"Thou art snared with the words of thy mouth, thou art taken with the words of thy mouth." Proverbs 6:2
Hindsight is golden. If we only knew then what we know now. Who could have known the quagmire that Iraq was going to turn into? Who could have predicted the casualties and civil war? All of which is standard operating Republican spin to let Bush and Cheney off the hook for misleading Americans into an ambush. But Dick Cheney did know back then. Way back then.
In his own words from 1994 watch Uncle Dick explain.
My, my, Cheney very well knew what would happen. As to the reason why Cheney changed his mind and ardently pushed war? To quote vidiot888, a user at You Tube: "REASON was Never the REASON."
Even if Cheney had somehow believed that Saddam did actually have weapons of mass destruction, Cheney should have long ago stopped claiming that Saddam did have such weapons when he didn't. The same goes for the unproven al-Qaeda connection to Iraq. Cheney is either crazy or a liar to continue making false claims.
My vote is for liar. Why? Back during the presidential campaign of 2004, chief U.S. weapons hunter Charles Duelfer released a report which found that Saddam had not had weapons of mass destruction since but that but that Saddam had no capacity to make any. Saddam could not have made any if he wanted to. Cheney's response?
"The headlines all say no weapons of mass destruction stockpiled in Baghdad.' We already knew that."
Cheney also added that "As soon as the sanctions were lifted, [Saddam] had every intention of going back" to his weapons program. In other words, Cheney knew that the sanctions program against Saddam had worked. Yet Cheney used the argument that sanctions would never stop Saddam from making WMD as a justification for invading Iraq.
Cheney has got to go. Cheney knew what was going to happen. Yet he lied to get us into a war while failing miserably in planning and preparing for the very quagmire and instability he knew was going to happen. Given the accuracy of his 1994 analysis, Cheney cannot argue that he did not know the blood would flow like an oil spill.
That is, of course, assuming that the current state of affairs is contrary to Cheney's wishes. After all, Cheney is a vital part of Bush's endless war mind set. When Cheney says things are going "remarkably well" in Iraq, that everything is going on schedule, maybe it is going as hoped for Big Brother Dick and the Holding Company. (apologies to Janis)
"Take just another a little piece of Iraq, now baby. You know you got it, if it makes you get rich."
B. 1952, GA, USA. D. To Be Determined. Beloved husband, father, grandfather, lover, confidant and friend of many from bikers to Zen masters; American writer and speaker, known for his criticism of Mammon's unholy trinity of big business, big government and big religion; served the least of them professionally as psychologist and voluntarily as activist for decades; loved to shoot basketball, billiards and the bull; lived free, died game. (memorial sketch by davidhewsonart.com)
So what was it that changed his mind by the turn of the century?
An acute awareness of impending peak oil.
In a world of looming oil shortage, Iraq represented a unique opportunity. With 115 billion barrels (officially) Iraq had the world’s third biggest reserves, and after years of war and sanctions they were also the most underexploited. In the late 1990s Iraqi oil production averaged about 2 million barrels per day, but with the necessary investment it was thought its reserves could support three times that output. Not only were sanctions stopping Iraqi production from growing, but also actively damaging the country’s petroleum geology by denying the national oil company access to essential chemicals and equipment.
In one of a series of reports to the Security Council, UN specialist inspectors warned in January 2000 that sanctions had already caused irreversible damage to Iraq’s reservoirs, and would continue to lead to “the permanent loss of huge reserves of oil”. But sanctions could not be lifted with Saddam still in place, so if Iraq’s oil was to help defer the onset of global decline, the monster so long supported by the West would have to go.
As I reveal in The Last Oil Shock, the CIA was also well aware of Iraq’s unique value, having secretly paid for new maps of its petroleum geology to be drawn as early as 1998. Cheney also knew, fretting publicly about global oil depletion at a speech in London the following year, where he noted that “the Middle East with two thirds of the world’s oil and lowest cost is still where the prize ultimately lies”. Blair too had reason to be anxious about oil: British North Sea output had peaked in 1999 - and has been falling ever since - while the petrol protests of 2000 had made the importance of maintaining the fuel supply excruciatingly obvious.
by
Bleeding Heart Liberal (0 articles, 1 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 48 comments)
on Monday, August 20, 2007 at 12:44:37 PM
