Cheney says Iraq not worth the casualties

According to a Seattle newspaper, in August 1992, when Dick Cheney was Secretary of Defense in the George Herbert Walker Bush administration, he made a public speech in Seattle 18 months after the end of the first Iraqi War.

After the speech, he entertained questions from the audience and responded to a particular question by saying, "The question in my mind is how many additional American casualties is Saddam worth? And the answer is not very damned many. So I think we got it right -- we were not going to go get bogged down in the problems of trying to take over and govern Iraq." (Imagine that.)

The first Iraqi war was initiated as a response to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait as well as retribution for his alleged "gassing" of the Kurds. Approximately 150 American servicemen were killed in the first Iraqi war.

Now we fast-forward almost 14 years to the second war with Iraq, a war that was started on bogus information; that Iraq was in possession of weapons of mass destruction they intended to use and that we must do it to them before they did it to us. The Bush administration looked only at the evidence that supported the existence of WMDs and conveniently ignored all evidence to the contrary.

Congress, both Democrats and Republicans, was complicit in supporting the Administration's actions. No one looked under the carpet or around the corner. No one held anyone's feet to the fire. The Administration said it was so, consequently it must be so.

Currently, 2,193 American service men and women have died in this second go-around with Iraq and that number is growing by the day. This past Thursday was the fourth deadliest day in Iraq since the fall of Saddam in 2003, with at least 136 total deaths, including 11 U.S. troops. Since the start of the war, 98 servicemen from the UK have been killed, along with 103 from our other allies for a total death count of 2,394, an average of 2.3 killed every day since the conflict started. In the first year of the war, there were 486 U.S. deaths and 2,409 wounded. In 2004, the death rate almost doubled to 848 and the wounded rate tripled to 7,989. By the end of 2005, almost two years since President Bush declared the war to be "over," there were an additional 859 U.S. deaths, and 5,557 wounded. This totals to the previously stated 2,193 deaths and almost 16,000 wounded, according to Department of Defense statistics.

But statistics are impersonal. Statistics don't reflect anything but a number or a subtotal or a total. Statistics don't bleed, don't suffer, and don't die. Statistics don't mourn. Statistics aren't left with holes in their hearts that never heal. Statistics just report.

And we continue to put our service men and women in harm's way when the current Vice President of the United States said Saddam and the liberation of Iraq "wasn't worth it" 14 years ago. Certainly significant things have happened in the world since 1992, most notably the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. But the terrorist attacks were not the primary reason we invaded Iraq the second time.

Although we knew that terrorists were operating in Iraq, we also knew they were operating in several other countries around the world and, as far as could be determined, no Iraqis were on any of the planes commandeered on September 11th.

We are repeating history. This administration is using the same strategies that were used by both the Democratic and Republican Administrations to initiate and continue the Vietnam War. Misstatements, half-truths and outright lies were told the American people leading up to and during the Vietnam War to justify our participation in that theater, just as misstatements, half-truths and outright lies have been imposed on us this time around as well.

Tens of thousands of Americans have lost family and friends in this war and their lives will never be the same again, not to mention the actual dead Americans who were stripped of their existence during the prime of their lives, denying us and them the opportunity to see what great things they may have contributed to our society had they lived.

It has always been a mystery to me that those who so vehemently oppose abortion are often the same people who support sending our young people into harm's way to fight and die in wars we ought not be involved in.

I'm not a peacenik nor a pacifist. I've been in a few fights of my own. After 9/11, I wrote a column urging that we do whatever was necessary to fight and win the war on terrorism. When our interests are directly threatened or when we are attacked, as in World War II and on 9/11, we must defend ourselves and if we're going to defend ourselves, the objective should always be to win.

But Iraq didn't attack us on 9/11. We used that horrific day in part to justify forcing regime change in a country that didn't want us there in the first place. The latest CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll indicates that 61 percent of the American people are dissatisfied with the way the President is handling the Iraqi situation and Nebraska U.S. Senator Chuck Hagel was recently quoted as saying that it is in no way unpatriotic to question the current Administration's Iraqi policy. In fact, he said, it is unpatriotic NOT to do so.

He's absolutely right.