Dick Cheney

Richard B. Cheney (born January 30 , 1941 ), 46th US Vice President

By Cheney

• "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."
  • At the Washington Institute 's Soref Symposium, April 29 , 1991 [1]

• "And the question in my mind is how many additional American casualties is Saddam worth? And the answer is not very damned many."
  • August 1992 , at the Discovery Institute in Seattle [2]

• "Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam now has weapons of mass destruction." - 2002-08-26

• "My belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators." - 2003-03-16

• [In response to "We have not been greeted as liberators."] "Well, I think we have by most Iraqis. I think the majority of Iraqis are thankful for the fact that the United States is there, that we came and we took down the Saddam Hussein government. And I think if you go in vast areas of the country, the Shia in the south, which are about 60 percent of the population, 20-plus percent in the north, in the Kurdish areas, and in some of the Sunni areas, you’ll find that, for the most part, a majority of Iraqis support what we did." -- Sunday, Sept. 14, 2003 on Meet The Press with Tim Russert. [3]

• "If we’re successful in Iraq, if we can stand up a good representative government in Iraq, that secures the region so that it never again becomes a threat to its neighbors or to the United States, so it’s not pursuing weapons of mass destruction, so that it’s not a safe haven for terrorists, now we will have struck a major blow right at the heart of the base, if you will, the geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under assault now for many years, but most especially on 9/11." -- Sunday, Sept. 14, 2003 on Meet The Press with Tim Russert. [4]

• "America has shown we are serious about removing the threat of weapons of mass destruction."..."We now know that Saddam Hussein had the capacity to produce weapons of mass destruction.... We know he had the necessary infrastructure because we found the labs and the dual-use facilities that could be used for these chemical and biological agents. We know that he was developing the delivery systems — ballistic missiles — that had been prohibited by the United Nations."
  • Fundraising dinner in New Mexico, February 6 , 2004 [5]

• "If Democratic policies had been pursued over the last two to three years...we would not have had the kind of job growth that we've had."
  • Lester Holt interview, MSNBC, March 2 , 2004 [6]

• "Senator Kerry says he sees two Americas. And that makes the whole thing mutual—America sees two John Kerrys."
  • Acceptance Speech at the Republican National Convention. September 1, 2004, - Video and text available.

• "Because if we make the wrong choice, then the danger is that we'll get hit again, that we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States, and that we'll fall back into the pre-9/11 mind set if you will, that in fact these terrorist attacks are just criminal acts, and that we're not really at war. I think that would be a terrible mistake for us."
  • At a Des Moines, Iowa campaign appearance on September 7 , 2004 [7].

• "The senator has got his facts wrong. I have not suggested there's a connection between Iraq and 9/11, but there's clearly an established Iraqi track record with terror." At the Vice Presidential Debates, October 5, 2004. [8]

• "What we did in Iraq was exactly the right thing to do. If I had it to recommend all over again, I would recommend exactly the same course of action."
  • Vice Presidential Debate October 5 , 2004 [9] [10]

About Cheney

• "Then there is Dick Cheney, who essentially said that if Kerry is voted in as president, terrorism will hit America again. How is that? Is Cheney going to make some calls? Apparently he has the hook up."
  • Spoken by comedienne Margaret Cho.