I thought he made a good point when he suggested that if the American people had known beforehand that 9/11 was going to happen, would they have supported pre-emption? Absolutely.
Same with Saddam.
Once we know for a fact that Saddam is planning to attack America, a lot of folks would probably jump on board a pre-emptive strike. For now, not even the Cato Institute thinks there’s any evidence of that. If the administration can’t even get Cato on their side, they’re really reaching.
Saddam, evil guy that he is, has never attacked America, nor provided weapons to terrorists to be used against America, nor shown any inclination to do either one. If we want to launch pre-emptive strikes against every country that doesn’t like us, we’ll be calling it the 200 Year War.
Are you suggesting that Dick Cheney has evidence that Saddam Hussein is planning an attack on American civilians?
Or are you suggesting that if the US government had learned of the WTC plot that it should have dropped 3,000 bombs on another country without the support of the UN, or most of its allies, rather than, say, arresting Osama bin Laden and other involved Al Qaeda terrorists?
If neither you nor Dick was asserting either of these positions then I’d say, no, Cheney’s “point” is pretty weak, like most of the American attempts to link Iraq to 9/11.
Doesn’t matter if its weak. It works. Huge numbers of American people currently believe that Saddam was directly involved with the 9/11 attacks. All you got to do is keep saying “9/11” and “Saddam bin Laden” in the same sentence and the connection creeps in. And its entirely deniable! Its subliminable!
Dick Cheney’s question sounds an awful lot like that question my history teacher asked in high school: Knowing what we know now, should the United States have assassinated Hitler prior to us entering the war?
That might be an easy question to answer back in those days, if we had time travelers telling us what Hitler would do.
And if it is the same with Iraq, can’t an equally strong argument be made for taking out North Korea?
Although this is a different question, why not take over Pakistan? Then we could prevent their nuclear weapons from ever getting into the hands of Islamic extemists, which you have to admit, is a possibility. If we fail to act, history will judge us harshly.
The cruel irony is that an invasion makes it more likely Saddam will work with terrorists and give them his worst weapons. After all what does he have to lose if he is going down anyway ? The CIA said as much in an assessment a few months back: Saddam was unlikely to attack the US unless attacked first.
And the war will probably help Al-quaeda recruitment efforts; indeed there are signs this is already happening.
So overall an invasion makes another 9-11 more likely not less.
- And the war will probably help Al-quaeda recruitment efforts; indeed there are signs this is already happening."*
More than signs, Cyber, this is impact has now been official documented by US counterintelligence.
(Though anyone with least common sense could have predicted it all along.)
Of course, Cheney might very well be on the short list of folks invited to Mount Weather, or wherever the bunker of the day happens to be, which would make him much less concerned about that sort of thing. I wonder if Bush made the list. 
Cyber: A small point, terrorism recruitment may be increasing, but an invasion is highly unlikely to cause Saddam to hand WMD to terrorists.
As an aside: Goddam Hussein is a cynic, OBL is a fanatic. Hussein will no more give weapons to someone he cannot control than he would nail his pecker to a tree and set the tree on fire.
Further, I strongly suspect that if 10 kilotons of plutonium were to fall in the hand of Al Queda, the would more likely produce a glowing hole in the middle of the Godforsaken Desert than anything else. Instructions off the internet are all very well, but if it took Oppenhiemer four years to do it, I very much doubt that Achmed Camelhumper can accomplish it with a set of Radio Shack tools.
Aside completed. Apology rendered.
“but an invasion is highly unlikely to cause Saddam to hand WMD to terrorists.”
Why not? It’s one of the best ways of getting revenge on the US from his pov. If there is no war he is unlikely to hand WMD to terrorists both because of fears of US retaliation and his suspicion of terrorists themselves. But if he has nothing to lose these contraints no longer apply and Saddam will try to hit the US with everything he has got.
“Hussein will no more give weapons to someone he cannot control than he would nail his pecker to a tree and set the tree on fire.”
In general I agree this is true. But if Saddam has nothing to lose and his regime is going to be detroyed he will try to hit the US with everything he has got including passing weapons to Al-quaeda. This underlines the true perversity of invasion: it increases the likelihood of what it suppposedly seeks to prevent.
I quite take your point, Cyber. On the other hand, he had these weapons during GW One, or at least we are so assured. And the Allies were going through him like a hot knife through butter. So why didn’t he use them then?
Perhaps because he had good reason to believe that regime change was not on the agenda? Now where, I wonder, would he get an idea like that?
Cyber: Because they’re bigger than the olympic torch, and he’d need a fast handoff if the act of invasion is what’s going to trigger it.
Elucidator: He did use them. He did have them. I met some of the men who physically blew up WMD installations on the ground, and saw men who had been poisoned by a wash of chemicals. I saw photo’s of the people in his own country that he VXed.
“with everything he’s got”? If he ain’t got nothin’ there won’t be nothin’, right?
BTW, Elucidator, did you know Saddam founded his own terrorist organization, trained Abul Nidal and later harbored him for four years? Somehow the State Department and the CIA both think he’s harboring Al Quaida terrorists in his own country?
Since you’re you, I’ll presume you don’t need a cite.
“So why didn’t he use them then?”
Because the US didn’t try to destroy his regime so he still had something to lose. This time he will have nothing to lose.
Copaesthetic,
If you are talking about biological weapons they don’t have to be much larger than the Olympic torch. And the US will not occupy every square inch of Iraqi territory on the first day of war. There will be plenty of opportunities for a few agents to slip out of Iraq in the middle of the night into Syria or Iran or even further.
Remember how Osama et al managed to escape US forces even though Pakistan was co-operating with the US.
Its called ad hominem. You could look it up.
But never mind me, what about all the other SDMBers who are bereft of this…rather startling bit of intelligence. Offer them a cite, won’t you, there’s a good fellow.
Just for the hell of it, could you come up with a few wars that this could not be used to justify? With this logic, clearly India should attack Pakistan, Pakistan should attack India, N. Korea should lob whatever nukes it has or develops at the U.S. In fact, the advantage of all of these scenarios is that they have a more immediate connection between the pre-emptor and the threat than the connection between 9/11 and Iraq.
God, it’s scary that we have the Vice-President of our nation using this sort of logic! I just hope the world survives until these people can be thrown out of power.
Of course Saddam was up to his neck in 9/11. Of course Osama and Saddam are in bed together. They both have Arab names. How much more obvious could it be? How can any one question the connection? How can any one think that Osama is not Saddam’s running dog and vice versa? What more proof could any one want? Any one who thinks otherwise is either deliberately obtuse or supporting Saddam-Osama (please note, the names are interchangeable and have nearly the same number of letters) and might well be a crypto enemy quasi-combatant and an unknowing member a secret terrorist fifth column.
At this point the VP, the Pres, the Sec of Defense, all the spin doctors and advisers and consultants will say anything that might grease the skids for an invasion of Iraq. If truth is the first casualty of war then the war has been going on for a long time now.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,78361,00.html
http://www.salon.com/news/wire/2003/03/13/saddam/
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/gunning/interviews/general.html
http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2002/cfr/stories/iraq/
http://216.26.163.62/2003/guest_holton_2_06.html
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20021114-044713-3433r.htm
http://www.usatoday.com/community/chat/2002-05-16-kirk.htm
This is totally off topic, but, for those who wish it. The ties between Saddam and terror organizations in the past are fairly well documented. The sources provided include some interviews with defectors, and some statements by CIA director Tenet, but they do outline some of the points I had mentioned. I’ve heard (Scott Ritter) that the training grounds at Salman Pak were used for anti-hijack training, as well as those that say it was hijack training. I’ve tried to avoid leftist newsletters and “Global Security” type publications. There’s an article from the Wall Street Journal that I couldn’t find a link to, with some comments from Tenet and Leiberman. Of course, it’s not irrefutable evidence that Saddam Hussein is linked to Al Quaeda, has WMD, ect. But it does raise a lot of questions for many people.