First, read this:

[QUOTE]Q: 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. [/QUOTE]

The $64,000 question is, who said this? If you guessed Dick Freaking Cheney in 1994, you'd be right. :shock:

Video here:

[YOUTUBE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BEsZMvrq-I[/YOUTUBE]

Re: Interesting and Phophetic Take on Iraq

Whoops, that was obviously supposed to be "Prophetic" in the thread title.

Re: Interesting and Phophetic Take on Iraq

Interesting. Makes me wonder who the war hawk or hawks in the adminstration are. If Cheney knew this going into Iraq, maybe it was Bush that pushed for the war.

Re: Interesting and Phophetic Take on Iraq

Very good piece of footage. Thanks.

What role did Cheney have in 1994?

I still think the administration thought that the situation would be of Iraqis opening their arms to the invaders and presenting them with flowers (what ever that quote was).

Re: Interesting and Phophetic Take on Iraq

Secretary of Defense under Bush Sr. He also briefly ran for president during that year...

I love this quote of him (even though I doubt he can "recall" saying it): We're always going to have to be involved [in the Middle East]. Maybe it's part of our national character, you know we like to have these problems nice and neatly wrapped up, put a ribbon around it. You deploy a force, you win the war and the problem goes away and it doesn't work that way in the Middle East it never has and isn't likely to in my lifetime

:roll::roll::roll:

Re: Interesting and Phophetic Take on Iraq

[quote=toasty;518324]First, read this:

The $64,000 question is, who said this? If you guessed Dick Freaking Cheney in 1994, you'd be right. :shock:

Video here:

[/quote]

Bush's daddy pretty much said the exact same thing in his journals too. Clusterfuck of the century.