Cheney’s words read like something from Pol Pot, utterly delusional and dangerous in their implications.
The record just could not be clearer: the U.S. has never cared about democracy anywhere. It has always done business with tyrants, just so long as they were tyrants that stood up for American interests. Its list of past good friends include the Shah of Iran, Ceaucescu of Romania, Park of South Korea, Suharto of Indonesia, Pinochet of Chile, Marcos of the Philippines, Thieu of South Vietnam, and scores of lesser lights – murderers and tyrants all.
Hussein was a good buddy so long as he didn't challenge American interests or policies. He was put into power with CIA assistance, he was treated respectfully for many years, and he was encouraged and assisted in the murderous 8-year Iran-Iraq War. There’s a nice photo on the Internet of Rumsfeld shaking hands with him in the early 1980s.
Every other claim made by Bush’s mob about the Iraq war has been demonstrated false.
No weapons of mass destruction, none. He did work towards them once, but the U.S. knew very well he had given up after the first Gulf War.
No terrorists. In fact Hussein and Osama bin Laden did not like each other. Hussein was a secular man. Bin Laden a religious fanatic. Terrorists are never found in absolute societies. There were none in the old Soviet Union or in Ceausecu’s Romania or in the East Germany of the Stasi or in Hussein’s Iraq. Indeed, today, Iraq has become a terror training ground under the American occupation.
Women, for example, gained some of the best freedoms in the Muslim world under Hussein. They had rights they have in no other Muslim country. Indeed, there are reports today of much increased abuse of women under U.S. occupation.
America's invasion broke all international law and constitutes a war crime, but America's great economic power prevents that from ever being enforced. But if you want a world where one country can decide the fate of others, then you are a supporter of Cheney and Bush.
Half the people in a large city like Baghdad still do not have dependable water. The economy is in what can only be called a Great Depression. Three million refugees - some of the country's best and brightest - have left and live in refugee facilities elsewhere (by the way, with no assistance from the United States, the author of their misery).
Not to mention all the deaths, all the destruction, including the greatest destruction of world cultural heritage in modern history.
Nice work, Dick.
