If Cheney was so wise in 1994, why did we go through with invading Iraq?

GJ.....GREAT LINK!!!

I am assuming your 1994 was a typo and you meant 2004. If not, lord help us... and you.

In 2004 the intelligence was there in favor of ousting Saddam and attempting to lead Iraq into becoming a Democracy. The whole world believed it so it wasn't just Cheney or Bush or the present Administration.

Noone could have predicted that the people of Iraq would have no backbone to stand up to the insurgency that took place.

Same as most Americans would never have believed that half of our citizenry was willing to sabotage the war effort all in the name of politics and discrediting our President.

Alot of what has occured can be attributed to politics and neither side is blameless.

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"WE", Republican and Democrat leaders alike, invaded Iraq to save the Iraqi people, including the Kurds, from mass genocide by Saddam Hussein and his military regime, also because "WE" were informed by Stu Cohen of the CIA that there definitely were WMD's in Iraq and the ongoing capability to make more of them. Our military forces did find small caches of chemical and biological warfare agents in 55 gallon drums, enoiugh to kill entire cities, and we found 450 thousand TONS of high explosives, enough to destroy half a million or more buildings the size of the Murraugh federal building in Oklahoma (that was blown up by Timothy McVeigh). This isn't speculation. THIS IS HISTORICAL FACT. Some of these explosives were stolen out of the munitions dumps by the terrorist insurgents and are still being used against our troops and Iraqi civilians.

Because it was the right thing to do. Saddam's people had used WMD and were working on more, and these were correctly perceived as being a threat. The fact that Saddam, feeling the heat, shoveled all of the WMD materials off to Syria in June 2002 has nothing to do with this; it was one of the best-kept secrets of the regime.

There's a sort of myopia that was common among Americans until recently, in which it was believed that the world loved us, would always be happy to see us, and would greet us with open arms wherever we travelled. In this scenario, all that was needed was to get rid of Saddam Hussein and everything in Iraq would be sunshine and flowers. Sure, you might expect our leaders to be a little smarter than that, but guess not.

Cheney wasn't in office in 1994

I don't know who actually clicks on links people have; I sure don't.

Anyway, the plan was to reshape the Middle East into democracies all along with the Neo-cons in power. They had to attack Iraq in order to do this and even though they have "misunderestimated" the problem, their plan hasn't failed yet due to the long-run nature of it.

That was 13 years ago.... things do change.

Duhh...because situations change over time?

"politics make for strange bedfellows".

$$$$ Cheney has gotten rich off of this war, and he knew it.