Monday, October 30, 2006

The Big Fish Flop Harder After They Flip

A friend forwarded some interesting links. How's this for a giant flip-flop by our Veep, the Big Dick Cheney as he justified not going all the way to Bahgdad in the first Bush War:
Cheney said in '92:

"I would guess if we had gone in there, I would still have forces in Baghdad today. We'd be running the country. We would not have been able to get everybody out and bring everybody home.

"And the final point that I think needs to be made is this question of casualties. I don't think you could have done all of that without significant additional U.S. casualties. And while everybody was tremendously impressed with the low cost of the (1991) conflict, for the 146 Americans who were killed in action and for their families, it wasn't a cheap war.

"And the question in my mind is how many additional American casualties is Saddam (Hussein) worth? And the answer is not that damned many. So, I think we got it right, both when we decided to expel him from Kuwait, but also when the president made the decision that we'd achieved our objectives and we were not going to go get bogged down in the problems of trying to take over and govern Iraq."

How -- given what he said then -- does Cheney get off challenging the judgment and strength of those who argue that we are bogged down and shedding blood today?
And so, what makes Iraq 2006 so different from Iraq 1992?

1 comment:

sumo said...

Couldn't you just slap him in the teeth?