IRAQ -- CHENEY SAYS IRAQ WAR WAS 'WORTH' THE 4,500 AMERICAN LIVES LOST: In an interview yesterday on PBS's News Hour, host Jim Lehrer asked Vice President Cheney about the American soldiers who have lost their lives in the war in Iraq. Lehrer asked, "Mr. Vice President, getting from there to here, 4,500 Americans have died, at least 100,000 Iraqis have died. Has it been worth that?" "I think so," Cheney responded with little remorse. Cheney's comments mirror those of other conservatives, such as House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH), who said that the lives lost in Iraq have been a "small price" to pay, and right-wing commentator Frank Gaffney, who declared that all these troops "did have to die" in Iraq. Despite Cheney's claims, the Bush administration chose to go to war with Iraq. It made everyone believe that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction at that time and an active relationship with al Qaeda. The Iraq war has decimated the readiness of the U.S. military, radicalized insurgents in the Middle East, and strengthened many of America's enemies. As David Sanger of the New York Times notes, the war also "occupied so much of the attention and the resources of the top levels of the U.S. government that we ignored much bigger threats, short-term and long-term."
John Adams famously described the American government as one of "laws, not of men." In eight years, the Bush Administration has reacted to the attacks of September 11, 2001, by turning that dictum on its head in their zeal to ensure that another attack does not occur on their watch. In particular, the President's confidence that he is a "good man," has led him to embrace the advice of Cheney, and his consigliere, his chief of staff David Addington, when they circumvented the Geneva Conventions to make torture the covert law of the land and whose first article of faith is that there are no limitations on presidential power in a "time of war."
Quoted article via: thinkprogress.org
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