Doc's Rants

Ok, I know this was a little untimely, but I tripped across this quote today and just had to share it. For what its worth, I agree with the author 100%, at least in this regard.

I think that the proposition of going to Baghdad is also fallacious. I
think if we were going to remove Saddam Hussein we would have had to go
all the way to Baghdad, we would have to commit a lot of force because
I do not believe he would wait in the Presidential Palace for us to
arrive. I think we'd have had to hunt him down. And once we'd done that
and we'd gotten rid of Saddam Hussein and his government, then we'd
have had to put another government in its place.

What kind of government? Should it be a Sunni government or Shi'i
government or a Kurdish government or Ba'athist regime? Or maybe we
want to bring in some of the Islamic fundamentalists? How long would we
have had to stay in Baghdad to keep that government in place? What
would happen to the government once U.S. forces withdrew? How many
casualties should the United States accept in that effort to try to
create clarity and stability in a situation that is inherently unstable?

I think it is vitally important for a President to know when to use
military force. I think it is also very important for him to know when
not to commit U.S. military force. And it's my view that the President
got it right both times, that it would have been a mistake for us to
get bogged down in the quagmire inside Iraq.

Now what nasty liberal politician said this, you ask? None other than the our current Vice President, Dick Cheney. These were in remarks during his role as Secretary of Defense under Bush I, in a speech delivered at the Soref Institute in April of 1991.

But I guess that was a "pre 9/11" mindset, right?

Doc