Dick Cheney Boggles Me
Dick Cheney on why it was a bad idea to take out Saddam back in the Gulf War. It's fascinating how prophetic and ironic it is.
Labels: Politics
Thursday, August 16, 2007
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7 Comments:
Yep; Jon Stewart had portions of this clip on his show last night when he interviewed Cheney's biographer. (Stewart's introduction of the biography was also hilarious: "Spoiler alert! In this one, Voldemort wins!")
Going after Hussein wasn't worth it until companies like Haliburton realized Hussein wasn't going to play ball with the US for contracts and oil. Then lives became expendable assets. It doesn't surprise me one bit, our government knew how bad Hussein was when he came to power, we aided him financially against the Russians (creating groups like Taliban and Al Quieda to defeat Communism), and we continued to avert our eyes and moral judgments until Hussein stopped kowtowing to us.
http://identitycheck-anok.blogspot.com/
anok seems to have confused Hussein with bin Laden.
Iraq bought most of their tanks from Russia, and much of that was on credit. That's why the Russians weren't gung-ho about seeing Hussein's regime ousted. It was like Iraq declaring bankruptcy. Same with France, which was the source of the planes in Hussein's air force.
People with brains should realize that quite a bit changed between the Gulf War and Iraq War.
What changed between 1994 and 2003 from what Dick was saying about the downsides of invading Iraq?
Bryan, I'm sorry but I have not confused the two. Originally Hussein has been linked to an assassination attempt on Iraq's Qasim in 1959, after joining the Baath party and his assassination was successful in 1963, although Hussein was not implicated. (It has been attributed as a coup from the Baath party). His ties with the CIA were known, as well as the funding of the assassination of Qasim. Hussein had been brought back from Cairo, and put into a position of power (and interrogator, then head of intelligence no less) when they systematically killed of communists, whose names were supplied by none other than...the US. His party then suffered a small coup, and came back from it in 1968. Hussein's cousin and mentor Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr had come to power, with his cousin close behind. At this point, the Baath party tried to create good relations with the communists, which irritated Nixon to no end, and he tried to stir up trouble using Shah's Iran to cause trouble with the Iraqi Kurds. This became expensive, and the Shah backed out, leaving Iraqi Kurdistan open for invasion by the Baath party. (Ordered by Hussein). The Us had to back out, trying to blame the whole thing on the Shah and the Shah alone, and at that point solidified Hussein's reign.
Later on Reagan and Rumsfeld began giving Hussein diplomatic encouragement through a close relationship with the US.
Although you were right, Bryan, that I was mistaken because at this point the common enemy was no longer communist Russia, but Iran and Syria. After a while it gets hard to keep straight. And although we condemned Hussein's use and creation of chemical weapons, we only did so on paper. We continued to look the other way with Hussein, which [the ingredients] were now being supplied to him by US pharmaceutical companies.
After that, during the Iran Iraq war, we supplied the Iraqis with money, arms, military intelligence
etc...which is how the monster Bin Laden and his Jihadists were created and funded. At least, for the most part. We also kept Iran from having Iraq condemned at the UN for use of chemical weapons.
But we didn't support him.
After the Gulf war, (1991) we again looked the other way as he decimated the Shiites and Kurds who tried to overthrow Hussein.
We only supported this entire regime to get rid of Qasim, whom we were afraid would stop exporting oil to us, and go back on the Baghdad pact of 1955. Then to throw off communism, and then to control Iran, and back to oil and development etc etc etc....
We looked the other way for a long time. Until, of course, we couldn't any longer.
We created this monster, and I'm not talking about Bin Laden. We only went in to take control because we had lost it through foreign relations.
Foreign relations that we should never had in the first place.
He boggles me too! How did he get such a cool ideology!
Da5id wanted to know: "What changed between 1994 and 2003 from what Dick was saying about the downsides of invading Iraq?"
9-11. Perhaps you haven't forgotten about it.
Other than that, the building of the coalition for the Gulf War was totally different from that for the Iraq War. We had support from Saudi Arabia and other ME nations based on leaving Hussein in power. It would have been stabbing them in the back to renege. In the latter war, the removal of Hussein was the basic premise, and Saudi Arabia had come along in the anti-terrorism effort to (reluctantly) support the mission. Turkey did not, you will recall (we had Turkish help for the Gulf War).
Part of the "quagmire" Cheney talked about was almost assuredly the political reaction from backstabbing the ME coalition from the Gulf War.
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