He Was Rational, Once...

"Once you've got Baghdad, it's not clear what you do with it. It's not clear what kind of government you would put in place of the one that's currently there...How much credibility is that government going to have if it's set up by the United States military when it's there?...I think to have American military forces engaged in a civil war inside Iraq would fit the definition of quagmire, and we have absolutely no desire to get bogged down in that fashion."

Who said this bit of wisdom? Paul Krugman? Jonathan Schell? A bleeding-heart disk jockey on Air America? No, it was none other than that loveable neocon teddy bear, Dick Cheney. Trouble is, he said it back in 1991, when explaining the rationale for prematurely ending the Gulf War after Iraq had been expelled from Kuwait, rather than taking the next logical step and forcing Saddam Hussein from power.

(Cheney quote via the 4/26/04 issue of The Nation.)