http://www.wam.umd.edu/~jpuckett/cheney.txtfollowing is from Cheney's remarks on Iraq:
Q Would you address the many lives of Saddam Hussein? We were -- the
American public was kind of led to believe he'd be out of the picture by
now, and he's still causing trouble. How do you view all that?
SEC. CHENEY: Well, the question often comes up about Saddam. My own
personal view continues to be one that he is not likely to survive as the
leader of Iraq. I emphasize that's a personal view. You can get all kinds
of opinions. That's based on the fact that he's got a shrinking political
base inside Iraq. He doesn't control the northern part of his country. He
doesn't control the southern part of his country. His economy is a
shambles. The UN sanctions continue to place great pressure on him. We've
had these reports of an attempted coup at the end of June, early July,
against him. I think he -- I think his days are numbered. But that's,
again, my personal view.
The question that is usually asked is why didn't we go on to Baghdad and
get rid of him? And let me take just a moment and address that if I can,
because it is an important issue. Now, as you think about watching him
operate over there every day, it's tempting to think it would be nice if
he weren't there, and clearly we'd prefer to have somebody else in power
in Baghdad. But we made the decision not to go on to Baghdad because that
was never part of our objective. It wasn't what the country signed up for,
it wasn't what the Congress signed up for, it wasn't what the coalition
was put together to do. We stopped our military operations when we'd
achieved our objective -- when we'd liberated Kuwait and we'd destroyed
most of his offensive capability -- his capacity to threaten his
neighbors. And no matter what he may say today, he knows full well that he
lost two-thirds of his army, about half of his air force, most of his
weapons of mass destruction, a lot of his productive capability. His
military forces were decimated, and while he can try to regroup and
reorganize now, he does not at present constitute a threat to his
neighbors.
If we'd gone on to Baghdad, we would have wanted to send a lot of
force. One of the lessons we learned was don't do anything in a
half-hearted fashion. When we committed the forces to Kuwait, we sent a
lot of force to make certain they could do the job. We would have moved
from fighting in a desert environment, where you had clear areas where we
knew who the enemy was. Everybody there was, in fact, an adversary --
military, and there was no intermingling of any significant civilian
population. If you go into the streets of Baghdad, that changes
dramatically. All of a sudden you've got a battle you're fighting in a
major built-up city, a lot of civilians are around, significant
limitations on our ability to use our most effective technologies and
techniques. You probably would have had to run him to ground; I don't
think he would have surrendered and gone quietly to the slammer. Once we
had rounded him up and gotten rid of his government, then the question is
what do you put in its place? You know, you then have accepted the
responsibility for governing Iraq.
Now what kind of government are you going to establish? Is it going to be
a Kurdish government, or a Shi'ia government, or a Suni
government, or maybe a government based on the old Ba'athist Party, or
some mixture thereof? You will have, I think by that time, lost the
support of the Arab coalition that was so crucial to our operations over
there because none of them signed on for the United States to go occupy
Iraq. 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 US casualties. And while everybody was tremendously
impressed with the low cost of the 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 worth? And the answer is not very 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.
</snip>
And then there is this from a Frontline transcript:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/gulf/oral/cheney/2.html<snip>
think if Saddam wasn't there that his successor probably wouldn't be notably friendlier to the United States than he is. I also look at that part of the world as of vital interest to the United States for the next hundred years it's going to be the world's supply of oil. We've got a lot of friends in the region. We're always going to have to be involved there. Maybe it's part of our national character, you know we like to have these problems nice and neatly wrapped up, put a ribbon around it. You deploy a force, you win the war and the problem goes away and it doesn't work that way in the Middle East it never has and isn't likely to in my lifetime.
We are always going to have to be involved there and Saddam is just one more irritant but there's a long list of irritants in that part of the world and for us to have done what would have been necessary to get rid of him--certainly a very large force for a long time into Iraq to run him to ground and then you've got to worry about what comes after. And you then have to accept the responsibility for what happens in Iraq, accept more responsibility for what happens in the region. It would have been an all US operation, I don't think any of our allies would have been with us, maybe Britain, but nobody else. And you're going to take a lot more American casualties if you're gonna go muck around in Iraq for weeks on end trying to run Saddam Hussein to ground and capture Baghdad and so forth and I don't think it would have been worth it. I think the, the decision the President made in effect to stop when we did was the right one.
</snip>
s_m
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