Old Cheney vs. New Cheney

August 17, 2007

We’ve all seen the YouTube clip this week — it was hard to avoid — but Dick Cheney’s pre-2002 perspective on occupying Iraq deserve to be fleshed out in a little more detail.

At the outset, let’s remember the political and historical context. After H.W. Bush ended the Gulf War, leaving Saddam Hussein in power, the administration was a little defensive about the strategy. Cheney, Bush’s Defense Secretary, would frequently defend the decision to leave Saddam in place.

In 1991, Cheney noted the intense sectarian rivalries that dominate Iraqi society and the likely inability to maintain stability in Baghdad. As for replacing Saddam with a democracy, Cheney asked his audience, “How much credibility is that government going to have if it’s set up by the United States military when it’s there?” He added:

“The notion that we ought to now go to Baghdad and somehow take control of the country strikes me as an extremely serious one in terms of what we’d have to do once we got there. You’d probably have to put some new government in place. It’s not clear what kind of government that would be, how long you’d have to stay. For the U.S. to get involved militarily in determining the outcome of the struggle over who’s going to govern in Iraq strikes me as a classic definition of a quagmire.”

Then, in 1994, Cheney reiterated his position.

“Once you got to Iraq and took it over, and 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 in Iraq, you can easily end up seeing pieces of Iraq fly off. How many additional dead Americans is Saddam worth? And our judgment was – not very many and I think we got it right.”

As ThinkProgress noted this morning, Cheney was repeating the line as recently as 2000:

“[T]he 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.”

That Cheney sure was smart, wasn’t he?

But let’s take this a step further and consider why all of this is problematic.

First, the excuses so far are laughable. A CBS affiliate asked the Office of the Vice President for comment on the difference between the old Cheney and the new Cheney. A spokesperson would only say: “He was not Vice President at the time; it was after he was Secretary of Defense. I don’t have any comment.”

Well, that’s not much of an argument. Vice President Cheney likes quagmires, but Defense Secretary Cheney doesn’t? Maybe we can get these two together for a chat?

When this came up on The Daily Show the other day with Cheney sycophant Stephen Hayes, the Weekly Standard writer went with the ol’ “9/11 changed everything” line. But this, too, is unpersuasive. The conditions didn’t change in Iraq at all; everything Cheney said before taking office was still true after 9/11. (Stewart told him, 9/11 “didn’t change the space-time continuum.”)

But I think something’s been missing from the debate this week. We’ve all had a good laugh seeing how spot-on correct Cheney was before he started screwing up, and we’ve all rolled our eyes at the “9/11 changed everything” argument, but it’s worth taking the argument one step further. The problem is not just that Cheney went from being right to being wrong, it’s that he knew exactly what to expect from invading Iraq, but he sold the nation a bill of goods.

In other words, Cheney knew sectarian violence was inevitable; he knew it’d be a quagmire; he knew we’d lose international support; and he knew a U.S. occupation would further destabilize the Middle East. Cheney not only did it anyway, he didn’t say anything about his expectations. Just the opposite — he and his close allies said the war would be short, cheap, and easy.

That’s the point to take away from this week’s revelations.

“Just the opposite — he and his close allies said the war would be short, cheap, and easy.”

“Greeted as liberators” I think is the exact quote.

  • Excellent post.

    Cheney isn’t stupid. He’s evil. It would make us wonder whose side he’s really on, if we didn’t already know.

    Follow the oil money.

  • What we must remember is that PNAC didn’t release their “We need another Pearl Harbor event to attack Iraq” idea until, what, 1998?

    The quote from him in 2000 was a set up when taking that into account — there was no way he could say “We must invade Iraq!” when they really didn’t yet have a reason to do so. So he kept to his old message, even though he and his Neocon buddies already had the idea of going after Iraq in their tiny little heads.

    Then 9/11 happened and that window of opportunity was thrown wide open.

    So in a sense, 9/11 DID change everything. Just not for the better.

  • Exactly right. The push-back is going to be that “9-11 changed everything.” But the problem with this argument is that even if you accept the premise (i.e., the need to invade Iraq was much higher in light of 9-11), that doesn’t excuse the false predictions of how easy it was supposed to be. Nothing about 9-11 changed that, no matter how you look at it.

    In other words, he was lying in the 90s or he was lying in 2002. No other choices are possible.

  • OkieFromMuskogee,

    Totally agree. He’s obviously not doing this because of conviction, it’s all about lining his pockets at the expense of US citizens. Evil is the perfect descriptor.

  • Why? Cheney and the neocon (emphasis on ‘con’) set wanted to go into Iraq during the entire Clinton administration. Why? Now that we are there and everything has gone to shit, why do they want to stay? We are witnessing the greatest plundering of the national treasury in this country’s history. Is that it? Is it in order to install a fascist dictatorship here? Do they really think they are going to be able to get at all that oil? If so, why are they now supporting the Sunni, who have no oil? Is there some brilliant end game like in a Hollywood caper movie, or are they just fucking stupid?
    Pardon the language, but in this case I feel it is appropriate.

  • For years now I’ve had this quote on my Iraq Quagmire graph:

    I think for us to get American military personnel involved in a civil war inside Iraq would literally be a quagmire. Once we got to Baghdad, what would we do? – Dick Cheney, 1991

  • Do you believe that Cheney’s actions meet the standard of High Crimes and Misdemeanors? If so, do you believe we should impeach Cheney?

  • Just because Cheney got everything right in 1994 doesn’t mean he believed anything he said. As you say, he was repeating his administration’s argument and doing a good job of it, but there are multiple sources from the first Gulf War period who say that Cheney was opposed to that strategy at the time and actually wanted to do what they ended up doing in 2003. There are self-serving lies somewhere in all this mess, but I have no idea how to tease them out into the open.

  • I have a slightly different take. I get the impression that Mr. Cheney is entirely confident that he is right at any given moment. It happens that from 1991-2000 he was basically right about Iraq, but I suspect that the decision not to invade came first and the reasons came later. Similarly, once the decision to go ahead and invade Iraq sometime after September 11, 2001, those reasons flew out the window and were replaced by much worse reasoning.

    What struck me more was how different he sounded in the 1994 interview — the tone of his speech. He’s aged much a lot in the last thirteen years. I suspect that his health problems in the intervening period have taken quite a toll.

  • It’s not a question of when he was lying. It’s a question that in spite of knowing the truth he did it anyway. His motivations therefore had nothing to do with ideology but was purely motivated by greed. War profiteering dominated foreign policy. “Everybody died and countries were destroyed”, he said . “Yeah, but my god did we make a fortune”, came the response. Reality is the war profiteers stole our treasure. They should seize all of Haliburton’s and KBR’s holdings, and refuse to pay them another dime. Cheney’s fortunes should be confiscated and he should go straight to prison. Exxon/Mobile’s $39.6 billion dollar profits for 2006 should be seized, and all appointees from the Bush administration should be replaced immediately as nearly all of them were lobbyists for the corporations they are supposed to be regulating. That would just be a start.

    This Cheney “before” dialogue is actually a confession of prior knowledge to the biggest crime perpetrated by this country in our nation’s history…a preemptive war for profit to steal our nation’s treasure and the resources of another nation and thereby the mass murder of nearly a million innocent Iraqis.

    Pray tell, are we in the last throes of Cheney’s quagmire, of corporate militarism for profits? Right where Cheney put us?

  • 9/11 changed everything, huh?

    How about Prince Bandar telling the U.S. to get its military bases out of Saudi Arabia? So, the Saudis, Bush/Cheney, and PNAC conspired to make it so; kinda reminds ya of Iran-Contra doesn’t it with the Israelis transferring arms to Iran? Nuts, huh?

    Are there any strictly U.S. bases left in Saudi Arabia? (see Kobar Towers)

  • What I don’t get is why this has percolated to people’s consciousness right now. Some of us were jumping up and down and pointing to that quote before we even invaded. It feels like old news. I mean, sure I appreciated Jon Stewart nailing Cheney’s biographer about it, but there are new lies every day. Why is this one special NOW?

    Is it YouTube viral effect, or what?

  • I bet if you look in the closet in Cheney’s office, you’ll find a big leathery pod with the human Dick Cheney’s body in it. Jeez, don’t you get it? He’s an ALIEN!! That would SO explain his refusal to be diverted from parroting “9-11” every time somebody asks him what in the holy hell the U.S. is doing in Iraq, his steadfast defence of ridiculous notions that have already been repeatedly debunked, and his complete unfamiliarity with shotguns despite having been around them all his life. It would also explain his slavering thirst to get a war with Iran on the rails.

    “Dick Cheney” was sent here from beyond Quasar 9 to initiate Armageddon.

  • We are witnessing the greatest plundering of the national treasury in this country’s history. Is that it?

    Yes, that is it. I have always thought that this was the main reason for this war.

    Loot the treasury, no-bid contracts for buddies and friends, money which will later find its way back to them, once safely out of office and the DC fishbowl.

    It was only ever about money–greed. It’s the only explanation that fits everything that has happened.

  • #11 bjobotts has got it right. Just follow the money. This war has turned Dick Cheney into a very wealthy man. Too bad for him that it won’t help him in HELL. Let’s hope his descendants blow his stash of money on sex, drugs, and rock and roll.

  • I’m just sorry that the “new” Dick Cheney we’re discussing isn’t the “late” Dick Cheney…

  • Russert asked Cheney about the willy-nilly line back in 2003 (the same interview as ‘greeted as liberators’), here was his response:

    MR. RUSSERT: “Imperialist power,” “moving willy-nilly,” “taking down governments.” Is that how we’re going to be perceived this time?

    VICE PRES. CHENEY: Well, I hope not, Tim. Of course, in ’91, there was a general consensus that we’d gone as far as we should. We’d achieved our objectives when we liberated Kuwait and that we shouldn’t go on to Baghdad. But there were several assumptions that was based on. One that all those U.N. Security Council resolutions would be enforced. None of them has been. That’s the major difference. And it was based on the proposition that Saddam Hussein probably wouldn’t survive. Most of the experts believed based upon the severe drubbing we administered to his forces in Kuwait that he was likely to be overthrown or ousted. Of course, that didn’t happen. He’s proven to be a much tougher customer than anybody expected.

    We’re now faced with a situation, especially in the aftermath of 9/11, where the threat to the United States is increasing. And over time, given Saddam’s posture there, given the fact that he has a significant flow of cash as a result of the oil production of Iraq, it’s only a matter of time until he acquires nuclear weapons. And in light of that, we have to be prepared, I think, to take the action that is being contemplated. Doesn’t insist that he be disarmed and if the U.N. won’t do it, then the United States and other partners of the coalition will have to do that.

    Now, I think things have gotten so bad inside Iraq, from the standpoint of the Iraqi people, my belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators. And the president’s made it very clear that our purpose there is, if we are forced to do this, will in fact be to stand up a government that’s representative of the Iraqi people, hopefully democratic due respect for human rights, and it, obviously, involves a major commitment by the United States, but we think it’s a commitment worth making. And we don’t have the option anymore of simply laying back and hoping that events in Iraq will not constitute a threat to the U.S. Clearly, 12 years after the Gulf War, we’re back in a situation where he does constitute a threat.

    Somehow, 9/11 made Saddam more dangerous.

  • White folks like money more than the country. VP and his cronies make millions from war. Case in point, the Fed puts $100 BILLION (corporate welfare) in the stock market so rich white folks won’t lose money.

  • Grasping the full scope of Cheney’s deceptions

    Greetings,

    Want to understand just how deceptive and duplicitous Cheney and crew really are? Read the article at the following link to understand that they were saying one thing publicly, while actively planning both 9/11 and the Iraq war (PNAC, etc.). The key point here is that the Iraq war was planned before 9/11 occurred, so any assertions that 9/11 changed their thinking are blatant lies.

    Follow the links in the article and be prepared to have your head spin…
    Read more…

  • Dick Cheney once made sense?

    My gods. I think my head’s going to explode…. can’t process… does not compute…

  • 9/11 didn’t change everything.
    Chaneybush are the ones who have changed everything!

    9/11 proved that the report or reports that Chaneybush and their evil twin Rove had before them, pre-9/11, that bin Laden was planning another attack on the US (remember the previous attack on the World Trade Center? Chaneybush didn’t.) probably much like the previous World Trade Center bombing that very nearly succeeded in collapsing one of the buildings.

    Think about it, the two attacks were essentially identical. Only the second time they used a bigger vehicle with more explosive in it, and it worked better.

    9/11 only confirmed what Chaneybush already knew about bin Laden.

    So that phrase is another Rovian lie which was gleefully picked up by the Repos, who love to scream rape and patriotism in the same breath, and their news media.

    And Chaneybush still have not been able to locate bin Laden.

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