I saw this on tonight’s daily show (which originally aired August 15th in America). Basically the video is of the interview at the end of the show with author Stephen F Hayes, who was written a new book about the current US vice-President. But before you watch the video, you should know the context. The piece before the interview, entitled Dick doesn’t even know Dick, was about the vice president. Now usually this is about the randomness that the Vice president goes through for members of the public to know very little about him and what he does. For example (past items on the feature have included) how he created his own top secret stamp for his documents, despite the fact that they aren’t secret at all (this was shown as the documents were released under the freedom of information act). The feature has also noted that Number One Observatory Circle (the official Residence of the Vice President) has been removed from Google earth, at the Vice presidents request.

This week however was different as it showed clips from an interview Cheney did in 1994 (when he was considering running for president at the elections in 1996) and he was talking about why America should not have gone into Iraq and removed Saddam, specifically citing that it would be a mess, the country would split up, violence would ensue and no new government would be able to maintain control. Here is specifically what Mr Cheney said;
(http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/search/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003624798)

“Q: Do you think the U.S., or U.N. forces, should have moved into Baghdad?

Cheney: No.

Q: Why not?

Cheney: Because if we'd gone to Baghdad we would have been all alone. There wouldn't have been anybody else with us. There would have been a U.S. occupation of Iraq. None of the Arab forces that were willing to fight with us in Kuwait were willing to invade Iraq.

Once you got to Iraq and took it over, took down Saddam Hussein's government, then what are you going to put in its place? That's a very volatile part of the world, and if you take down the central government of Iraq, you could very easily end up seeing pieces of Iraq fly off: part of it, the Syrians would like to have to the west, part of it -- eastern Iraq -- the Iranians would like to claim, they fought over it for eight years. In the north you've got the Kurds, and if the Kurds spin loose and join with the Kurds in Turkey, then you threaten the territorial integrity of Turkey.

It's a quagmire if you go that far and try to take over Iraq.

The other thing was casualties. Everyone was impressed with the fact we were able to do our job with as few casualties as we had. But for the 146 Americans killed in action, and for their families -- it wasn't a cheap war. And the question for the president, in terms of whether or not we went on to Baghdad, took additional casualties in an effort to get Saddam Hussein, was how many additional dead Americans is Saddam worth?

Our judgment was, not very many, and I think we got it right.”

So, hopefully the video will make a little more sense now;


Now all of Jon Stewart said near the end is true. There are people in the world, including those in this country, who question your patriotism, or even your ‘loyalty’ to a country you live in, when you disagree with a governments proposals, whether they be about terrorism and the war in Iraq.

In 2003 I opposed the invasion of Iraq, on the grounds that were presented to the British people – which were that Iraq had stockpiles of WMD that could be launched in 45 minutes. My objection to invasion was this;
There was no evidence that they did have these weapons, at this point anyway (Although I am fully aware the Donald Rumsfeld went to Iraq at least twice to sell Mr Hussein WMD.)

And we have no right to independently decide who should be removed from power and who should not. It is a job for the international community and not a handful of countries. And if America wants to be the worlds policeman perhaps they should go police Burma, Sudan and Zimbabwe were millions of people are being effected by dictatorships and military violence that has killed thousands upon thousands of people. Oh and by the way if you want to spread democracy to the world, remove the military dictatorship in Burma and place _ in her right-full role as the democratically elected leader of that country.

All of this can be added to the fact that we had not (And have still not) found Osama Bin Laden (This might seem a little petty but we can put Paris Hilton in Prison but cannot find a 6ft 5 Arab man on dialysis. Here’s a clue US army he is the one attached to the luggage and not blowing it up). What’s more the right ridiculous theory that Al-Qaeda was in Iraq is complete and utter s**t. Saddam Hussein despised Bin Laden (It would be the only thing that he and President Bush would agree on if they had ever met). Would it not have made more sense to concentrate on finding him and the rest of the leadership of Al-Qaeda, instead of p***ing of more people of the Middle East, who will now join up with these fanatical groups that hate everything that we live and stand for.

But despite all of these valid reasons, whenever a liberal mentions theses to conservatives (and especially neo-conservatives) they paint us as soft on crime, soft on terrorism, and willing to negotiate with terrorists. This from group of people who have no problem with the death penalty, and cannot understand why people don’t agree with. And by the way my opinion on this is; society has a right to punish, and not a right to kill.

To that effect they (conservatives) simply cannot simply conceive that they are not the only political view point in the world, and continue to blame liberals for all the world’s evils. The greatest irony to this is that without liberals they would not be able to speak out against government policy they don’t agree with (for the sake of an example lets say global warming), as no-one would have freedom of speech, or freedom of religion, or the right to free association.