| October 10 |  |
Editor says, What if Dick Cheney remained the skeptical dove from 1990? This story was published in the January 2009 edition of Changing the Times Magazine.
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In 1997, on this day US President Richard B. Cheney met a key election pledge to the American people by serving notice of an accelerated plan for the withdrawal of US Forces on the President of Iraq, Ahmad Chalabi.Out of the Quagmire
Back in 1991, as Defence Secretary, Cheney had strongly argued against the decision to go into Baghdad1, saying that America would simply install a puppet regime ~
"How long would we have to stay there to keep this regime in power? How effective would it be if it were perceived as the puppet regime of the United States military? It gets to be a very difficult, a very nebulous, a very long, drawn-out kind of committment, what I would describe as a quagmire. We have absolutely no interest in getting U.S. Military forces involved inside Iraq".
Cheney had been proved absolutely right, and the Clinton Presidency was sucked into this quagmire.
More profoundly, Cheney himself had been radically changed by the experience. During the Nixon Presidency, Cheney had served as White House Chief of Staff, earning the CIA codename Backseat for his style of withdrawal and disengagement. And through the Bush Presidency, had left the running of the Pentagon to Deputy Secretary of Defense Donald J. Atwood, Jr.
During the 1996 general election campaign, a new and revitalised Cheney arrived on the political scene. Defeating both Bill Clinton and Robert Dole, Cheney seized the Presidency on a radical ticket that included early withdrawal from Iraq.
Entry posted by Todayinah Editor
© Bushworld by Maureen Down (2004)Story Tags
Permalinks: Post, Day. Browse Thread: Beasts Source: Wikipedia Labels: Dick Cheney, Gulf War, George W. Bush, America, 1996 Election. Editor says, In this scenario, we try to understand why Dick Cheney allied with neocons after the 1992 election. 1Cheney's position in 1991 is repeated in unedited form, simply out of context. Wikipedia reports ~ Following the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Cheney remained steadfast in his support of the war, stating that it would be an 'enormous success story' and made many visits to the country. He often criticized war critics, calling them 'opportunists' who were peddling 'cynical and pernicious falsehoods' to gain political advantage while U.S. soldiers died in Iraq. In response, Senator John Kerry asserted, 'It is hard to name a government official with less credibility on Iraq [than Cheney].'
~ Ah, if only Cheney was open to reason...
~ Love the irony of Cheney the peacedove... :)
~ Nicely done.
I’m assuming that in this timeline George Bush Sr. went into Baghdad, and that President Clinton inherited the results, including a guerrilla conflict similar to what we’ve actually seen.
One point: I doubt Cheney would have won on a third-party ticket6. No one has done so at the presidential level in U.S. politics since Abraham Lincoln in the four-way election of 1860 (the Republicans were then a new party, having been founded only in 1854). And I doubt he’d need to: all he’d have to do would be to beat bob Dole in the Republican primaries. Since Dole’s whole campaign in “our” 1996 seemed to have amounted to repeating “I served in World War II and my opponent didn’t,” that might not have been impossible. Even as temperament goes, the scowling bob Dole had little advantage over the scowling Dick Cheney.
~ Great concept. David Atwell's right...the idea of Cheney as a peacenik is too good to pass up.
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