3/23/2004

Why does Dick Cheney hate America?

Apologies to Atrios for appropriating that line, but I love it when he uses it ironically when pointing out Republican hypocrisy. The Kerry DBunker blog brings us this 2000 exchange between Dick Cheney and Tim Russert: "MR. RUSSERT: Do you regret not taking Saddam out nine years ago? MR. CHENEY: I don't, Tim. It was--and it's been talked about since then. But the fact of the matter is, the only way you could have done that would be to go to Baghdad and occupy Iraq. If we'd done that, the U.S. would have been all alone. We would not have had the support of the coalition, especially of the Arab nations that fought alongside us in Kuwait. None of them ever set foot inside Iraq. Conversations I had with leaders in the region afterwards--they all supported the decision that was made not to go to Baghdad. They were concerned that we not get into a position where we shifted instead of being the leader of an international coalition to roll back Iraqi aggression to one in which we were an imperialist power, willy-nilly moving into capitals in that part of the world taking down governments. [Meet the Press, 8/27/00, emphasis added]" To quote an oft-repeated right-wing phrase, if it were up to George H.W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and others, Saddam Hussein would have remained in power between 1991 and 2003, and would have gassed a Kurdish village sometime in the 90s.

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