Courtesy of ABC News:
...if you go back and see what Vice President Cheney has said for the last three or four years concerning Iraq, his batting average is abysmally low. He hasn't been right on hardly anything, in his prediction of what was going to happen; reasons for us going over there; the status of the situation to have a good result. So he's been almost completely wrong on just about everything he's said. And obviously, this is not playing into the hands of Al Qaida or the people who are causing violence and destruction over there, to call for a change in policy in Iraq.
Right on, President Carter!
P.S. Many in the Democratic blogosphere are wondering whether Dick Cheney is "insane." Good question.
A clue in a Dr Pepper promotion suggested a coin that might be worth as much as $1 million was buried in the 347-year-old Granary Burying Ground, the final resting place of John Hancock, Paul Revere, Samuel Adams and other historic figures. After contestants showed up at the cemetery gates early Tuesday, the city closed it, concerned that it would be damaged by treasure hunters.
Well, duh.
The intelligence level of the person who came up with that contest is the same intelligence level some of these policymakers (like Cheney) seem to have. They can have a semi-bright initial idea, but neglect (due to mental inability) the complex process of planning properly, thinking of the ramifications of the idea, imagining all the pros and cons of the idea, etc. I have met SOOOOO many people like that in DC, and the current GOP seems stuffed with them.
Now, if you're going to deal with the effort to change the military balance inside Iraq, if you want to really neutralize the Iraqi Army, you have to deal not only with helicopters but also with artillery, with tanks and armored personnel carriers, and with the infantry units that clearly make the Iraqi government -- even today with a two-thirds smaller army than they had a few months ago -- significantly an overwhelming presence vis-a-vis the insurgents that exist inside the country.
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.