An unlikely new star has emerged on YouTube. Dick Cheney's newly-uncovered video interview from 1994 has gotten over 600,000 views and has got everyone talking.
In this particular video, Cheney (who had been the Secretary of Defense during the Gulf War) is asked whether he thought that U.S. forces should have moved into Baghdad after Hussein's army had been defeated in 1991.
His response was that we shouldn't have because "There wouldn't have been anybody else with us. There would have been a U.S. occupation of Iraq." His concern was that once the US toppled Hussein's regime, "then what are you going to put in its place?...It's a quagmire if you go that far and try to take over Iraq." He demonstrated his concern for the troops by asking, "how many additional dead Americans is Saddam worth? Our judgment was, not very many, and I think we got it right."
Smart man, that Cheney fellow. So why was it that in 2002 and 2003 this very same man (and his minions) was telling the nation that an invasion of Iraq would be a "cakewalk" and that we would "be greeted as liberators." Neocons were quick to assure us that we needn't worry. The oil revenues would pay for the war, and we should be out of there in practically no time at all.
Of course, over the years, lots of people have questioned why Bush Sr. and his administration had not gone into Baghdad in 1991 to "finish the job." Bush, Cheney, Powell...they all had what I thought were pretty reasonable reasons for not doing exactly that.
So what was it that made Cheney flip-flop and decide that those reasons were no longer valid in 2003? Of course, the answer that he and his people always give is "9/11 changed everything." Well, it might have changed certain people's thinking about whether or not Iraq should be attacked, but how exactly did 9/11 change those predicted consequences that Cheney spoke of so eloquently in 1994?
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Dave Nalle
Doug, I want to start out by saying two things. First, that I think you've hit on a very relevant subject and have a valid question, and you do it in a relatively rational tone, all of which is good. Second, please understand that I am not singling you out for criticism here, but doing what I do with every new post regardless of political orientation if it raises questions or has inconsistencies, just to get discussion started.
It's a short article and I have one major quibble and one minor one.
The minor issue concerns the idea of the oil revenues paying for the war. Neocon detractors repeatedly claim that the Neocons promoted this idea publicly and were all happy that we could have a 'free' war. I have yet to see a specific quote attributed to anyone associated with the administration - Bill Kristol on Fox News doesn't count - who said that we were going to use oil revenues to underwrite the war. As far as I can tell that was never a stated intent and was never acted on in any way.
The bigger point is that you seem to forget that over a decade situations can change and people can change their minds for perfectly reasonable reasons. In the case of Iraq, between the time of Cheney's surprising statement and his support for the later invasion, more than a decade had passed, a period during which Iraq was under severe pressure, an embargo and other sanctions which resulted in a massive decline in their economy, infrastructure and ability to wage war. Iraq in 2003 and Iraq in 1991 were very different as far as their potential to resist an invasion. After a decade of 'softening up', it was presumably a much easier target, the people were more pissed than ever at the government and it might have been reasonable to assume the invasion (if not the occupation) would be a 'cakewalk'.
People DO change their minds, and conditions also change. Suggesting some Neocon mind control or conspiracy is to distort the significance of this change in position by Cheney.
Dave
2 - Doug DeLong
You have to admit, tho, it's pretty amazing how he could have been so prescient in 1994 and so completely wrong about pretty much everything relating to this war.
3 - Brad Schader
Things do change over a decade, but his statement of what would happen to an Iraq without Saddam are correct today. He was right in 1994 about what is happening today. The only thing he got wrong was forgetting he knew this. Not that he said it, but that he knew it.
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.
4 - troll
*I have yet to see a specific quote attributed to anyone associated with the administration - Bill Kristol on Fox News doesn't count - who said that we were going to use oil revenues to underwrite the war.*
Dave - you are correct if you don't count the cost of rebuilding as a cost of the war...
what Wolfowitz testified (as quoted by Salon) was: *We're dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon.*
5 - bliffle
Too bad that US foreign policy is determined by Cheney whimsy.
6 - Michael J. West
The bigger point is that you seem to forget that over a decade situations can change and people can change their minds for perfectly reasonable reasons. In the case of Iraq, between the time of Cheney's surprising statement and his support for the later invasion, more than a decade had passed, a period during which Iraq was under severe pressure, an embargo and other sanctions which resulted in a massive decline in their economy, infrastructure and ability to wage war.
You might be missing the point, Dave. What's amazing about this piece (at least from my perspective) is not that Cheney changed his mind. It's that in the video he rattles off a set of negative consequences that would have come out of an Iraqi invasion in 1991 - all of which turned out to have been correct when he discared them and invaded Iraq anyway.
7 - Baritone
It's troubling that Cheney's apparent wisdom concerning the likely "quagmire" that would result from bringing down Saddam in '92 did apparently vanish in the haze of 9/11.
Actually, from a military standpoint, I don't think things did change all that much. There may well have been more open resistance in Baghdad in '92 than in '03. But it more than likely would have fallen fairly quickly.
It's the aftermath, the vacuum left without Saddam, the likelihood of guerilla warfare, the probable sectarian violence, the opportunism of al qaida, that was foreseen back then by Cheney and presumably others in '92 but conveniently forgotten in '03 by largely the same people. Were they being cavalier or just stupid? It's just another case of political spin.
Dave, let's not give Cheney too much credit. It should be remembered that he is, after all, an asshole.
Baritone
8 - Dave Nalle
Baritone, nothing wrong with being an asshole. Some of our best leaders have been total dickweeds and we've loved them for it. They just don't usually get into such a prominent position.
As for Cheney's prescience or lack thereof, I think it all really hinges on one thing. The huge, glaring mistake in Iraq was not how we invaded or why we invaded or whether we wanted oil or any of that crap. It was the idiotic naivete and idealism of the neocons or someone else in power - possibly Bush - in actually trying to set up a democracy and let the Iraqis run things themselves.
It's demonstrated in the Wolfowitz quote someone brought up above and in everything the administration did in the first year. We clearly never intended to take the oil, because doing so made no sense. Once the oil was free of Saddam the US would benefit from it no matter who actually controlled it. But for the cost of reconstruction to be low, we HAD to go in with a plan which was based around eliminating Saddam and replacing him with a puppet leader - a new 'Saddam Lite' dictator who was beholden to America. That kind of a transition, preserving the mechanisms of internal security and government, would have kept reconstruction costs reasonable and prevented chaos.
But regardless of the likelihood that the war was sold as a 'cakewalk' on that basis, someone stepped in shortly after the invasion was over and decided to make Iraq a grand experiment in democracy, and democracy is the mother of chaos, and so chaos ensued. I said this somewhere else recent, but it's very true that no good deed goes unpunished.
Dave
9 - Jon Sobel
People are jumping all over Cheney's old interview as if it's suddenly a "smoking gun" of some sort which now, at long last, clearly shows the cynicism and/or wrongheadedness of this administration, when it's nothing but a slightly more blatant example.
Michael's point is the key one: not that Cheney et al. changed their minds, but that he got it so right back then. Everything he talked about ten years earlier was still true in 2003. And yet they still went ahead.
And no one should insult our intelligence with "9/11 changed everything" when everyone knows Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11.
10 - Martin Lav
Strategies can change, yet execution remains the most important.
11 - Dave Nalle
You have to admit, tho, it's pretty amazing how he could have been so prescient in 1994 and so completely wrong about pretty much everything relating to this war.
Do you think he took a stupid pill? Do you think he forgot what he believed 10 years before? If he was so very wise at one point, whatever convinced him the war was worth taking on despite the potential for disaster, must have been enormously powerful and persuasive.
Maybe we should be looking for what that thing might be. And the first person who says 'oil' gets to sit in the corner with a dunce cap on.
Dave
12 - Christopher Rose
Where they'd be right next to the gullible folk who think it had anything to do with the war on terror or weapons of mass destruction.
13 - REMF
Well, I was going to say "oil," but that means I'd end up in the corner with Dave, and there's no way I'm going to prison over someone like that.
(MCH)
14 - Michael J. West
If he was so very wise at one point, whatever convinced him the war was worth taking on despite the potential for disaster, must have been enormously powerful and persuasive.
Well, it must indeed have been powerful to have overshadowed what he knew to be, and turned out to be, the truth.
Maybe we should be looking for what that thing might be.
His ego, perhaps? Off the top of my head I can't think of any force more powerful than the ego.
Hubris? Machismo? The need to prove something? The power of suggestion? The simple treachery of memory?
The need to follow up the invasion of Afghanistan with a similar opportunity for exploiting the trend of post-9/11 jingoism?
15 - Lumpy
How about the presence of a massive arsenal of WMDs in the hands of a known ally if terrorists? Seems like reason enough for me.
Though we ought to be going after the WMD storage sites in the Beka'a valley right now, unless a covert op already did and actually managed to stay secret.
16 - Doug DeLong
How about the presence of a massive arsenal of WMDs in the hands of a known ally if terrorists?
Oh, did they finally find those WMD's? Thank God!!
17 - Michael J. West
How about the presence of a massive arsenal of WMDs in the hands of a known ally if terrorists? Seems like reason enough for me.
It does sound pretty scary. Which known ally of terrorists are you talking about?
18 - Baritone
I don't believe that Cheney was any more on top of the situation back in '92 than he and the rest of the gang were in '03. My last sentence in my comment above was more to the point.
It was the spin that worked back in '92. It was the way they chose to defend the decision not to got into Baghdad. But by '03 that was all ancient history. In '03 it served the administration's purpose to ignore the reasons for not toppling Saddam on "92. When everything began to turn to shit, they just shrugged their shoulders and claimed that the chaos was all unpredictable, which we now know was a load of crap.
I agree with Dave about the democracy thing. Look how difficult "democracy" has been in Russia. Iraq and many other middle eastern countries have no experience with democracy. A society must be allowed to grow into it. It took western Europe hundreds of years to fully embrace it. People who have lived all of their lives living under totalitarian regimes cannot be expected to understand the workings of a democracy. And in that vacuum of understanding opportunists will always step in and steal everything in sight and be gone before anyone even knows they were there.
Also, Dave, I know what you mean about assholes. There are still people here in Indiana who think Bobby Knight is a great guy. Personally, I wouldn't want to ride in an elevator with the man. I hope you Texans are enjoying his tenure down your way. Keep him down there. Hey, maybe he can set up a good man-to-man defense against Hurricane Dean!
Baritone
19 - Michael J. West
I'm only joshin' ya, of course, Lumpy, and personally I have to give you points for your stick-to-it-iveness. I mean, hell, even President Bush no longer believes there was a massive arsenal of WMDs in Iraq, and yet you just keep on believing!
Go get 'em, Tiger. :-)
20 - Sicko
Dick Cheney is Sicko!
21 - Dave Nalle
I think they could have toppled Saddam in '92 or in '03, if they'd just stuck to toppling him and sticking someone else in his place. I hate to say it, but all our problems seem to almost stem from an excessive sense of responsibility and a desire to do the right thing, which sure isn't the way most people are looking at it, but might be right anyway.
As for democracy, it's tough. I think that everyone does understand the concept. It's kind of natural when any group of people gets together. What they don't understand is that the larger the scale the harder it is to make it work, and that democracy alone is NOT a government. It's just a tool. And the structure of government is what they don't understand, or more specifically, our ideas of the structure of government are not compatible with the cultural background of other societies.
You want to westernize the middle east you need to start slow from a base which is familiar to people who are tribal in nature and used to autocratic leadership.
You need a strong leader in a constitutional style monarchy with some inobtrusive western backing - mostly arms and money. I will say it again. The Shah of Iran. Twice. The Shah of Iran. Put aside all your pissiness about how we overthrew the democratically elected legitimate government - which would have descended into tribal chaos in months - and look at the results. While the Shah was in power Iran was prosperous, successful, educated and increasingly friendly to the west.
Get over your self-righteousness and moral piety. That's exactly what led the Neocons wrong in Iraq. They are not that far from democrats - hell, they WERE democrats not too long ago. Democracy isn't the solution for the rough parts of the world, benevolent dictatorship is. They've got to walk before they can run. Bring them capitalism and education and satellite TV and cellphones and let them work their way up to fully representative government after a few generations.
Dave
22 - bliffle
Not so hard to understand Cheney: he's an Old Prevaricator. He's good at rationalizing policies. He makes the ridiculous palatable. He's glib, and has developed a manner that deceives people into believing that there is some deep purpose behind what he says. But there isn't anything beyond self-assertion.
23 - Baritone
Bliffle,
Very insightful regarding Cheney. You hit the nail on the head. He may be the Bush administration's most adept spin doctor. Cheney does carry an air of being uniquely "in the know" of having greater knowledge than his detractors, but in the end, it's all smoke and mirrors.
Dave,
The Shah was so enamored of and beholden to the west, and the US in particular that his modernization of Iran happened much too fast. It knocked down and stepped on too many sacred cows of the Arab/Muslim cultural and religious traditions. I am hardly an apologist for religion, but it is in the nature of people to take umbrage against those who disrespect traditions. The British learned that the hard way. Now it's our turn.
In any event, is it really in the best interest of Iraq and other countries in the region to be "Americanized?" Is life really all about cell phones, IPods and Starbucks?
Baritone
24 - SFC SKI
I'll readily agree that the planning for much of this currrent war was poor, the "surge" should have been done in 2004 when Sadr's militias and others were taking advantage of that period's withdrawal of personnel, and taking advantage of the dumb-ass idea of pulling troops into super-bases outside of the cities instead of the current plan of outposts in the cities controlling neighborhoods.
I haven't seen the video, but I don't really need to because I remember all the debates of the time. Considering they directly affected me, I was paying attention. Then and now I felt that we should have taken out Saddam in 1991 when we had the opportunity, the overwhleming force, and the consent, or consent by silence, of the rest of the world. No one shed a tear for Ceaucescu (sp?) when he was dragged int othe street and killed by his own, no one would have missed Saddam, except for his few supporters who would have been swinging by the neck, or their heels, alongside him in the end.
There is a very good book called "The General's War". In it, it discusses the recommendations of Scowcroft, Cheney, Powell, and other advisors to the first Pres. Bush in pursuing IRaqi forces all the way to Baghdad. Very enlightening and disheartening.
Personally, I think the odds for success in regime change were even higher in 1991 for two reasons. The first is that we had definitively defeated Iraqi forces (though many civilian Iraqis in 1991 never actually saw a Coalition soldier, and so never really believe that they had been defeated, but that is another story.) Had the Iraqis actually seen not only regualr Iraqi troops, but Saddam's personal security troops running in defeat with Us Forces on their heels, I feel they would have been far less likely to support Saddam's regime any longer, and might then have actually welcomed US troops as liberators with far less guerrilla activities and sympathizers, etc. As it was Saddam had 12 years to freely spread his propaganda, bolster his image, and kill off any homegrown oppositon, as well as prepare for another attack.
Second, the US military had almost twice as many ground troops in 1991, so the worries about "breaking the Army and Marines" would have been moot, and there would have been far more occupation troops to "flood the zone" against guerrilas and more ably stabilize the country. Ther probably would have been many more capable and willing Iraqis available to build a government as well. Eager to reap the "peace dividend" Americans chose to do what is always done after a war, shortsightedly downsize the military.
IN short, these videos are only revelations for those who weren't paying attention the first time, and they were based on the idea that Saddam could be contained and eventually would die off (that's worked so well with Fidel and Kim Jong Il, hasn't it?).
Politically, not finishing the job in 1991 was a huge error, but it was understandable considering Americans who didn't even know where Kuwait was on August 2nd were running, no, driving to, rallies carrying signs and shouting "No Blood For Oil".
25 - bliffle
SFC, amending the TACTICAL circumstances of either invasion doesn't change the STRATEGIC fact that the USA is better off with Saddam than it is with the current circumstance. With Saddam left in place we have a bulwark against Iran. And we had successfully bottled up saddam in Iraq when we successfully formed a coalition that successfully drove him out of Kuwait.
It was a savvy move to leave Saddam in place in '91.
It was a strategic blunder to invade in 2003.