Cheney Continues To Appeal to Fear

Previously Dick Cheney warned about terrorist attacks if the wrong person is elected (ignoring the fact that the 9/11 attacks might have been prevented if they had heeded the warnings of either their predicessors in the Clinton administration or their own intelligence briefings). Today Cheney claims that, if John Kerry and the Democrats were in office, the Soviet Union would still be around.

Next he'll claim that we would have lost World War I and II if the Democrats were in office. Oh wait a minute, they were. Let's not forget about all those other Democrats who were "weak on Communism" such as Harry Truman and John Kennedy.

Of course if Cheney and Bush had been in power in the past, the world would be a different place. In Congress, Dick Cheney was on the far right, voting, for example, against the Civil Rights Act. Imagine if Cheney and Bush had been around for other key votes. We can safely assume they would have been strongly opposed to progressive change.

If Cheney and Bush had been in power, women and blacks would not be allowed to vote.

If Cheney and Bush had been in power, we would not have Medicare and Medicaid.

If Cheney and Bush had been in power, the government would never have admitted their mistake, and we'd still be fighting in Vietnam.

If Cheney and Bush had been in power to pick the Supreme Court justices, abortion would be illegal and prayer in public schools would be allowed. For that matter, there would be no real separation of church and state.

If Dick Cheney was in office, we'd really have a flip flopper who has changed his views on Iraq:

WASHINGTON -- In an assessment that differs sharply with his view today, Dick Cheney more than a decade ago defended the decision to leave Saddam Hussein in power after the first Gulf War, telling a Seattle audience that capturing Saddam wouldn't be worth additional U.S. casualties or the risk of getting "bogged down in the problems of trying to take over and govern Iraq."

Cheney, who was secretary of defense at the time, made the observations answering audience questions after a speech to the Discovery Institute in August 1992, nearly 18 months after U.S. forces routed the Iraqi army and liberated Kuwait.

President George H.W. Bush was criticized for pulling out before U.S. forces could storm Baghdad, allowing Saddam to remain in power and eventually setting the stage for the invasion of Iraq ordered by his son, President George W. Bush, in March 2003.

The comments Cheney made more than a decade ago in a little-publicized appearance have acquired new relevance as he and Bush run for a second term. A central theme of their campaign has been their unflinching, unchanging approach toward Iraq and the shifting positions offered by Democratic nominee John Kerry.

A transcript of the 1992 appearance was tracked down by P-I columnist Joel Connelly, as reported in today's In the Northwest column.

"And the question in my mind is how many additional American casualties is Saddam worth?" Cheney said then in response to a question.

"And the answer is not very damned many. So I think we got it right, both when we decided to expel him from Kuwait, but also when the president made the decision that we'd achieved our objectives and we were not going to go get bogged down in the problems of trying to take over and govern Iraq."

About 146 Americans were killed in the Gulf War. More than 1,000 U.S. soldiers have died in the invasion of Iraq and its aftermath.

Going to Baghdad, Cheney said in 1992, would require a much different approach militarily than fighting in the open desert outside the capital, a type of warfare that U.S. troops were not familiar, or comfortable fighting.

"All of a sudden you've got a battle you're fighting in a major built-up city, a lot of civilians are around, significant limitations on our ability to use our most effective technologies and techniques," Cheney said.

"Once we had rounded him up and gotten rid of his government, then the question is what do you put in its place? You know, you then have accepted the responsibility for governing Iraq."