The Daily Background

A little while ago, everybody watched a video of Dick Cheney in 1994 saying that taking out Saddam Hussein wasn’t worth it. Now we learn more about Cheney’s prior views, in this video from 1992 when Cheney was the Secretary of Defense:

In this Q&A session when he was Secretary of Defense, Cheney said that a post-Hussein government would likely not sustain itself without US forces there to “prop it up.” More:

If you get into the business of committing U.S. forces on the ground in Iraq, to occupy the place, my guess is I’d probably still have people there today instead of having been able to bring them home…The bottom line question for me was: How many additional American lives is Saddam Hussein worth? The answer: not very damn many.

Later he said the US would become a “quasi-permanent occupier” if they removed Hussein in 1992 and replaced him with a new government. Cute. Of course, the White House would say that 9/11 changed his mind about the need to get rid of Saddam Hussein, but that doesn’t change the fact that he pretty clearly predicted a long insurgency pre-9/11, but when he actually did invade Iraq, he didn’t think the Administration needed any post-war insurgency planning.

Filed under: Z-TDB Blog