog trying to create a "gotcha" moment using anything out of context. CNN's report stressed 3 times that there was 250,000 views on GooTube. WOOOW! What great evidence of importance of a story! They might as well say 10 out of 10 whackos agree.

Bush 1 should have ignored the UN and took out Saddam the first time around.

Ask not what you can do for your country, ask what your country can do for you. Washington Elected Elite

Don't take the bait.
Cheney said it and he was right. Things looked simpler and easier in 2003. They weren't. Water over the dam. That doesn't change anything about where we are today.

The Republican Party needs to stay focused on the future. While we need to learn from history, the nation needs a party that will LEAD us into the future. That won't happen if we keep defending what was done in years past.

The question on the table isn't how we got to where we are or why did we do the things we did. The question is where are we going from here. Give me a candidate who says he has a plan, I'll listen. Give me a candidate WITH a plan, and I'll vote.

Cheney needs to do whatever it takes to push this rabbit back into its hole, even if it means taking one for the Party.

"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?"

We know what we are fighting _against_ in Iraq now, and our troops seem to be doing better on the ground militarily, but the 1991-4 Cheney's question to the 2003-7 Cheney still stands unanswered.

When intelligent people like yourselves are so easily misled with catch phrases like, "Everything Changed After 911", I fear for the future of our country.

Exactly how does this little gumball explain Cheney's comments ... it does not. Are you seriously suggesting that Cheney's comments from 1994, which turned out to be right, were actually wrong. And then, after 911, when Cheney's comments were wrong, he was actually right ?

That notion is completely absurd and your regurgitation of these spoon-fed catch phrases belies your lack of thoughtfullness on this topic. And that is why nobody can articulate a cogent explanation that reconciles this video with contemporary White House policy.

This is NOT A GAME people. We are fighting for the future of our country and FACTS MATTER. Our country ended the last century as the worlds leading super-power in large part because our freedom allowed us to embrace scientific and academic principles that accelerated our defense and economic capacity beyond that of the rest of the world.

If we reject that which has made us so successful, ie. Facts, Science, Academia, Education, Intellectualism, Thought, Reason ... if we reject that which separates us from animals, we will FAIL in the 21st Century. I fear that the Republican Party is morphing into the Anti-Intellectual/Science/Thought/Reason Party, and the Republican Party was our last great hope.

God Help us ALL ...

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"That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government ..."