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Bush-Cheney Flip-Flops Cost America in Blood
By Joel Connelly
The
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Wednesday 29 September 2004
"And the question in my mind is how many additional American
casualties is Saddam (Hussein) worth? And the answer is not that damned many."
-Dick Cheney (1992)
As George W. Bush has lately shown, the tactic of
successfully defining your opponent is to political conflict what occupying the
high ground is to waging war.
The Bush-Cheney campaign has gleefully labeled John
Kerry a flip-flopper. But what of Bush-Cheney flip-flops? They're getting a lot
less ink, but America is paying a price in blood.
Little noticed, and worthy of lengthy consideration,
is a speech delivered by then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney in 1992 to the
Discovery Institute in Seattle.
The words of our future vice president - defending
the decision to end Gulf War I without occupying Iraq - eerily foretell today's
morass. Here is what Cheney said in '92:
"I would guess if we had gone in there, I would still
have forces in Baghdad today. We'd be running the country. We would not have
been able to get everybody out and bring everybody home.
"And the final point that I think needs to be made is
this question of casualties. I don't think you could have done all of that
without significant additional U.S. casualties. And while everybody was
tremendously impressed with the low cost of the (1991) conflict, for the 146
Americans who were killed in action and for their families, it wasn't a cheap
war.
"And the question in my mind is how many additional
American casualties is Saddam (Hussein) worth? And the answer is not that damned
many. So, I think we got it right, both when we decided to expel him from
Kuwait, but also when the president made the decision that we'd achieved our
objectives and we were not going to go get bogged down in the problems of trying
to take over and govern Iraq."
How - given what he said then - does Cheney get off
challenging the judgment and strength of those who argue that we are bogged down
and shedding blood today?
Is Saddam worth the lives of 1,046 (at last count)
dead Americans, and 7,000 injured Americans?
Dick Cheney posed the hard-nosed questions that
should be asked by a president in time of war. George Bush is out on the
campaign trail boasting he's hard-nosed because he didn't ask how a "Mission
Accomplished!" could unravel.
Kerry is taking a pounding from the relentless
Republican message machine. A GOP TV ad shows Kerry windsurfing, with Strauss'
"Blue Danube" waltz playing in the background, as the voice-over claims the
nominee has shifted positions "whichever way the wind blows."
In case the "mainstream" media are interested, or Fox
News wants to balance its reporting to furnish a few moments of fairness, here
are a few Bush flip-flops that might be put before the voters:
Nation-Building: As a candidate, Dubya
traveled the land in 2000 denouncing the Clinton administration for using U.S.
troops in what he called "nation-building."
"I'm worried about an opponent who uses
nation-building and the military in the same sentence," he told a rally. "My
view of the military is for our military to be properly prepared to fight and
win wars - therefore, (to) prevent war from happening in the first place."
What are we doing in Iraq if not "nation-building?"
Enmeshed in Iraq, are we properly prepared to fight such crazies as the nuclear
weapon-equipped "Great Leader" of North Korea, Kim Jong Il?
Our Real Enemy: Two days after 9/11, President
Bush declared: "The most important thing is for us to find Osama bin Laden. It
is our No. 1 priority, and we will not rest until we find him."
Six months later, laying political groundwork for the
Iraq war, the president said: "I don't know where he is. I have no idea and I
really don't care. It's not that important. It's not our priority."
The 9/11 Commission: The White House initially
opposed creation of an independent commission to investigate causes of the 9/11
atrocities. A July 2002 statement read: "The administration would oppose an
amendment that would create a new commission to conduct a similar review (to
Congress' investigation)."
The administration reversed course five months later.
The bipartisan commission, including former Sen. Slade Gorton, R-Wash.,
distinguished itself at hearings and in its findings and recommendations.
Homeland Security: In the fall of 2001, Sens.
John McCain, R-Ariz., and Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., proposed creating a
Cabinet-level Department of Homeland Security.
White House press secretary Ari Fleischer outlined
the administration's opposition in October 2001, saying Congress did not need to
make the director's job "a statutory post" and that "every agency of the
government has security concerns."
A year later, the Bush administration was flaying
Sen. Max Cleland, D-Ga. - a Vietnam triple amputee - for allegedly being an
obstacle to creation of the department. Anti-Cleland ads showing Osama bin Laden
and Saddam Hussein flashed across the TV screens of Georgia.
Such are this administration's major national
security flip-flops. But other flips bear on our safety.
During the 2000 campaign, candidate Bush pledged to
limit carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere. It didn't happen. The
president promised to support - or at least sign - renewal of Congress' 1994 ban
on military-style assault weapons. The Bush administration didn't lift a finger
to extend the ban, which recently expired.
Out here on America's "Left Coast," candidate George
Bush proclaimed himself a steadfast free trader. Even today, Republican State
Chairman Chris Vance hammers Kerry as a flip-flopper on trade.
How, then, to explain the president's 2002 decision
to slap tariffs of 8 to 30 percent on steel imports to the United States? (The
tariffs were lifted after 21 months.)
Answer: The steel-producing states of Pennsylvania,
Ohio and West Virginia have 46 fought-over electoral votes in this year's
election.
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