Dick Cheney Says That Taking Down Saddam Wasn't Worth It

Here is the transcript the interview with Dick Cheney. The YouTube videos are at the end of this post.

Interviewer:
Do you think the U.S., or U.N. forces, should have moved into Baghdad?

Cheney:
No.

Interviewer:
Why not?

Cheney:
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.

Okay, this interview is from 1994 and Cheney is talking about the 1991 Gulf War, but exactly what changed? Saddam was a brutal dictator in 1991 just as he was in 2003. The reality is that he was a much bigger threat to his neighbors in 1991 than he was in 2003.

The Neocons wanted permanent bases in the Middle East in order to project American military power in the region. This is all part of the Neocon philosophy, America should be the power in the world and should shape the future of the world. American bases in Saudi Arabia were causing problems for the Saudis and needed to be moved.

As anyone who has read in any depth on the subject knows, there was no connection between Iraq and 9/11. The 9/11 attacks just gave the Neocons a convenient excuse to put their plan into action.

First here is the straight unedited interview:



Here is that same interview edited for effect: