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Cheney: We would have invaded Iraq even if we knew they had no WMDs


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Anyone shocked here? Nope?

 

Cheney: WMD or not, Iraq invasion was correct

Vice president says ?we would do exactly the same thing? regardless of intel

 

? Cheney: 'Exactly the same thing'

Sept. 10: Vice President Dick Cheney tells Tim Russert of NBC's "Meet the Press" that the Bush administration would do "exactly the same thing" in Iraq, even if it knew there were no weapons of mass destruction.

By Alex Johnson, MSNBC Updated: 2:25 p.m. ET Sept 10, 2006

President Bush would have ordered an invasion of Iraq even if the CIA had told him that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction, Vice President Dick Cheney said Sunday.

 

In the build-up to the U.S. invasion in 2003, Bush and other administration leaders argued that Saddam should be removed from power because he had stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and was actively seeking to build a nuclear weapon.

 

Subsequent investigations concluded that he did not have such weapons, and in an appearance on NBC?s ?Meet the Press,? Cheney acknowledged that, ?clearly, the intelligence that said he did was wrong.?

 

Asked by ?Meet the Press? host Tim Russert whether the United States would have gone ahead with the invasion anyway if the CIA had reported that Saddam did not, in fact, have such weapons, Cheney said yes.

 

?He?d done it before,? Cheney said. ?He had produced chemical weapons before and used them. He had produced biological weapons. He had a robust nuclear program in ?91.?

 

The U.S. invasion ?was the right thing to do, and if we had to do it again, we would do exactly the same thing,? he said.

 

Cheney also said he was wrong when he said shortly before the invasion that U.S. forces would be ?greeted as liberators.? Instead, more than three years later, violent resistance to the U.S.-backed government in Baghdad continues, and more than 2,600 U.S. service members have been killed.

 

?No doubt, we did not anticipate that the insurgency would last this long,? Cheney said. The United States must stay the course, however, because while the situation is ?difficult,? it is significantly better, he said.

 

Cheney acknowledged opinion polls that show that a majority of the U.S. public believes Iraq is a more dangerous threat than it was before U.S. forces invaded.

 

?The people obviously are frustrated because of the difficulty, because of the cost and the casualties, but you cannot look at Iraq in isolation,? he said. ?You have to look at it within the context of the broader global war on terror. ... If Saddam Hussein were still in power, we would be in a vastly worse position.?

 

.....

 

He also acknowledged that U.S. and Afghan forces, now joined by NATO forces, were ?still in the fight for Afghanistan? almost five years after U.S. forces invaded to remove the Taliban for harboring al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks.

 

There you have it. Would've invaded Iraq even if they KNEW there weren't any WMDs. I think they pretty much knew it anyway, but regardless...

 

So that crosses off the "but wait! All the rest of the world had the same intel as we did!" defense. They could've cared less about the WMD intel. But were smart enough to know that everyone would look at them with a big WTF if they suddenly stormed Iraq. So "voila", America is treated to day after day of mushroom cloud and anthrax talk, combined with trumped up WMD claims and how 9/11=Bin Laden=Saddam, until we're sufficiently whipped into a frenzy.

 

WMDs were irrelevant in their decision to invade. Of course this has been a "left-wing" talking point for years, but as usual it was ignored as conspiracy theories and terrorist-sympathizing and the aforementioned "but everyone else thought they had WMDs too!!" defense. The PNAC gang wasn't about to let a little thing like public support get in the way of testing out their empire-building theories. Do people even go back & read this stuff?

 

Also Cheney would rather we stop emboldening the terrorists with all this stilly "debate". I mean what's with debating? Unamerican is what it is. Do what I f*cking tell you and get in line. America is not the place for dissent.

 

Talk about unfit to lead this nation.... :(

 

Makes you proud.

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Transcript: President Clinton explains Iraq strike

CLINTON: Good evening.

 

Earlier today, I ordered America's armed forces to strike military and security targets in Iraq. They are joined by British forces. Their mission is to attack Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs and its military capacity to threaten its neighbors.

 

http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/199...ts/clinton.html

 

http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1998/12/16/clinton/

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It makes you feel all fuzzy inside, doesn't it?

 

Unfortunately no one has held them accountable for the lack of WMDs, and I doubt that they will either.

 

i find it amazing that clinton was almost impeached over a BJ and bush is ready to blow the world up and nothing...i mean damn...does it take bush and cheney standing there on national TV holding a smoking shotgun while uncle sam had his brains blown out to get someone to do something?

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This is old news.

 

 

Bush wanted back in Iraq long before he even took office.

 

 

The most disgusting thing is that we have just basically let Bush get away with flat out lying to us about the reasons for going into Iraq, and we have done nothing about it except basically turn the cheek.

 

 

A bit sad if you really look at it.

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The worst part is that Bin laden was about to be caught, but they let him escape, because the troops hunting him down were pulled to go to Iraq instead. If the Dems want the House and the Senate that what they have to let the people know.

 

I agree that using Bin Laden against Bush could work. Just play his speech where he pledges to bring him in "Dead or Alive", and then show an interview with a guy like Gary Bernsen (head of the CIA task force assigned to get Bin Laden in 2001). That would certainly raise some eyebrows.

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