Dick Cheney:
"I guess my general sense of where we are with respect to Iraq and at
the end of now, what, nearly six years, is that we've accomplished
nearly everything we set out to do...."
What has Dick Cheney really accomplished in Iraq?
An estimated 4 million Iraqis, out of 27 million, have been displaced from their homes,
that is, made homeless. Some 2.7 million are internally displaced
inside Iraq. A couple hundred thousand are cooling their heels in
Jordan. And perhaps a million are quickly running out of money and
often living in squalid conditions in Syria. Cheney's war has left
about 15% of Iraqis homeless inside the country or abroad. That would
be like 45 million American thrown out of their homes.
It is controversial how many Iraqis died as a result of the 2003
invasion and its aftermath. But it seems to me that a million extra
dead, beyond what you would have expected from a year 2000 baseline, is
entirely plausible. The toll is certainly in the hundreds of thousands.
Cheney did not kill them all. The Lancet study suggested that the US
was directly responsible for a third of all violent deaths since 2003.
That would be as much as 300,000 that we killed. The rest, we only set
in train their deaths by our invasion.
Baghdad has
been turned from a mixed city, about half of its population Shiite and
the other half Sunni in 2003, into a Shiite city where the Sunni
population may be as little as ten to fifteen percent. From a Sunni
point of view, Cheney's war has resulted in a Shiite (and Iranian)
take-over of the Iraqi capital, long a symbol of pan-Arabism and
anti-imperialism.
In the Iraqi elections, Shiite
fundamentalist parties closely allied with Iran came to power. The
Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, the leading party in parliament, was
formed by Iraqi expatriates at the behest of Ayatollah Khomeini in 1982
in Tehran. The Islamic Mission (Da'wa) Party is the oldest ideological
Shiite party working for an Islamic state. It helped form Hizbullah in
Beirut in the early 1980s. It has supplied both prime ministers elected
since 2005. Fundamentalist Shiites shaped the constitution, which
forbids the civil legislature to pass legislation that contravenes
Islamic law. Dissidents have accused the new Iraqi government of being an Iranian puppet.
Arab-Kurdish violence is spiking in the north, endangering the Obama withdrawal plan and, indeed, the whole of Iraq, not to mention Syria, Turkey and Iran.
Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi women have been widowed by the war and its effects, leaving most without a means of support. Iraqi widows often lack access to clean water and electricity. Aljazeera English has video.
$32 billion were wasted on Iraq reconstruction,
and most of it cannot even be traced. I repeat, Cheney gave away $32
bn. to anonymous cronies in such a way that we can't even be sure who
stole it, exactly. And you are angry at AIG about $400 mn. in bonuses!
We are talking about $32 billion given out in brown paper bags.
Political power is being fragmented in Iraq
with big spikes in the murder rate in some provinces that may reflect
faction-fighting and vendettas in which the Iraqi military is loathe to
get involved.
The Iraqi economy is devastated, and the new government's bureaucracy and infighting have made it difficult to attract investors.
The Bush-Cheney invasion helped further destabilize the Eastern Mediterranean, setting in play Kurdish nationalism and terrifying Turkey.Cheney
avoids mentioning all the human suffering he has caused, on a cosmic
scale, and focuses on procedural matters like elections (which he
confuses with democracy-- given 2000 in this country, you can
understand why). Or he lies, as when he says that Iran's influence in
Iraq has been blocked. Another lie is that there was that the US was
fighting "al-Qaeda" in Iraq as opposed to just Iraqis. He and Bush even
claim that they made Iraqi womens' lives better.
The real question is whether anyone will have the gumption to put Cheney on trial for treason and crimes against humanity.
© 2009 Juan Cole
Juan Cole teaches Middle Eastern and South Asian history at the University of Michigan. His latest book, Engaging the Muslim World, is just out in a revised paperback edition from Palgrave Macmillan. He is also the author of Napoleon's Egypt: Invading the Middle East (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). He has appeared widely on television, radio and on op-ed pages as a commentator on Middle East affairs, and has a regular column at Salon.com. He has written, edited, or translated 14 books and has authored 60 journal articles. His weblog on the contemporary Middle East is Informed Comment.
91 Comments so far
Show AllPut him on trial right here, or within county/regional committees of citizens within the country. Since there was no threat, and the "evidence" for the war was contrived from the beginning, with evaluations of the threat from numerous intelligence sources including Joseph Wilson indicating there was no threat, then all Cheney's objectives were bogus and criminal in the spirit of spreading disaster-capitalism and influence throughout the region/world. He belongs in a jail cell, no seat on the toilet.
"Cheney avoids mentioning all the human suffering he has caused, . . ."
A trait that he shares with other republicans and neoconservatives.
He doesn't belong in jail; he belongs on a gallows.
q
Cheney's legacy is his enormous success in transferring billions (soon to be a trillion)of US Treasury dollars to the military industrial medai complex and creating an eternal revenue stream for the military industrialmedia complex.
Who in this government HAS apologized for all this suffering. The silence in this regard has been deafening.
CQ from Maine
Indict the treasonous weasel. And his dull, incurious boss. Placing even what we lost in 9/11 against what we lost in response to it makes us look stupid. But somebody gained. I wonder who? Oh, Haliburton, KBR, Dyncorp, Blackwater. And who were the bankers? How did the street make out? AIG make any side bets? Work with me here. . .
Who is more detestable?..Bush or Cheney?...Or is it a toss-up?
Cheney. Bush is a certifiable moron.
q
And he ran our country for eight years...what does this make us?
Complicit.
I agree quickstepper, the only ones I really feel sorry for are his two daughters who MUST realize what a complete bozo their dad really is! Where did those two girls come from anyway -- they are really pretty girls -- not from him!
Not even close.
While Bush was out falling off his bike, Cheney and his secret 'task force' were setting into motion the Iraq oilfields grab -- long before 9-11.
On 9-11, while Bush was being flown as far from D.C. as he could get, Cheney huddled up with his crew to formulate the 'response'.
During Katrina, while Bush was playing air guitar and having birthday cake with McInsane, Cheney jumped immediately into action -- not helping victims, but arranging the no-bid, cost-plus 'rebuilding' contracts for his partners.
I doubt even today, looking back, that Bush has much of a clue what happened over the last eight years. This was never his show.
Cheney says that after nearly six years of US occupation of Iraq, "we've accomplished nearly everything we set out to do....."
Now wait a minute. You don't need to spend much time in the press or media archives to remember exactly what the stated reasons were for the American military attack upon Saddam Hussein's government, according to the text of the 2002 Congressional authorization for use of force and the White House's own propaganda run up to this disasterous war, a media campaign that Dick Cheney personally spear headed.
"We set out" supposedly to neutralize Saddam Hussein's arsenal of weapons of mass destruction - chemical, biological and/or nuclear. When was this accomplished?
"We set out" supposedly to prevent Iraq from harboring international jihadi terrorist networks like al Qaeda. When was this accomplished?
"We set out" supposedly to uphold international law, and to enforce UN Security Council resolutions authorizing the use of multinational military force in accordance with the UN Charter. When was this accomplished?
"We set out" supposedly to overthrow a tyrant dictator, and guide Iraq into becoming a model for spreading democratic government, modernity, and economic development based upon global free market principles throughout the Middle East. When was this accomplished?
"We set out" supposedly to bring stability to a region of the world often plagued by sectarian strife, unrest, and violence. When was this accomplished?
Juan Cole does an excellent job of reminding us all what the real facts are on the ground, and what the Bush/Cheney preemptive war legacy genuinely is. There certainly should be a full Congressional inquiry into the missing $32 billion in Iraq reconstruction funds, even though that amount now pales in comparison to the staggering sums already dispensed and unaccounted for (missing in action) in the great Wall Street corporate bailout of 2008-2009.
If what "we set out to do" was spread hate and fear, multiply America's enemies throughout the world, and bankrupt the US government while looting the public treasury for crony capitalist gain, then that mission, indeed, has been nearly accomplished.
Bill from Saginaw
Wasn't the original idea to Get Osama, the mastermind behind 9/11? Could he be living the life of leisure in a guest house at a ranch in Texas?
Sorry, but you address only the "reasons" as stated in their cover story, not the actual reasons. I believe the whole thing was to get a toehold in the Middle East to extract oil. And that was in fact accomplished. What so many liberals seem to miss is that there ARE people in the world who value human lives differently. It's not that they think all humans are equal, and just do a bad job of living that ideal. It's that they don't believe it in the first place.
Bill, Juan is spreading fear and hatred w/his anti-Iranian bullshit. Regardless of what you think of the current Iranian government, it would do well to trace US-Iranian relations back to the popular Mossedegh government of 1953 which was overthrown in a US-backed coup bringing to power another brutal thug (standard fashion), the Shah. This of course, led to the Iranian people rising up and overthrowing him in 1979. So Juan is just one more appologist for US imperialism regardless of how he coats his rhetoric.
Juan Cole "spreading fear and hatred"? "One more apologist for US imperialism regardless of how he coats his rhetoric"?
You are certainly correct that the CIA-sponsored overthrow of Mossedegh in 1953 was the grandaddy of fifty years worth of blowback against American black ops intrigue in the Middle East. From the Shah's SAVAK police state, through the Iran-Iraq War during the '80's, up to the occupation of Iraq today, US militarism and foreign policy machinations in the region have wrought incalculable hardship upon the locals. Professor Juan Cole's website Informed Comment, in my opinion, chronicles this history in a very even handed fashion and takes care not to demonize.
The bullshit here is Cheney's revisionist history, not anything anti-Iranian that Juan Cole writes about. Bush's invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq as part of a global war on terror has served only to strengthen the Shiite theocrats in Tehran domestically, and substantially expand Iranian political influence in southern Iraq and in Iraq's post-Saddam central government. Those are simply the facts on the ground, with no moral value judgments being drawn. Iran (and then Russia) are emerging as the big winners in terms of regiional realpolitik.
For Dick Cheney to now suddenly claim that the Bush regime's imperial crusade somehow succeeded in thwarting Iranian nationalism or has contained the spread of the Shiite version of Islam in the Middle East is the real, dangerous, self-serving bullshit that in my opinion needs to be vigorously exposed and condemned.
Bill from Saginaw
%&!*blowtorch*%!%!!his m*f*@!dick!!
Best comment I have ever read regarding the Evil Doer, Cheney!!!
These are bitter truths about Iraq.
Cheney (and his boss) must be brought to justice, but how?
Frontier justice- in the form of a noose. Hang 'Em High.
Arrest & execute
NUREMBERG II 2009
I also heard Cheney didn't get his degree at an Ivy league school! Probably got it at one of those hick state schools so he could crony his way to the bottom of the republi-crumb political aparatchik.
Cheney graduated from the University of Wyoming after having flunked out of Yale due to excessive drinking. Actually, George would have flunked out of Yale due to excessive drinking, but he was from "gentleman's" stock, unlike Cheney who was more of a commoner, and so George was able to receive "Gentleman's C's" that kept him from Cheney's fate.
I wonder whether they ever bonded over the recognition that they were both Yalee drunkards.
If McCain was going to be Bush's third term, Obama's turning out to be Cheney's first. Endless wars, endless bailouts to Wall Street.
And those of you who think that the Obama's Justice Department will seriously investigate and prosecute Cheney or Bush are living in an "audacity of stupidity" fantasy world. Democrats (including Obama) were co-conspirators, accomplices, accessories, aiders, and abettors. Not to mention that Obama's committing the same Bush crimes against humanity in the Middle East, as I type these words.
So you see, Obama couldn't possibly prosecute Bush or Cheney, as this would also bring his OWN ass & party down.
I prefer to look at it a little differently. For a simple metaphor, it seemed that we were about to head off a cliff, morally, economically, and intellectually. I think Obama has managed to turn us, and now we're racing along the edge. The future is up to us.
Great soundbites, you should be hired to write speeches for Obama. But empty words won't change the fact that Obama's covering and protecting the crimes of Bush & Cheney. Case closed. Spare me the apologies, excuses and Sunday mass rhetoric.
No, I agree w/cape_fear!
It could be that. Or, it could be that, like Wiley E. Coyote, we've already run off the cliff, but the dust cloud has not yet dispersed to reveal, cleary, the fall to come. Or, perhaps, Obama helped the elite turn on the knife edge, but their dust will obscure the edge from those who are following as fast as they can.
Confusius said (OK, this is from a tee-shirt, but I like to think of Dick Cheney when I read it): "Sit by the river long enough, all your enemies will float by."
Cheney's Mission Accomplished
Cheesedick Cheney's "Mission" will not be accomplished until he's dead. He will then be borne by a black helicopter onto the deck of an aircraft carrier large enough to contain everyone he's ever killed or robbed . . . who will then have their way with him.
A superstitious person might believe that we were living in the Kali Yuga, where evil is rewarded and justice is no place to be found. Don't worry. It'll be over in a thousand years.
Someone once asked a very, wise man: " Is there really a hell someplace "? His reply: " Where do you think you are now "!
My sentiments exactly.
HAHAHA! Now that's good!!
Dick belongs in an insane asylum along with all the people that voted for him and Bush and even if they stole 2 elections, look how many voted for another head case called Palin! The problem: around 50% of America is an insane asylum!
The first time George Wallace ran for a local public office he lost. In a phone call to a friend the next day he said "I got out niggered in that election. That's never going to happen to me again." And it didn't. He knew the damage he was doing but his lust for power made all those lies worth telling. From his wheelchair he tried to apologize.
Jesse Helms was a dummy, but a true believer. He went to his grave believing he was right. Jesse had integrity. George didn't.
Which do you prefer?
What's your point, Nietzsche?
Yes, please fill us in.
Those pictures in the article, horrible as they are, are not worse than what blacks suffered under Jim Crow. And while the lynchings were carried out by white trash they were incited by people like Jesse and George.
Would you feel differently about Cheney depending on whether he was unable to tell right from wrong (Many sociopaths are very intelligent) and merely saw himself as a super patriot who was willing to do anything for his country, or whether his life was consciously dedicated to global instability on a financial, military, and moral level with all the human suffering he could possibly create---a true disciple of evil?
Cheney is probably right, in that the current state of affairs is exactly what they wanted. (Well....maybe they would have liked to have gotten their hands on the oil a little sooner). Naomi Klein's "Shock Doctrine" is probably one of Dick's favorite reads. Probably even raises a chuckle from him.
Freewheelin Franklin: Naomi's book is a great and incisive look at the current state of world capitalism. I would recommend it to all. SHOCK DOCTRINE: THE RISE OF DISASTER CAPITALISM by Naomi Klein -- a very brilliant young girl. I watched her debate Alan Greenspan back in Sept. of 08 and he was tongue tied. She ran circles around him. For a good look at an interview she gave back in Oct. of 08 visit "fora.tv.com/naomiklein"
Cheney should be put to death by Israeli bulldozer while inside the Palestinian house being destroyed.
GaryA
With all due respect to Mr. Cole, Mr. Cheney is absolutely right - we've achieved beyond our wildest hopes with the war in Iraq.
* We've vastly enriched major sectors of our military industrial complex, many of whom have prospered without the nuisance of having to deal with competitive bidding.
* We've put a puppet regime in power in the country with the largest reserves of oil in the world.
* We've proven that, as David Barstow pointed out in shocking exposes in the New York Times, that the American media is subservient to military industrialists, not the public, willingly deceiving the public on behalf of said industrialists. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/washington/20generals.html (See also Salon.com's Glenn Greenwald for an excellent discussion of this, at: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/washington/20generals.html)
* We've succeeded in masking from the public the true costs of our military, which is probably in excess of $1.5 Trillion per year ($10,000.oo per working woman or man).[See Marketwatch.com's Paul Farrell's discussion, at: http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/why-we-love-americas-outrageous/story.aspx?guid=%7B0D31C880-32CD-4BA1-8133-329EA57CB069%7D
* And we've established that no major political or media figure (except perhaps "comedians" such as Jon Stewart) will ever challenge the status quo, further guaranteeing that as we continue bankrupting America on military misadventurism, our political/media elites will call on the poor, the infirm and the elderly to sacrifice (on Medicare, Social Security, Aid to Families with Dependent Children, Food Stamps, Education, healthcare, etc.) to delay complete financial collapse.
In sum, a stunning achievement. So if you're Dick Cheney, what's not to like?
GaryA: the only problem that I have with your comments is that you are using the same "we" as Cheney. Do you include yourself in that "we"? I don't.
But your point is made. The Bush/Cheney administration was not a failure but a success to the class that they represent. But that doesn't include me or the overwhelming majority of Americans (let alone the world) - the other "we".
"We've put a puppet regime in power in the country with the largest reserves of oil in the world."
This, being the exact same thing the CIA did in Iran in 1953. The wheel (samsara) just keeps on turning.
You, Juan are an asshole. While Cheney and Co should be tried and hung by their balls (what little they have), you are sparking anti-Iranian hatred which will lead to another brutal and probably much worse war. And this bullshit about "endangering the Obama withdrawal plan" is exactly that -- BULLSHIT! Obama was alot of talk about ending the war during the campaign and now he's retracting all of what was only rhetoric to begin with. And Juan, who's ass are you kissing, Rush Limbaugh's? We don't need more neo-cons like you parading themselves as progressives.
You seem a might too touchy about any criticism of Shia or Iran. While they're certainly not the worst governments in the world, they are nothing to emulate or praise. Every government in the world deserves at least some criticism. We must not mute our voices simply because we're worried that the crazies will take over. As a for instance in my case, I tend to mute my criticisms of Obama because I feel he is so much better than Cheney, etc. You're free to call me an 'asshole' too for that, but a little civility is often appreciated by most people.
How great is O'Bama? Was the Imperial Chimp and Darth Viper such a tough act to follow? Maybe we've traded a Theocracy for our very own Shah.
Dave
You are obviously not aware of who Juan Cole is. Certainly, the Bush antics has benefited Iran in terms of regional politics. And that is what Professor Cole is saying. Is Iran a problem for the militarists and Israelis who dominate American policies? You should believe that a strengthened Iran is indeed a problem for those who look at the world through Israeli lenses.
Dr. Cole is not "stirring" up hate, he is only explaining rather clearly how American foreign policy has actually made things worse in the Middle East in the exact way that policy makers wanted to avoid. Please think some more, so you can understand what is going on.
Obama has to work within the existing structure, since he is an popularly elected president, not the winner of a full scale revolution. Bush's foreign policy was only a crazy extension of a policy of American hegemony put into place since WWII.
Unfortunately, decades of misguided policies, both foreign and economic have shaped the world as it is. Maybe you are the one that has to pull his head out of his own ass to understand that we are lucky to have a President Obama. Jeeze o' pete, Dave, stop this attack on Cole. He is one of very few voices of real understanding of the situation in the Middle East.
Davethered decries "Neocons parading as progressives....."
Could this possibly be what the shrinks call projection?
Bill from Saginaw
damnliberal's right.
Dr. Cole is the new Chomsky. I'd say, he's even better than Chomsky.
We are tremendously lucky to have Obama as our Commander in Chief!
And, yes, Iran is a threat.
"There's no greater threat to Israel or to the peace and stability of the region than Iran,"
"The danger from Iran is grave and real and my goal will be to eliminate this threat,"
- Obama at AIPAC
"Iran is a grave threat," Obama said in Billings, Montana. "It has an illicit nuclear program, it supports terrorism across the region and militias in Iraq, it threatens Israel’s existence, it denies the holocaust. But this threat has grown, primarily — and this is the irony — the reason Iran is so much more powerful now than it was a few years ago is because of the Bush-McCain policy of fighting an endless war in Iraq and refusing to pursue direct diplomacy with Iran."
The real answer: Probably not.
The real solution: Execution first. Trial later.