Who said: "How many American casualties is Saddam worth?"

Iraq Forum

Dick Cheney - 1992.

And his answer: "Not very damned many. 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."

Different now though. Now Saddam's worth a thousand human lives and counting (not to mention - well we don't mention em - the hundred/fifty/hell-of-a-lotta thousand Iraqis killed by the smart bombs and their laser-guided surgical strike capacity, whatever) - anyway, now the US is bogged down in the problems of trying to take over and govern Iraq.

What's changed in the last decade? I dunno. Saddam had nothin to do with 9/11, had no WMDs, and was good as toothless on the international stage bar throwing a few grand at the families of those idiot suicide bombers. He killed a few million Iranians and Kurds but we didn't care, hell, we gave him the gas to do it.

Yet someone told Dick and Rummy that Saddam was a threat ... why? Why did they want Iraq so bad? Why were they looking for a link between Saddam and 9/11 on Sep 13?

Dick again:

"All of a sudden you've got a battle you're fighting in a major built-up city, a lot of civilians are around, significant limitations on our ability to use our most effective technologies and techniques."

"Once we had rounded him up and gotten rid of his government, then the question is what do you put in its place? You know, you then have accepted the responsibility for governing Iraq."