Vice President Dick Cheney offered an aggressive defense of the Bush administration’s Iraq strategy today, asserting that those in Congress who pursue a gradual drawdown of American forces are “undermining” the troops and that a withdrawal would represent “a full validation of the Al Qaeda strategy.”
Mr. Cheney’s comments, delivered before the America Israel Public Affairs Committee, came days after Democratic leaders said they would seek to place new conditions on military operations in Iraq and would call for the withdrawal of most American troops by August 2008.
But Mr. Cheney, speaking before a clearly supportive audience, did not temper in the slightest the often-tough language he has used in describing the stakes in Iraq or in the fight against terrorism.
Indeed, the vice president’s remarks were the strongest warning yet from an administration official that Democrats should not seek to tie the president’s hands on troop deployments.
President Bush called on Congress on Sunday, during a visit to Colombia, to finance the Iraq war “with no strings attached.” Mr. Cheney, however, appeared to go a step beyond the president, who has offered repeated assurances that he does not question the patriotism of war critics.
The Democratic-led efforts to place conditions on military operations, Mr. Cheney said, were “counterproductive and send exactly the wrong message.”
“When members of Congress pursue an antiwar strategy that’s been called ‘slow-bleed,’ they’re not supporting the troops, they are undermining them,” the vice president said.
And when those lawmakers seek to impose time limits on the American presence in Iraq, Mr. Cheney added, “they’re telling the enemy simply to watch the clock and wait us out.”
He took us to Iraq with an agenda. What he says repeatedly is that leaving Iraq defeats the agenda. And he tells us that our enemy in Iraq is al Qaeda. So, he would have us stay in Iraq so as to not give in to the Al Qaeda strategy. If our enemy is al Qaeda, why don’t we go fight al Qaeda. They’re over in Pakistan getting ready to attack Afghanistan. Why do we let our troops be sitting dicks in Iraq, if, indeed, the fighters there are al Qaeda? What he says only makes sense if the agenda he speaks of is occuppying Iraq. What he says only makes sense if occuppying Iraq long term was the plan in the first place. What he says only makes sense if the goal of going to Iraq in the first place was to get control of their oil.
But there’s another reason besides his motives in getting us into this war to ignore what he says. He’s always wrong. Everything he’s said about this war has turned out to be dead wrong. They have bombs. They have chemical/biological weapons. We’re going to be greeted as liberators. We’re winning in Iraq. We don’t need more troops. We do need more troops.
Update: And then I saw Jon Stewart…
There ought to be a law about lying us into war. The children in our country are learning an important lesson every time Cheney opens his mouth to speak, that it is Ok to lie. If he can do it anybody can do it. Isn’t there anything we can do to stop him? He is morally repulsive. Why don’t we ask General Pace about that? This was going to be the correct moral values Administration. Cheney has to be one of the worst VPs, and we used to worry about Cheney not being there to help Bush. What a cruel joke on us. The worst President and Vice President in the most dangerous time in U S history.
And they are the reason it is the most dangerous time in U.S. history.