Some Interesting Quotes
I’ve been doing some reading lately and come across some interesting quotes.

The first one is “Future Tense: The Coming World Order” by Gwynne Dyer. The quote is from George Bush Sr. in his 1988 book “A World Transformed” (as quoted by Dyer on page 221). “Trying to eliminate Saddam, extending the ground war into an occupation of Iraq…would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. …We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting it in anger and other allies pulling out as well. There was no viable ‘exit strategy’ we could see, violating another of our principles. Furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-Cold War world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish.”

The second quote is Dick Cheney in 1991, then Bush Sr.’s Secretary of Defense, as quoted in “War and the American Presidency” by Arthur Schlesinger. “Once you’ve got Baghdad, it’s not clear what kind of government you would put it….How much credibility is that government going to have if it’s set up by the United States military….To have American military forces engaged in a civil war inside Iraq would fit the definition of a quagmire, and we have absolutely no desire to get bogged down in that fashion.”

I think you’ll agree that it’s hard to believe these words are by the same people who told us that we would be greeted as liberators in Iraq.