Almost the entire senior leadership of President Bush’s national security team was for regime change in Iraq. Vice President Dick Cheney was out in front making accusations against Saddam Hussein to justify the invasion. Since he recently passed here is a review of his role in the lead up to the Iraq War.
First some myths about Cheney need to be dismissed. There was much talk during the Bush administration that the Vice President was the power behind the throne. This was not true. The decision to overthrow Saddam Hussein came from President Bush himself and not because of the advice of any members of his cabinet including Cheney.
Second, the vice president was not a neoconservative. He shared their view that the United States should use its military power to assert its dominance in the world but he did not care about spreading democracy and political reforms in other countries which the neoconservatives did.
Cheney was one of the earliest advocates of using force against Iraq. As early as the vice presidential debate in October 2000 he said that the U.S. might have to take military action to remove Saddam.
A few months after 9/11 the vice president began talking about the threat that Iraq posed. On November 14 for instance, Cheney said that 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta met with Iraqi intelligence in Prague in 2001. This came from the Czech Republic but was eventually dismissed. Cheney however repeated the claim for months helping to convince the majority of Americans that Iraq was connected to the terrorist attacks when it was not.
The Vice President was out in front claiming that Iraq had WMD. He was one of the first senior members of the administration to give a speech saying that Iraq might give WMD to terrorists that could threaten the United States. In August 2002 he addressed the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Tennessee stating, “There’s no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt that he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us.” (1)
He furthered the case for war by dismissing the return of United Nations weapons inspectors. In August 2002 he said he was skeptical the inspectors could find anything and later claimed that Iraq was good at deceiving them. He went as far as telling head inspector Hans Blix that his work in Iraq couldn’t last forever and that Washington was ready to discredit them anyway. The White House saw the inspectors as an end to a means not a way to disarm Iraq. It claimed that if Iraq said it had no WMD it was lying and if the U.N. found that it proved Baghdad’s guilt. Either way it would help justify an invasion.
The Vice President also disapproved of going to the United Nations for a new resolution to approve the war. He believed that it was a waste of time and that the President should just give a speech saying Iraq was a threat and be done with it.
Finally, Cheney was the one that talked about Iraqis welcoming regime change. He told the Veterans of the Korean War in August 2002 that Iraqis would welcome an American invasion with joy.
Overall, Vice President Cheney played a pivotal role in the public relations campaign to gain public support for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. He tied Baghdad with the 9/11 attacks, that it had WMD and the only solution was regime change not international efforts like U.N. weapons inspectors. Like the rest of the Bush administration he proved wrong on every single point. He never budged from his position however that the war was justified while others grew to question its legitimacy. That’s why he stands with the president as being a supporter of one of the worst foreign policy decisions in American history. Like Bush his stubbornness and hubris would not allow him see the error in his ways.
FOOTNOTES
1. Donnelly, John, “Vice president makes case for war on Iraq,” San Francisco Chronicle, 8/27/02
SOURCES
Ahmad, Muhammad Idrees, The Road to Iraq, The Making of a Neoconservative War, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press Ltd, 2014
Baker, Peter, Days Of Fire, Bush and Cheney in the White House, New York, London, Toronto, Sydney, Auckland: Doubleday, 2013
Canellos, Peter and Bender, Bryan, “Questions Grow Over Iraq Links to Qaeda,” Boston Globe, 8/3/03
Cirincione, Joseph, Mathews, Jessica, Perkovich, George with Orton, Alexis, “WMD in Iraq Evidence and Implications,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, January 2004
Danner, Mark, “The Secret Way to War,” New York Times Review of Books, 6/9/05
Donnelly, John, “Vice president makes case for war on Iraq,” San Francisco Chronicle, 8/27/02
Mazarr, Michael, Leap of Faith, Hubris, Negligence, and America’s Greatest Foreign Policy Tragedy, New York: Public Affairs, 2019
Prados, John, Hoodwinked, The Documents That Reveal How Bush Sold Us a War, New York: The New Press, 2004
White House, “The Vice President Appears on NBC’s Meet the Press,” 12/9/01
Woodward, Bob, Bush At War, New York, London, Toronto, Sydney, Singapore: Simon & Schuster, 2002
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