The Far Left was enraged today with Dick Cheney.
The Vice President declared that the Iraq War was worth it.
He also announced that most of our objectives had been reached.
The Bush-bashers still feign outrage that the US lost 4,226 heroes liberating Iraq.
Of course, they weren’t too upset about military losses when the Clinton’s were in charge.
Numbers from Iraq Coalition Casualties and CRS report to Congress (pdf)
The Iraq War historically has been a great success.
The Telegraph reported today:
The number of American troops killed during the eight years of the War against Terror has been fewer than those slain capturing two islands in the Second World War, and in Britain we have lost fewer soldiers than on a normal weekend on the Western Front. As for civilians, there have been fewer Iraqis killed since the invasion than in 20 conflicts since the Second World War.
Vice President Cheney talked more about the success in Iraq with Jim Lehrer today on the “News Hour”:
THE VICE PRESIDENT: We now find ourselves in the situation where we’re five years later; we’ve achieved most of the objectives that you would have set out in the spring of ’03 when we launched into Iraq. We’ve got the violence level down to its lowest level since ’03. We’ve had three national elections, a constitution written, a new government stood up, new army recruited and trained, the Iraqis increasingly able to take on responsibility for themselves. And we’ve now entered into a strategic framework agreement with the new Iraqi government that will provide for the ultimate withdrawal of U.S. forces.
You could not have asked for much more than that in terms of the policies that we started on in ’03.
Q But Mr. Vice President, getting from there to here, 4,500 Americans have died, at least 100,000 Iraqis have died. Has it been worth that?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: I think so.
Q Why?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Because I believed at the time what Saddam Hussein represented was, especially in the aftermath of 9/11, was a terror-sponsoring state so designated by the State Department. He was making payments to the families of suicide bombers. He provided a safe haven and sanctuary for Abu Nidal and other terrorist operations. He had produced and used weapons of mass destruction, chemical and biological agents. He’d had a nuclear program in the past. He killed hundreds of thousands of his own people. And he did have a relationship with al Qaeda.
We’ve had this debate that keeps people trying to conflate those arguments. That’s not to say that Saddam was responsible for 9/11. It is to say as George Tenet, the CIA Director, testified in open session in the Senate, that there was a relationship there that went back 10 years. This was a terror-sponsoring state with access to weapons of mass destruction. And that’s the greatest threat we faced in the aftermath of 9/11, that the next time we found terrorists in the middle of one of our cities, it wouldn’t be 19 guys armed with airline tickets and box cutters, it would be terrorists armed with a biological agent, or maybe even a nuclear device.
And so I think given the track record of Saddam Hussein, I think we did exactly the right thing. I think the country is better off for it today.
It’s too bad that Cheney wasn’t out giving that same talk each week.
It is also too bad that the media continues to keep this information from the American public.
Here is the Vice President discussing the War in Iraq and amazing progress that has occurred since the Bush Surge in 2007:
Today there is a democracy in the Middle East where there was once a brutal regime.
Was it worth it?
Related… The Telegraph reported today: “History will show that George W Bush was right” –via Protein Wisdom.
