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O’Reilly Lets Dick Cheney Spin The Iraq War, Saddam Hussein And Those Weapons Of Mass Destruction

Posted by Ellen -7842.60pc on October 28, 2013 · Flag

Kudos to Bill O’Reilly for asking some tough questions of Dick Cheney tonight but there’s no doubt that Cheney got a pass on his excuses for invading Iraq that nobody on Fox would ever have given Obama. All you have to do is look at how they keep questioning and rehashing and rehashing Benghazi. In fact, O'Reilly condemned President Obama's handling of Benghazi earlier in this very show. A tragedy to be sure but nothing like the tragedy of the Iraq war. Unless you’re the Republican administration that waged it.

During the interview, O’Reilly asked Cheney, “What did we get out of Iraq?” O’Reilly immediately assured Cheney that he was on friendly ground as O’Reilly’s next words were, “I mean, as Americans, we’re all in it together. We’re all in it together. It’s easy to finger point… I don’t want to do that.” But, O’Reilly nonetheless added, “we spent a trillion dollars on this, with a lot of pain and suffering… What did we get out of it? Beside Saddam being out of there.”

Cheney responded by saying, essentially, that Saddam Hussein was a threat with access to weapons of mass destruction. Cheney said, “But remember what we were faced with in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. We had a lot of evidence, they indicate, that in fact Al Qaeda was trying to get their hands on weapons of mass destruction. We had in Saddam Hussein a guy who had produced and used weapons of mass destruction.”

O’Reilly interrupted. “OK …I don’t blame you – you, Vice President Cheney or President Bush for doing what you did. I’m not Monday morning quarterbacking.,” he assured Cheney again. “But right now, what did we get out of Iraq for all that blood and treasure? What did we get out of it?”

Cheney replied by going back to WMD’s. He said, “What we gained – and my concern was then and it remains today is that the biggest threat we face is the possibility of terrorist groups, like Al Qaeda, equipped with weapons of mass destruction. With nukes, bugs or gas. That was the threat after 9/11 and when we took down Saddam Hussein, we eliminated Iraq as a potential source of that.”

O’Reilly pushed back somewhat by saying, “But they’re back! Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia is back!” But that was more of an opening for Cheney to attack President Obama’s handling of the Middle East than any real challenge to Cheney’s WMD spin. Even though he was supposedly in the No Spin Zone.

Cheney seized the opening. He said, “That’s right. But they wouldn’t be if they’d followed our policies that we they laid out for ‘em when we left.”

But Cheney, no doubt mindful that his own record may play a part in his daughter’s senate run, went back to the WMDs. He said:

We took down Saddam as a major source. Five days after we got Saddam, Muamar Qaddafi announced he was going to surrender his nuclear materials. And he had centrifuges, he had a weapons… he had uranium feedstock. And after we took care of that, we took down A. Q. Khan, who was his major supplier, the Pakistan program that was running a black market operation. We put him out of business. We got rid of three major sources of potential (weapons of mass destruction).

O’Reilly never pointed out how then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had said, “We know where they are,” referring to Iraq’s supposed weapons of mass destruction, nor how we had been told the war would probably not last six months. I guess because we’re all Americans. So long as we’re all Americans under a Republican administration.

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Sandman2 commented 2013-10-30 10:17:44 -0400 · Flag
What are your thoughts, Mr. Vice President, on the Bengahzi issue where 4 people were killed in an attack on a CIA safe-house, considering that the same thing happened to 158 other folks during your administration and the media was completely silent?

I didn’t watch the video, but I assume O’Reilly asked that question?
radpat_USA commented 2013-10-29 19:43:50 -0400 · Flag
What a sickening thought, in it together with Americans as represented by Cheney and those who supported him
d d commented 2013-10-29 18:42:31 -0400 · Flag
What? BOR finally got Cheney on his show — when he doesn’t have much to lose (as in he’s no longer in political office and doesn’t feel that he needs to answer to the folks) and has much to gain with regards to pimping his new book — and BOR can’t even bring himself to challenge the WMD issue? Despite the fact that Cheney gave him a couple of easy openings to actually go there?

Okay, I realize that BOR is not really a journalist, not really “fair & balanced” and not even a good interviewer. But, for crying out loud, not to ask Cheney about the WMD debacle?! Clearly the cowardly BOR knows on which side his bread is buttered. As one of the folks, I just gotta say, “Gee, thanks for nothing, Billy boy.”

CHENEY, 2003: " From the standpoint of the Iraqi people, my belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators."
truman commented 2013-10-29 09:18:45 -0400 · Flag
It’s disgusting to endure Darth’s arrogant braying about a disastrous $2 trillion, 10-year war of occupation that killed 4,000 American military. All for non-existent WMDs.
Joseph West commented 2013-10-29 01:36:52 -0400 · Flag
Darth Cheney needs to be reminded that al Qaeda operations started in Iraq WHILE US troops were there DURING his own administration’s handling. It was HIS administration’s bungling of the operation against Saddam that ALLOWED terrorists to enter Iraq in the first place. While it’s within the realm of a correct statement that Saddam Hussein and his sons created an atmosphere of terror—ie, terrorism—in the country, it’s also far more accurate to point out that, under Saddam, Iraqis were NOT subjected to FOREIGN terrorist groups. And then, of course, you can always point out that Sunnis and Shi’ites lived in most parts of Iraq in relative peace and harmony and quickly turned into animals attacking their own neighbors as soon as the US decided to play God. And, for more insanity, there’s the plight of Iraqi women. Under Saddam, it’s true that a relative handful of women were turned into human sextoys for the Hussein boys but most women were actually safe to walk the streets of virtually any part of Iraq, UNchaperoned. After the US “intervention,” that changed—extremist Islamic groups began roaming the streets, acting like Iraq’s version of the Taliban. Unescorted women (especially those wearing Western clothing and going unveiled) found themselves being attacked—many times in broad daylight—by self-appointed “morality police.” Women were beaten, even kidnapped at gunpoint. And this was IN BAGHDAD. DOYC only knows what was going on in rural areas. Before the war, women’s political and economic status had deteriorated (largely because of the sanctions imposed by the Western powers following the 1991 war) but women were still far better off than the overwhelming majority of their Arab sisters in other parts of the Middle East and North Africa; following the toppling of Saddam, that can’t be said any longer.
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Invade a country under false pretenses? It's OK if you're a Republican.








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