Even a US administration, staffed and headed by morons, would have known of the consequences of suddenly breaking the power balance in Iraq, and in the region around Iraq, that Saddam maintained. He had it figured out, checking the shi'a ambitions in his own country, and in Iran.
Cheney was involved in the decision as to whether to "take out" Saddam, twice in a dozen years. What was he thinking? What did he think that the US would gain, besides either strengthening Iran, or strengthening Iran to the point that it would be necessary to fight a war with Iran, as a means of withdrawing US troops with the US in a better strategic position than before March, 2003.
Cheney knew what he was doing, and this "fallout" is on him, and on Bush:
Quote:
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/nation...mily_Lost.html
MIDDLE EAST
Friday, March 2, 2007 · Last updated 10:57 a.m. PT
Family's tragedy tells of Iraq's divide
By BRIAN MURPHY
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
BAGHDAD, Iraq --
....The Sunni-Shiite rivalries reach back to a fight for leadership after the Prophet Muhammad's death in the 7th century. Saddam Hussein turned it into a modern blood feud. He favored his fellow Sunnis and kept the majority Shiites under a tight lid - which grew even tighter after the last failed Shiite uprising following the 1991 Gulf War. The result was a Potemkin peace that collapsed along with Saddam.
Iraq's sectarian divorce appears to be reaching a kind of institutional permanence. Each group is building its own separate structures right up to clinics and hospitals. No one trusts the other will let them come out alive.
"And there's nothing to suggest this trend is reversing," said Dana Graber, who follows Iraq for the International Office for Migration - a Geneva-based group whose latest report on Iraq estimated up to 1 million people could flee violence and intimidation this year alone.
<h3>Already about 4 million Iraqis are displaced within the country or are refugees abroad, mostly Sunnis who fled to neighboring Syria or Jordan, international agencies estimate.</h3>
The new epicenter is a place once hailed as the "little Iraq" for its overlap of the country's three main groups: Sunnis, Shiites and the northern Kurds. But that's ending. Diyala province, northeast of Baghdad, has been increasingly overrun by Sunni insurgents. It's part of a strategic retrenching to avoid a new U.S.-led security crackdown in Baghdad, military officials say.
Maj. Gen. Benjamin Mixon, the U.S. military official in northern Iraq, said the fight for Diyala is "as important to Sunnis as control of Baghdad." Added Capt. Paul Carlock - with a touch of understatement - after a series of bold daylight barrages on his 1st Cavalry Division: "It's been pretty violent."
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Families like the al-Sihaili clan are caught helplessly in the middle.
They sped away from home with whatever they could cram in a three-vehicle convoy. The first car was filled with all five al-Sihaili brothers. Behind them: two minibuses with their wives and 13 children.
The left Balad Ruz and drove south through the night. Just before dawn, the convoy was nearing Suwayrah, about 25 miles southeast of Baghdad. The Tigris River was to their right and the green plains leading to ancient Babylon. The family's relatives were preparing breakfast for their expected arrival in a few minutes.
Just then, a roadside bomb blew the brothers' Toyota into three smoking pieces. They were all dead, said Maamoun Ajil al-Robaiei, a director at the morgue in nearby Kut.
A hail of metal shrapnel peppered the trailing minibuses, wounding most of the wives and children, said officials at Suwayrah's hospital.
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Back in Diyala province, a Shiite imam wondered about his orange trees and the home taken over by a Sunni family.
Ahmed Hamad al-Tamimi said he was forced out of the mixed village of Quba two years ago after insurgents blew up his mosque. He hasn't set foot in a Sunni-held area since.
"There's another (Sunni) family living in my house. They took over my groves," he said in the Shiite town of Huwayder near Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad. "I don't know who they are."
He claimed Sunni groups have "kicked out 100 percent of the Shiite families in some areas" of the province. His village is moving in that direction, too, he said, shrugging.
"It's engraved in my heart that I'll go back one day," he said. "But conditions must change."
Agencies monitoring the population shifts are not optimistic....
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Cheney, in 1992:
Quote:
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/nation..._cheney29.html
Wednesday, September 29, 2004
Cheney changed his view on Iraq
He said in '92 Saddam not worth U.S. casualties
By CHARLES POPE
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT
WASHINGTON -- In an assessment that differs sharply with his view today, Dick Cheney more than a decade ago defended the decision to leave Saddam Hussein in power after the first Gulf War, telling a Seattle audience:
Quote:
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/connel...28_joel29.html
Wednesday, September 29, 2004
In the Northwest: Bush-Cheney flip-flops cost America in blood
The words of our future vice president -- defending the decision to end Gulf War I without occupying Iraq -- eerily foretell today's morass. Here is what Cheney said in '92:
"I would guess if we had gone in there, I would still have forces in Baghdad today. We'd be running the country. We would not have been able to get everybody out and bring everybody home.
"And the final point that I think needs to be made is this question of casualties. I don't think you could have done all of that without significant additional U.S. casualties. And while everybody was tremendously impressed with the low cost of the (1991) conflict, for the 146 Americans who were killed in action and for their families, it wasn't a cheap war.
"And the question in my mind is how many additional American casualties is Saddam (Hussein) worth? And the answer is not that damned many. So, I think we got it right, both when we decided to expel him from Kuwait, but also when the president made the decision that we'd achieved our objectives and we were not going to go get bogged down in the problems of trying to take over and govern Iraq.".........
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....and Reconmike, why can't you support the troops, vicitmized by the most corrupt politicians ever to send US troops into another sovereign nation, instead of demanding prison terms for the ones who "say no". Is your "way" really the "American way", are you sure, Reconmike?