Cheney Predicts Quagmire

Above is none other than Dick Cheney explaining why, when the U.S. was in perfect position to depose Saddam Hussein in 1991, President George H.W. Bush elected not to do so. The interview took place in 1994. Here is a transcript in case you can't hear the video.

... 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. Source

Sounds like a very sensible view to me. Too bad Cheney changed his mind a few years later. He had it right the first time.

Hat tip: Born at the Crest of the Empire