Vice President Cheney and Liz Cheney on the Dangers Facing America

RUSH: We'd like to welcome back -- and we have 'em both at the same time today. This is a first, Vice President Cheney and Liz Cheney both joining us at the same time. Welcome to both of you. Welcome back to the program.

RUSH: You bet. Now, you guys have formed a group, a think tank. I want to know what it is. It's called the Alliance for a Strong America. I can pretty much guess why you've decided to do this now, but I want you to tell me why you're doing it, if there was one particular tipping point or issue that made you finally throw down the gauntlet and say you just had to do this.

DICK CHENEY: Well, I think one of the things that stimulated our thinking, Rush, and sort of brought it to a head -- we've been thinking a lot of this for some time -- is Liz and I took a trip to the Middle East a couple months ago and visited with a lot of friends out there, people I dealt with 25 years ago during Desert Storm. And we came away from that experience thoroughly depressed at the perception they have of the United States, in particular of the Obama administration. Lack of trust, lack of confidence in our leadership or our willingness to keep our commitments. Just a decided diminution of the ability of the United States to influence events in a key part of the world, for all kinds of reasons.

DICK CHENEY: I think it'd be fair to say they volunteered it. These are people I've known a long time and that I've kept up with over the years, and they all agreed to see us in advance. Liz worked that part of the world extensively when she was at the State Department and previous administrations, and you just came away with this sense of weakness, of lack of trust and confidence in the US; that the role that we historically have played as sort of the leading nation in terms of maintaining the peace and stability in the world was gone.

LIZ CHENEY: I think also, Rush, we were very much focused on this notion that we've clearly had presidents before in our history who've made bad choices and bad decisions, who've had disastrous policies in some instances. But what's happening now is different because you've got really for the first time in our history a president who seems to be choosing to take us down that path.

Charles Krauthammer's talked about, you know, the fact that the president has chosen decline, and you look around the world. You know, whether you're talking about what's happening today in Iraq, what's happening today in the Middle East -- the threat from Al-Qaeda is a very serious, significant, strategic, growing threat to the security of the nation -- and we felt like it was time to do more than just talk about the danger of this president's policies.

But really to begin to form an organization that could become a center of gravity, that people could join who believe in a strong nation, who believe in returning America to a role of preeminence and power in the world and who know that we cannot afford to continue down this path the president's put us on where he basically tells lies to the nation about the threat we face, minimizes it -- and his policies, in the meantime, are making it much, much worse.

RUSH: Well, I was happy to hear Dr. Krauthammer suggest that Obama is managing a decline. I've been worried about this for three or four years, and I'm gonna go a step further. I don't think he's managing a decline, 'cause I think the natural tendency of the United States economy -- for example, like an airplane. The natural tendency is to grow. You have to sit on this economy if you want to suppress it.

The natural tendency of the American people is to expand, to grow, to improve themselves and everybody around them. Same thing with foreign policy. Some of this stuff doesn't seem like it's part of a natural decline. My fear is that this goes far beyond managing and is, in fact, purposeful because of a distorted view of this country that the president and people like him have about this country.

Being unjust and immoral and, "We have no business, we're colonialists, we're imperialists!" We fight now kidnapped girls in Nigeria with hashtags and we want people to take us seriously? You know, some of this stuff is just beyond belief. So it's good that you're doing this, but what is the practical application of your group? Who's gonna join? What are you gonna do?

LIZ CHENEY: Well, there's a number of different things. First of all, it's clear to us that we've got the problem that you're laying out, which is absolutely right. I think the president's actions are very intentional. He wants to take America down a notch. He doesn't believe in American exceptionalism. So what we're doing initially is we're gonna be a place where people can come to get ammunition, frankly, to make the arguments.

To be able to say, "Wait a second, this is why American power matters." We want to be a place that can help to buck people up, to lay out the policy discussions, to lay out this side of the policy debate, so that people's voices can be heard. People can sign up on our website, which is StrongerAmerica.com, in order to get information about all the important national security issues of the day.

We also are very focused on what's happening in our own party, and you've got a concerning isolationist trend, and we want to fight back against that as well. So we're gonna be a group that is about educating people, about advocating for the right policies. We hope to be able to turn some of these bad policies around in the next two years, and then we're gonna be focused on 2016 and helping to make sure that we get a nominee in our party who understands the importance of restoring American strength and power around the world.

RUSH: That is an interesting observation you just made about the rising isolationist tendencies in the Republican Party. The Republican Party has almost become dormant in this area and in some areas as well as economically, domestically. Do you all have any thoughts on why our how this happened, when it began, and what it is that's fueling this... this... It looks like fear to me. I don't know how you would characterize it, but --

DICK CHENEY: As I look at it, Rush, I'm very concerned about it. Part of it, I think, is sort of a natural result after the years since 9/11, when we have to put in place some very tough policies in order to keep the country safe from another mass-casualty attack, long involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The key to being able to sustain that kind of effort over time in part is leadership. And you need a president who will stand up and explain why it's necessary for us to continue to be on guard and to work at all of these various efforts in terms of keeping the nation safe. And, of course, you're not gonna get that out of Barack Obama. What you get from him is somebody...

Well, I remember when they first went into office. One of the first things they announced was they were gonna investigate and potentially prosecute the personnel at the CIA who had been running our counterterrorism program for us and our enhanced-interrogation techniques. I really think part of the problem is that you've got a president who doesn't share the consensus that both parties have had to some extent in the past, certainly since World War II, that the US has to be strong militarily.

It has to operate as a leader of the free world, in effect. We've had different levels of commitment to that, obviously. Some have been better than others. But I don't think Barack Obama believes any of that. I think he's got a whole different perception about the world and our role in it, and without strong leadership at the top we end up in a situation where, in fact, he's taken us backwards, as you say.

RUSH: Well, it's not just foreign policy and geopolitics. It's also economics. When you withdraw from the world, when the United States withdraws from the world... You remember back in the Desert Storm days all the catcalls about "blood for oil." Well, one of the responsibilities going into Kuwait was to maintain the free flow of oil at market prices, an economic issue. Only the US can do that. The more we withdraw from the world and become isolationists like some in the Republican Party are doing, the greater the economic damage. Not just to us, the rest of the world as well. This seems to be forgotten or missed by a lot of people as well.

LIZ CHENEY: It does, and I think that the other piece of it that people miss is there's a tendency sometimes to hear people say, "Well, look, we've got enough economic challenges here at home. We need to just come home and focus on those," and that completely ignores the threat to the economy and the potential devastation to the economy of another terrorist attack.

The idea that you've now got this group, ISIS, that is basically creating Al-Qaedistan -- they're creating a terrorist safe haven that will basically be a country of its own; they don't respect the borders now -- from which they can train people, from which they can provide safe haven, from which they can provide attacks. It's the wealthiest terrorist organization that's ever existed. They now control more territory than any terrorist organization ever has. It is a very significant and serious threat to our freedoms, to our security, and to our economy.

RUSH: It's very possible that had Obama had his way in Syria that this same group would have been running it. He was blaming Bashar Assad for whatever transgressions are being made and drew this red line, and had he succeeded in getting Assad out of power, guess who would be in power? This same group, ISIS, in Syria! I just can't believe he's unaware of that, that he is just naive and ignorant. It's gotta be more than that. Anyway, can you guys hang on? I gotta take a quick break.

RUSH: We'll come back and we'll continue. We have Dick Cheney, Vice President Cheney and his daughter, Liz, with us.

RUSH: Welcome back, folks, and we are joined today by Vice President Cheney and Liz Cheney, both of them on the phone. Mr. Vice President, I have a question. This personally bothers me. The last three years -- and maybe you could say the whole second term of the Bush administration -- the Democrat Party and willing accomplices in the media every day did their best to secure negative opinion about our involvement in Iraq, tried to saddle the country with defeat, called General Petraeus a liar before he'd even testified. I mean, you remember it. And not once did any of you in the Bush administration respond to any of it. You just kept your heads down and kept trying to execute the policy and secure victory, came up with the surge, and it proved successful.

But for four years the body count, every potential negative was just hammered at the American people to the point that they began to think the whole thing was illegitimate, not worth it, and a waste of time. Now we move forward to just the past couple of months and it's all falling apart. President Bush has not said a word. And I know he thinks that it sullies the office to do so. But does it frustrate you at all that there hasn't been any -- as Obama trashes what you did -- I mean, he's the one who decimated the military, not Al-Qaeda. He claims he decimated Al-Qaeda. They're not decimated. He didn't cause them to run to the hills and disband. It's outrageous and never once has there been any push-back on any of this now for multiple number of years.

DICK CHENEY: Well, the president, obviously, has made his own decision with respect to how much he wants to get involved. That's his call. I don't mean to be critical of it. He basically decided to follow the same path his dad had with respect to the Clinton administration. I'm not bound by those limits, Rush. I don't accept it. I do want to get out there and mix it up, and that's part of the reason what we're operating with here. And I think there's sort of a natural tendency there, obviously. We've got critics on the other side. We had Harry Reid, I can remember, announcing at the very beginning of the surge into Iraq -- this would have been in early '07 -- taking the Senate floor to announce that it was a failure, complete defeat, wasn't gonna work. Well, obviously he didn't know what he was talking about. There's a lot to overcome there if you, in fact, are gonna push, well, things like the programs that I was closely associated with, enhanced interrogation and so forth. So you've gotta get out there and be honest and forthright with the American people --

DICK CHENEY: -- but lots of times you're also dealing in classified areas, and you can't really talk about --

RUSH: Well, Harry Reid and the like, it's exactly what I'm talking about. All they were doing was trying to push public opinion down --

RUSH: -- and poison the minds of the American people. Now that this has happened, now that Iraq -- I mean, it is outrageous to anybody that has paid any attention to this, it is outrageous what is happening. I mean, you talk to people that have families members and troops that were there, who are watching this, they're asking themselves why, what did we risk everything for? And then to add insult to injury, you got people trying to say that you are responsible for this, I mean, you and the Bush administration, because there was never any legitimate reason to go in there in the first place. And the people make that allegation I think willfully ignore what the justification for going in was. But how do you react to that criticism, that this is ultimately your responsibility or fault?

DICK CHENEY: Well, I think the point that needs to be made, Rush, we got the current dustup over Iraq. The problem's much bigger than just Iraq. One of the things that was a major concern in the aftermath of 9/11, especially when we got involved with Iraq, was the possibility of a follow-on terrorist attack with something far deadlier than airline tickets and box cutters, and that concern is even greater today. We've just had, for example, a major attack on the Karachi airport by the Taliban inside Pakistan. Why worry about that? Well, Pakistan has somewhere between 50 and a hundred nuclear weapons.

The point at which the terrorists get their hands on that kind of deadly technology, you know, may not be very far away, and it's more important than ever that we be actively and aggressively engaged over there in these kinds of issues. Those were our same concerns we had when we went into Iraq, because we had a guy with a track record of producing and using weapons of mass destruction, he had ties to terror, and we anticipated that that was where there was most likely to be a link-up between the two.

Now, once we got rid of Saddam Hussein, we had Moammar Khadafy come forward and surrender his nuclear materials. We have all of those. We also then shut down the black market operation that had supplied Khadafy, and it also helped the Iraqis and the North Koreans with their weapons of mass destruction program. So the problem actually, that basic, fundamental principle or theme runs all the way through from when went into Iraq to what we're having to deal with now in the Middle East to the possibility that someplace like Pakistan, for example, or even Syria, remember it wasn't that long ago that we discovered that the North Koreans had built a nuclear reactor for the Syrians. Thank goodness the Israelis took it out before they could take advantage of it.

LIZ CHENEY: I'll answer that one, Dad. First of all, on the issue of Iran, I think the notion that somehow the Iranians have any interests in common with us is outrageous. The talk about the fact that we might be working with the Iranians, again, just gives our allies, you know, they're apoplectic. They don't understand what we're doing. And this notion of sort of who's to blame. I think it's really important also that we recognize the next president is gonna have a heck of a challenge and task to clean up the mess left by this administration.

You've gotta look at the facts, which are, you know, from the beginning of the administration, this president has walked away. This president has abandoned our allies. He's apologized for the nation. He has appeased our enemies, and we've gotta learn the lessons of that. We've gotta recognize that what's happening today in Iraq, what's happening today across the rest of the Middle East, what will happen in Afghanistan if he follows through on his promise to withdraw there, are all a direct consequence of the policies he's been following.

And people have been warning about those policies ever since he came into office. People have been warning that weakness is provocative and it invites the aggression of our enemies. And if we don't learn those lessons, the next president will not, frankly, be able to get us out of the hole that we've now found ourselves in. So we do have to be very clear about cause and effect. When the Bush administration left office, Iraq was stable.

The US military said they needed 20,000 troops in country in order to maintain the stability. And the White House said no. They said, "All right, how about 10?" The White House said no. The White House said "you can have 3,500 troops," and they told Maliki that he had to get any agreement, any SOFA agreement through his parliament. Now, you know, when the president says, "Well, I tried to get a SOFA agreement," it's just not true. He didn't want one, he wanted out, and their rejection of the commanders' recommendations on the ground tells you that he just wanted out.

RUSH: Let me step in. I've simply run out of time but your timing there, Liz, was superb. I just want to remind people again of your new organization. It's the Alliance for a Strong America, and the website is StrongerAmerica.com. And people can learn exactly what you're doing by clicking and surfing there. Thank you both very much for being with us today. It's always a pleasure.

18 Please try to remember what brought this all on. At the time we had no troops in the Middle-Eest. Even if that is the model you wish to return to, I cannot join you.

You and I are not in opposition to 1 another. Obviously we want a conservative U.S. to prevail for posterity. My main point is the nature of the American citizenry - short attention span.

Every explanation you give for keeping U.S. boots on the ground, I can counter that the Democrat Party will sell us out over the long run. South Vietnam - Teddy Kennedy, Shah of Iran - Jimmy Carter, Mumbarak/Egypt - Obama, Qaddafi/Libya - Obama, Malaki/Iraq - Obama, Afghanistan - Obama, USSR? - think back to the Democrat Party of FDR and during the 1970s - they nearly cost us the Cold War but for the exeptional timing, courage and wisdom of RWR. The communists captured the Democrat Party from within in 1972. The Democrat Party cannot be trusted to do the right thing and defend the U.S. against Islamists. It is a grim scenario.

Yes, the U.S. will have to take an even greater hit than 9/11 on American soil before we can regain the momentum against Islam - but whether we will prevail is unclear at this moment. Obama has effectively split this country in 2 along racial/class lines. I don't see this nation retaing its superpower ability. History doesn't give many examples, if any, of nations pulling out of deep econommic decline after having attained status as a world power. As the TEA Party members age and die, the Gen X's and Millenials are just too brainwashed by public education to "keep the Republic". Whites are projected to become 50% of the population by 2040 - probably sooner after the 2014 Central American invasion of the U.S.

It is truly grim. I haven't given up, but I am dispirited. Even more major changes loom on the horizon - "Something Wicked This Way Comes".

“Then you realize that both buildings of the World Trade Center have been taken down, several other large buildings there too, and the world’s leading known blow-hard that supported terrorists was still mouthing off in support of terrorism. “

I’ll tell you what I realized. That every one of those 9-11 terrorists was in this country due to our incredibly lax attitude about immigration and visas, an attitude that Bush 43 had in spades. In fact all Bushes seem wedded to this idiocy.

All of the 9-11 terrorists were either Saudis or Yemenis, not one was Iraqi. In fact not one Islamic terrorist in the previous 40 years had been an Iraqi. Iraqis weren’t players in the world of Islamic extremism.

Saddam Hussein was not even a mildly observant Muslim. He was about power. He modeled himself after Stalin right down to the mustache. Christians went about their lives unmolested in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. That hasn’t been the case since his removal and Iraq becoming an Islamic state.

We went to war with Saddam Hussein in 1991 because he invaded Kuwait, which had nothing to do with Islam. It was just a naked grab of territory. Saddam imagined that he could become the ruler over a great Babylonian kingdom. He was driven by ambition, not Islam.

Israel had bombed Saddam’s Osirak nuclear reactor back in 1981. By the time of the Kuwait war in 1991 Saddam had still not retaliated against Israel. That’s not exactly the hallmark of a terrorist state. It’s the hallmark of someone afraid of starting a war with a country that can hurt him.

“IMO, this could have been what drove Bush to avoid entering Iraq and toppling Hussein.”

Bush went to war with Iraq because he believes democracy has magical powers, a belief shared by the fools he chose as advisers. It is nothing more than warmed over Liberal Internationalism wedded to coercive utopianism. A bizarre mirror image of Islam’s habit of imposing Islam on others- the democracy worshippers believed it was their obligation to convert the Iraqi infidels for their own good so that peace and love would break out along the Euphrates.

“I don’t think the goal was to turn Vietnam into a miniature United States. I believe it was an effort to keep the people of South Vietnam free. “

We were doing both. See if the fantasy that American “social scientists” were peddling back then sounds familiar:

“The new South Vietnamese state, [Fishel} concluded, would overcome both the colonial legacy and the communist threat. With US guidance and support, it would seize the moment to build a nation where none had existed before.

Fishel’s interpretation reflects the extent to which US social scientists and policy makers envisioned nation-building in South Vietnam as part of a universal process of modernisation that, once it gained sufficient momentum, would become an inexorable force, sweeping all before it.”

http://viet-studies.info/kinhte/Nation_Building_VN_TWQ.pdf

“What would have been your battle plan after 09/11?”

Well it sure as hell wouldn’t have included attacking Iraq, a country ruled by an Arab strongman with no ties to the Islamic Brotherhood or any other Islamist terror cult. The fact is that many of Bush’s advisers had been spoiling for an attack on Iraq long before 9-11. The ‘Project for a New American Century’ wrote to Bill Clinton in January 1998 urging him to attack Iraq and remove Saddam Hussein. Check out who signed the letter. 9-11 was just an opportunity for them to take advantage of the public’s hazy knowledge of the Arab world to implement a goal that they had been pushing for years.

What we needed to do was to dismantle every terrorist hole in Afghanistan, western Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, all of them sanctuaries for the scum who had declared war on us. But attacking and occupying a non-involved Arab country with the idea that we would convert it into a pro-western democracy was a criminal misuse of our soldiers, getting them maimed and killed in pursuit of the utopian fantasy of some crackpot ideologues for whom worldwide democracy is a religion.

“At the time nearly everyone was certain he had WMDs.”

There was a good deal of bait and switch going on with this WMD claim and it was intended to spook the American public. People hear WMD and they think ‘nuclear bomb’, which is precisely why the ambiguous term WMD was used. But WMD can also mean poison gas and bugs like anthrax.

What Saddam did have was chemical artillery shells. They’re dangerous if you’re in cannon range, which pretty much excluded the entire continental United States unless Saddam had the smarts to hire a coyote to bring them across the Rio Grande. Of course considering amnesty-loving Dubya’s refusal to defend the American border that may have been a real threat.

Had the mythical Iraqi nuclear bomb actually existed Saddam still would have needed a delivery system. I never did see anyone claim that the Iraqi air force included strategic bombers, ICBMs, or boomer submarines but maybe I missed it. Perhaps once again the real fear was that the Iraqi bomb could be strapped on the back of a burro and smuggled across at Juarez.

Somehow we were supposed to believe that Iraq, a country that couldn’t even defeat it’s next door neighbor Iran, posed an existential threat to the enormously more powerful and much more distant United States. Hey, it makes sense to me! Saddam had a secret desire to see what would happen when an enraged America repeated its Hiroshima/Nagasaki exercise right on top of his head!

The fact is that Saddam was less of a real threat than North Korea, which we have managed to keep in check since 1953. Saddam’s Iraq was far less powerful than the Norks and the idea that we couldn’t have kept him contained with minimal effort until he died of old age is ridiculous.

What would have been your battle plan after 09/11?

Well it sure as hell wouldn’t have included attacking Iraq, a country ruled by an Arab strongman with no ties to the Islamic Brotherhood or any other Islamist terror cult.

Okay, then you were unaware he was paying $25,000.00 rewards to the families of suicide terrorits that blew themselves up inside Israel. These suicide bombers weren't free-lancing. They were operating with the help of Hamas and the remnants of the former PLO. And if as I have long suspected, these terrorists do a musical chairs of sorts between various terrorist organizations in the Middle-East, some Muslim Brotherhood involvement could have been the case. So yes, he most certainly did have ties to Islamic terror cults. What's more he advocated for more suicide bombings.

The fact is that many of Bush’s advisers had been spoiling for an attack on Iraq long before 9-11. The ‘Project for a New American Century’ wrote to Bill Clinton in January 1998 urging him to attack Iraq and remove Saddam Hussein. Check out who signed the letter. 9-11 was just an opportunity for them to take advantage of the public’s hazy knowledge of the Arab world to implement a goal that they had been pushing for years.

Well, considering the need for my comments above, it appears these may not have been the only ones with a hazy knowledge of the "Arab World". Hussein had been mouthing off in public about the need for more terrorists attacks on Israel and the United States. A leader of a nation doesn't generally make public comments like that, unless he means it. So was the United States opportunistic or not? Was Hussein a leading target in the Middle-East, and suspected of helping terrorists to conduct their activity? I'm not convinced by any means there were no al Qaeda training camps in Iraq pre 2003. What we do know is that as soon as the U. S. was on the ground, an active well armed opposition was in country. We had to fight to retake territory, and IEDs were a mainstay of the forces we faced? The knowledge and materials to do that sort of thing aren't readily available, unless terrorist elements are present and trained.

What we needed to do was to dismantle every terrorist hole in Afghanistan, western Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, all of them sanctuaries for the scum who had declared war on us. But attacking and occupying a non-involved Arab country with the idea that we would convert it into a pro-western democracy was a criminal misuse of our soldiers, getting them maimed and killed in pursuit of the utopian fantasy of some crackpot ideologues for whom worldwide democracy is a religion.

Non involved.... sorry, but that's laughable. Please think back to the early days of the war, and our need to fight some very fierce battles to free up Iraqi territory. Terrorists were in country when we decided to take Hussein out. They were opearting there freely, at his will. I do agree with you that there were other places that need to be rid of the terrorist elements. As a matter of fact, Southern Lebanon and the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip were places that came to mind. Bush said we would go after the terrorists where-ever they were. I knew we wouldn't. We didn't, and I agree we should have.

At the time nearly everyone was certain he had WMDs.

There was a good deal of bait and switch going on with this WMD claim and it was intended to spook the American public. People hear WMD and they think ‘nuclear bomb’, which is precisely why the ambiguous term WMD was used. But WMD can also mean poison gas and bugs like anthrax.

What Saddam did have was chemical artillery shells. They’re dangerous if you’re in cannon range, which pretty much excluded the entire continental United States unless Saddam had the smarts to hire a coyote to bring them across the Rio Grande. Of course considering amnesty-loving Dubya’s refusal to defend the American border that may have been a real threat.

Bush was the best friend our enemies ever had, when it came to our southern border. Obama has since eclipsed him, but Bush was a joke when it came to border security. After 09/11, he refused to allow us to profile. So grandma in a wheel chair became the person to check out, and Islamacists standing up on flights and shouting in unison were a-okay.

Once these types of munitions exist, they can be hand carried across the continent. They are a threat. We still don't know the full extent of what Hussein had, but both sides of the isle in the U.S., the U.N., and the E.U. all thought Hussein was hiding things that could be a serious threat. He had shown the willingness to use them. He had attacked Israel by Scud, and had upgraded his Scud capabilities. So was it wrong for us to intervene? No. The guy had to go. If he had toned it down like Khadaffy had, then no. Hussein refused to comply with international demands. He had put himself in the position of needing to. He overplayed his hand, and it cost him.

Had the mythical Iraqi nuclear bomb actually existed Saddam still would have needed a delivery system. I never did see anyone claim that the Iraqi air force included strategic bombers, ICBMs, or boomer submarines but maybe I missed it. Perhaps once again the real fear was that the Iraqi bomb could be strapped on the back of a burro and smuggled across at Juarez.

I think you make a good point here. What's probably more dangerous, is a proliferation of technology that would wind up in the hands of terrorists around the world. If nothing else took place than Husseing providing technology to create enhanced dirty bombs, it would have been important to remove the guy from the equasion.

Somehow we were supposed to believe that Iraq, a country that couldn’t even defeat it’s next door neighbor Iran, posed an existential threat to the enormously more powerful and much more distant United States. Hey, it makes sense to me! Saddam had a secret desire to see what would happen when an enraged America repeated its Hiroshima/Nagasaki exercise right on top of his head!

The fact is that Saddam was less of a real threat than North Korea, which we have managed to keep in check since 1953. Saddam’s Iraq was far less powerful than the Norks and the idea that we couldn’t have kept him contained with minimal effort until he died of old age is ridiculous.

Well, we didn't keep him in check until after his invasion of Kuwait. During the run up to his downfall, he was still targeting our aircraft over Iraq, and moving his troops up to the borders of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

He was also killing his own citizens. And without help from the U.S., that would have continued on for decades.

As for North Korea, we really screwed up when we allowed it to get nukes. We could have neutered that program while China was still a relatively powerless nation against us. Now it has a proxy than will in a few years be able to hit large metropolitain cities in the U. S.

We won't be able to keep it in check.

“Well, considering the need for my comments above, it appears these may not have been the only ones with a hazy knowledge of the “Arab World”.”

You do have illusions.

I’m perfectly aware that Saddam gave money to Gaza suicide bombers. I also know that Israel is not the 51st State, despite the tendency of some sloppy thinkers to conflate the two. An ally is not America. There is a difference.

The fact is that in every terrorist attack on the United States prior to and including 9-11 there was not one Iraqi participant. More than that a study of Arab terrorists published in the late 90s noted that no Iraqis had been found in any known Arab terrorist movement, an oddity that struck the author in light of the Gulf War.

“Non involved.... sorry, but that’s laughable. Please think back to the early days of the war, and our need to fight some very fierce battles to free up Iraqi territory. Terrorists were in country when we decided to take Hussein out.”

Here’s a newsflash: that was the Iraqi army. That’s why they had uniforms and squad automatic weapons and tanks and the training to fight back against a strong American military force. Soldiers tend to fight back when someone crosses into their territory no matter how bad their leader is.

“Well, we didn’t keep him in check until after his invasion of Kuwait.”

Of course we did. He never left his borders once after the Gulf War. He took pot shots at our aircraft but the Norks do that and worse to this day. Killing his own citizens? Sure, just like the Kims have been doing in North Korea, except that the Norks use starvation as a weapon. America isn’t superman. We can’t right all of the world’s wrongs, and any politician who thinks we can is a serious danger to this country.

Well, considering the need for my comments above, it appears these may not have been the only ones with a hazy knowledge of the “Arab World".

You do have illusions. Well, looks like I'm in good company then.

I’m perfectly aware that Saddam gave money to Gaza suicide bombers. I also know that Israel is not the 51st State, despite the tendency of some sloppy thinkers to conflate the two. An ally is not America. There is a difference.

Wow, have you really gone around the bend. Pelham, using those chemical warheads, Hussein was breaking internatonal law. What part of this are you not quite grasping? He had upgraded his skuds. He was ready to do it all again. There was a need to take the guy out. He was an unknown loose canon, and with a massive terrorist attack on our soil, his highly visible vocal support for terrorism cost him his honey pot. End of story.

Now you're pulling out the Israel is not the 51st state card? Yikes. Did I hit a nerve or what.

The fact is that in every terrorist attack on the United States prior to and including 9-11 there was not one Iraqi participant. More than that a study of Arab terrorists published in the late 90s noted that no Iraqis had been found in any known Arab terrorist movement, an oddity that struck the author in light of the Gulf War.

Hmmm, and what was the author's take on the indesputable fact that the U. S. did face terrorists inside Iraq? These people just suddenly materialized out of the vapors? Somewhere this author skipped a grove, and what's sad about it, is some folks who should know better by empirical evidence alone, are still quoting the idiot stick.

Non involved.... sorry, but that’s laughable. Please think back to the early days of the war, and our need to fight some very fierce battles to free up Iraqi territory. Terrorists were in country when we decided to take Hussein out.

Here’s a newsflash: that was the Iraqi army. That’s why they had uniforms and squad automatic weapons and tanks and the training to fight back against a strong American military force. Soldiers tend to fight back when someone crosses into their territory no matter how bad their leader is.

Here'a a news flash for you fella, those WERE NOT solely the Iraqi army. You didn't know this did you. Wow. You honestly had no idea there were terrorists in Iraq. Okay, well that's your story and you're sticking to it.

Well, we didn’t keep him in check until after his invasion of Kuwait.

Of course we did. He never left his borders once after the Gulf War. He took pot shots at our aircraft but the Norks do that and worse to this day. Killing his own citizens? Sure, just like the Kims have been doing in North Korea, except that the Norks use starvation as a weapon. America isn’t superman. We can’t right all of the world’s wrongs, and any politician who thinks we can is a serious danger to this country.

It's just sad to watch people melt down trying to trash an effort to reduce a regional and international threat. With literally tens of thousands of terrorists inside his nation, you are STILL tryng to massage the theory that Hussein wasn't a threat to this day.

The guy had advanced skuds, chemical weapons, was harboring tens of thousands of terrorist in his own nation, he had shown both the ability and willingness to use them on multiple occasions, was killing his own citizens in mass, was locking on our aircraft over his nation, was moving troops up to the borders with other nations, was voicing support for terrorist acts againt the United States (and I can't even mention his rewards for terrorism in Israel because it's not the 51st state), and you think it was a mistake to take the guy out.

Then you come up with some lame comments about what we don't do with the North Koreans as if that's proof positive we should never take out a guy like Hussein.

And why would you say this anyway. After all, there are no known terrorist groups operating out of North Korea.

LOL

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