Interviewer: Do you think US or UN forces should have moved into Baghdad?
Interviewee: No.
Interviewer: Why not?
Interviewee: Because if we’d gone to Baghdad we would have been all alone, there wouldn’t have been anybody else with us. It would have been a US occupation of Iraq. None of the Arab forces that were willing to fight with us in Kuwait were willing to invade Iraq. Once you got to Iraq and took it over, 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. Part of it the Syrians would like to have, to the west. Part of eastern Iraq the Iranians would like to claim. They fought over it for eight years. In the north you’ve got the Kurds. If the Kurds spin loose and join with the Kurds in Turkey then you’ve threatened the territorial integrity of Turkey. It’s a quagmire if you go that far and try to take over Iraq.
The other thing was casualties. Everyone was impressed with the fact that we were able to do our job with as few casualties as we had, but for the 146 Americans killed in action and for their families it wasn’t a cheap war. And the question for the President in terms of whether or not we went to Baghdad and took additional casualties in an effort to get Saddam Hussein, was “How many additional dead Americans was Saddam worth?” Our judgement was “not very many” and I think we got it right.
As of August 15, 2007, Saddam Hussein is worth 3553 dead American soldiers.
[tags]dick cheney,iraq,saddam hussein[/tags]
#1 by Mac on 16 August 2007 - 6:45 am
I love it when people don’t do a total cost of ownership type analysis. What other benefits do we have from the price we’ve paid to date? 1) 27,499,638 free Iraqis. 2) Countless fewer dictatorial murders, rapes and crimes against humanity. 3) A potential Middle East democracy. 4) The death of the sexual predator son of Saddam, Uday. 5) The death of the Shiite oppressor son of Saddam, Qusay…. Need I go on?
#2 by Brad on 16 August 2007 - 8:53 am
Sure, go on.
You forgot the $450,000,000,000 price tag, money that could have gone towards helping Hurricane Katrina victims, money that could have gone towards ensuring our bridges are safe, money that could have gone towards higher education.
You forgot the massive loss of worldwide support for the United States.
You forgot the massive failures in basic Iraqi infrastructure. Iraqis are going without clean water or electricity because of this war.
You forgot the 1001 contractors killed. You forgot the 50,000 wounded American soldiers, some of whom suffer from multiple amputations, severe head trauma, and severe burns. You forgot the 70,000 reported civilian deaths caused by military intervention. (This number is estimated to be as high as 650,000, by the way.) You forgot the estimated 1.4 million injured Iraqis. You forgot the 2 million Iraqi refugees that have fled their country.
But no, please go on. I’m interested to see how you think all of these things are worth killing one dictator over.
#3 by duran on 16 August 2007 - 9:29 am
Mac, you’re ignorant.
I don’t mean that you’re dumb. Just that you’re ignorant of the facts.
1. 3553+ US Service Men/Women Killed.
And the average Iraqi has far less access to electricity then before the war :
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12784358/
2. 3553+ US Service Men/Women Killed.
And the US Govt has had to borrow $1.05 TRILLION dollars in the last 4 years to help pay for it. In comparison, the **TOTAL** amount of money borrowed by EVERY PRESIDENT BEFORE COMBINED is $1.01 Trillion. : http://tinyurl.com/dt3tv
3. 3553+ US Service Men/Women Killed.
And the total drug output of Afghanistan is HIGHER then when we invaded Afghanistan. We had a real mission in Afghanistan, with real goals. We squandered those goals to invade Iraq.
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=1675283&page=1
The facts are Mac, that you’re ignorant of them.
The facts are, that we’ve messed up bad.
That we ruined a justifiable invasion of Afghanistan to try and intimidate the Oil Market to continue to support our Fiat currency. That we are out spending our means on a lost cause.
That no matter how much you and I might think that Saddamn was a bad guy, and yes, he was a VERY BAD guy, that the average iraqi had a better life when he was in charge… Lets ignore the fact that we helped put him there in the first place.
Stop moralistically justifying the removal of a few bad men, and look at the destruction we, as a nation, have caused on Iraq and its citizens.