Dick Cheney -- even a stopped clock is right twice a day -- or used to be

This column by Joel Connelly in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which I found courtesy of Ambidextrous tells us that once upon a time, Dick Cheney had something other than poison coming out of his Elvis-sneer mouth:

In the Northwest: Bush-Cheney flip-flops cost America 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.'"

So that was Dick Cheney a dozen years ago, when he was kissing up to the first Bush, which meant being realistic about Iraq.

And Dick Cheney today? Well, he foresees dire tragedy if Kerry is elected. I can only surmise that tragedy will be loss of his ability to pipeline billions from our pockets to Halliburton's and his.

Link