Dick Cheney on Iraq, 1991

A friend sent me the link to this transcript of a 1991 Dick Cheney speech on Iraq, post-Gulf War I. It's from the website of the right-wing Washington Institute for Near East Policy. I'll excerpt some of the choice bits:

There have been significant discussions since the war ended about the proposition of whether or not we went far enough. Should we, perhaps, have gone in to Baghdad? Should we have gotten involved to a greater extent than we did? Did we leave the job in some respects unfinished? I think the answer is a resounding "no."...

I think that the proposition of going to Baghdad is also fallacious. I think if we were going to remove Saddam Hussein we would have had to go all the way to Baghdad, we would have to commit a lot of force because I do not believe he would wait in the Presidential Palace for us to arrive.... [And] then we'd have had to put another government in its place.

What kind of government? Should it be a Sunni government or Shi'i government or a Kurdish government or Ba'athist regime? Or maybe we want to bring in some of the Islamic fundamentalists? How long would we have had to stay in Baghdad to keep that government in place? What would happen to the government once U.S. forces withdrew? How many casualties should the United States accept in that effort to try to create clarity and stability in a situation that is inherently unstable?

I think it is vitally important for a President to know when to use military force. I think it is also very important for him to know when not to commit U.S. military force.... [I]t would have been a mistake for us to get bogged down in the quagmire inside Iraq....

Saddam Hussein's offensive military capability, his capacity to threaten his neighbors, has been virtually eliminated.

Those are the juicy parts. Here's the rest.