[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 8]
[Senate]
[Pages 11754-11755]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                        A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, it is always good to have someone in the 
media with a sense of history. Walter Pincus demonstrates that time and 
again. His June 19 column in The Washington Post is a prime example and 
I ask unanimous consent that the article be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

               [From the Washington Post, June 19, 2014]

     Dick Cheney Wants To Forget History and Write His Own Version

                           (By Walter Pincus)

       Why should anyone take seriously what Dick Cheney says 
     about President Obama's policy in Iraq?
       In their Wall Street Journal op-ed this week, Cheney and 
     his daughter Liz began by cherry-picking Obama quotes from 
     over three years about the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria 
     (ISIS).
       That warmed-over technique is what Cheney, President George 
     W. Bush and other top aides cleverly used with intelligence 
     reports in the fall of 2002 as they drummed up public support 
     for their invasion of Iraq. That, of course, set the stage 
     for today's terrible events.
       ``Rarely has a U.S. president been so wrong about so much 
     at the expense of so many,'' the Cheneys chortled. ``Too many 
     times to count, Mr. Obama has told us he is ending the wars 
     in Iraq and Afghanistan--as though wishing made it so.''
       Let's return to a Dick Cheney speech on Aug. 27, 2002, in 
     Nashville, before the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) and see 
     how many times a vice president could be ``so wrong about so 
     much at the expense of so many.''
       He told his audience: ``In Afghanistan, the Taliban regime 
     and al-Qaeda terrorists have met the fate they chose for 
     themselves. And they saw . . . the new methods and 
     capabilities of America's armed services.''
       Here's another applause line: ``In the case of Osama bin 
     Laden--as President Bush said recently--`If he's alive, we'll 
     get him. If he's not alive--we already got him.''
       The Bush team never got him. Obama did.
       When Cheney was speaking, bin Laden was very much alive. 
     Al-Qaeda terrorists and the Taliban had just retreated, but 
     they were able to regroup as the Bush team, satisfied with 
     its ``victory'' in Afghanistan, had turned its attention and 
     U.S. military forces toward Iraq.
       It was in this speech that Cheney began what a former Bush 
     chief of staff, Andrew Card, would describe as the fall 2002 
     public-relations plan to ``educate the public'' about the so-
     called threat from Iraq. That effort would lead to a 
     congressional joint resolution authorizing the president to 
     use U.S. armed forces to ``defend the national security of 
     the United States against the continuing threat posed by 
     Iraq'' and ``enforce all relevant United Nations Security 
     Council resolutions regarding Iraq.''
       Cheney told the VFW: ``The Iraqi regime has in fact been 
     very busy enhancing its capabilities in the field of chemical 
     and biological agents. And they continue to pursue the 
     nuclear program they began so many years ago.''
       He added: ``We've gotten this from the firsthand testimony 
     of defectors--including Saddam's own son-in-law, who was 
     subsequently murdered at Saddam's direction. Many of us are 
     convinced that Saddam will acquire nuclear weapons fairly 
     soon.''
       A former White House deputy press secretary, Scott 
     McClellan, would later write that a White House Iraq Group 
     (WHIG) was ``set up in the summer of 2002 to coordinate the 
     marketing of the [Iraq] war,'' and will continue ``as a 
     strategic communications group after the invasion had toppled 
     Saddam [Hussein]'s regime.''
       It was Cheney at the VFW convention who first said: 
     ``Regime change in Iraq would bring about a number of 
     benefits to the region. When the gravest of threats are 
     eliminated, the freedom-loving peoples of the region will 
     have a chance to promote the values that can bring lasting 
     peace.''
       He also said: ``Extremists in the region would have to 
     rethink their strategy of Jihad. Moderates throughout the 
     region would take heart. And our ability to advance the 
     Israeli-Palestinian peace process would be enhanced, just as 
     it was following the liberation of Kuwait in 1991.''
       Show me a better example of ``as though wishing made it 
     so.''
       The Cheneys also cavalierly forget that the status of 
     forces agreement with Iraq that Bush signed Dec. 14, 2008, 
     made way for the

[[Page 11755]]

     withdrawal of all U.S. combat troops by the end of 2011. That 
     agreement protected U.S. forces on duty from prosecution by 
     Iraqi courts. It was the Iraqis' desire to modify this that 
     led Obama--on the advice of his military chiefs--to not leave 
     a residual force of military trainers.
       One more sign of the Cheneys' convenient amnesia: They said 
     of Obama's initiative toward involving Tehran in the effort 
     to put down ISIS advances in Iraq, ``Only a fool would 
     believe American policy in Iraq should be ceded to Iran, the 
     world's largest sponsor of terror.''
       In November 2001, the Bush White House, despite icy 
     relations, approved talking directly to Iran diplomats before 
     and during the Bonn conference called to try to establish a 
     post-Taliban government in Afghanistan. As a result, U.S. 
     Ambassador James Dobbin got what he described as Tehran's 
     ``major contribution to forge a solution'' among various 
     Afghan groups, which in turn led to a unified temporary Kabul 
     government under Hamid Karzai.
       On Dec. 5, 2001, a White House spokesman described Bush as 
     ``very pleased'' with the Afghan agreement. However, in his 
     Jan. 29, 2002, State of the Union speech, Bush described 
     Iran, Iraq and North Korea as the ``axis of evil'' at the 
     same time there were meetings underway between U.S. and 
     Iranian diplomats to see whether talks could go beyond 
     Afghanistan.
       In contrast to the Cheneys, people should listen to former 
     secretary of state James Baker III, who in Thursday's Wall 
     Street Journal called on the United States to organize an 
     international coalition of regional countries, including 
     Iran. Recalling Iran's cooperation on Afghanistan, Baker said 
     today's ``reality is that Iran is already the most 
     influential external player in Iraq and so any effort without 
     Iranian participation will likely fail.''
       Baker has a successful track record and a memory. The 
     Cheneys have neither.

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