Cheney: War deaths worth it, 'I think so'

by Mark Silva

President Bush has fessed up some of his mistakes, several in fact, in his final press conference.

But Vice President Dick Cheney is sticking to his story: The only mistake he can think of, in an interview airing on PBS this evening, was his "underestimating'' the difficulty of standing up a new government in Iraq.

Bush, in his confessional presser, joked that the press corps had sometimes "mis-underestimated'' him.

But Cheney isn't one for confessionals. Cheney, asked by anchor Jim Lehrer of the Newshour if the Iraq war has been worth the 4,500 Americans lost in the effort, says:

"I think so.''

That's one of those lines he might have preferred rehearsing - a mistake perhaps. He explains his answer, however: "Given the track record of Saddam Hussein, I think we did exactly the right thing. I think the country is better off for it today.''

When Lehrer asks Cheney about being the most powerful vice president in one of the most failing presidencies ever, Cheney says, "I don't buy that.''

What doesn't he buy? The failed presidency.

See some video from PBS, and for a closer look at these exchanges, read on:

LEHRER: The President has also said that mistakes -- he made some mistakes in the last eight years. Did you make any?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, make mistakes -- I can think of places where I underestimated things. For example, when you talk about Iraq, the extent of which the Iraqi population had been beaten down by Saddam Hussein was greater than I anticipated. That is, we thought that the Iraqis would be able to bounce back fairly quickly, once Saddam was gone and their new government established, and step up to take major responsibilities for governing Iraq, building a military and so forth. And that took longer than I expected.

I think that what happened in Saddam's reign, as well as what happened back in '91, when after the Gulf War there was an uprising in Iraq that was brutally crushed by Saddam -- I think that eliminated a lot of the people that were potential leaders. If they had stuck their heads out they would have been chopped off. And if I were to look for one where there was a miscalculation on my part, I think I underestimated the difficult of getting an Iraqi government stood up.

Q When you look back on that, why? How did that miscalculation come about?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, we didn't have that good of intelligence I don't think, with respect to sort of a state of affairs inside Iraq. A lot of that had been wiped out over the years. Saddam Hussein was so brutal, killed so many people, slaughtered so many innocents, that it had a lasting effect on Iraqi society that was greater than I expected.

Q Is it fair to say then that the miscalculation resulted in the chaotic situation that existed immediately after for a while, then got -- immediately after the invasion and all that sort of stuff?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I can't say that. I don't -- I can't link the particular points. What I can say is I think if we had been able to move more rapidly to stand up a government that was capable, I think we might have avoided some of that. But I don't want to blame all that on the Iraqi government. It was a difficult situation, but it was successful.

We now find ourselves in the situation where we're five years later; we've achieved most of the objectives that you would have set out in the spring of '03 when we launched into Iraq. We've got the violence level down to its lowest level since '03. We've had three national elections, a constitution written, a new government stood up, new army recruited and trained, the Iraqis increasingly able to take on responsibility for themselves. And we've now entered into a strategic framework agreement with the new Iraqi government that will provide for the ultimate withdrawal of U.S. forces.

You could not have asked for much more than that in terms of the policies that we started on in '03.

Q But 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?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I think so.

Q Why?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Because I believed at the time what Saddam Hussein represented was, especially in the aftermath of 9/11, was a terror-sponsoring state so designated by the State Department. He was making payments to the families of suicide bombers. He provided a safe haven and sanctuary for Abu Nidal and other terrorist operations. He had produced and used weapons of mass destruction, chemical and biological agents. He'd had a nuclear program in the past. He killed hundreds of thousands of his own people. And he did have a relationship with al Qaeda.

We've had this debate that keeps people trying to conflate those arguments. That's not to say that Saddam was responsible for 9/11. It is to say as George Tenet, the CIA Director, testified in open session in the Senate, that there was a relationship there that went back 10 years. This was a terror-sponsoring state with access to weapons of mass destruction. And that's the greatest threat we faced in the aftermath of 9/11, that the next time we found terrorists in the middle of one of our cities, it wouldn't be 19 guys armed with airline tickets and box cutters, it would be terrorists armed with a biological agent, or maybe even a nuclear device.

And so I think given the track record of Saddam Hussein, I think we did exactly the right thing. I think the country is better off for it today. I think it's been part of the effort, alongside Afghanistan, to liberate 50 million people and establish a vibrant democracy in the heart of the Middle East. I think those are major, major accomplishments.

* * * *

Q Osama bin Laden is still out there. I mean, al Qaeda is still functioning.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Osama bin Laden is -- wherever he is, he's in a deep hole. He does not have much impact on the organization as best we can tell. The important thing was to go after the organization, after al Qaeda. Even if you got Osama bin Laden tomorrow, you'd still have a problem in terms of whatever residue of al Qaeda is out there.

We have had a big impact on al Qaeda. This was a significantly diminished organization I think compared to what it was four or five years ago. When we killed Abu Musab al Zarqawi, the head of al Qaeda in Iraq, in June of '06, major accomplishment -- and over the last -- I don't want to get into the classified area obviously, but within the last year or so we've had a very significant impact on senior al Qaeda leadership.

Q On a more general scope here, Mr. Vice President, what do you make of a current suggestion that you have been, in fact, the most powerful Vice President in history, but in one of the most failed presidencies in history?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I don't buy that.

Q You don't buy that?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: No. I think the argument that this is a failed presidency is just dead wrong. I think we'll hear that from some of our critics, but when I look back at what we've been able to do, we dealt with big issues, we didn't deal with school uniforms. We dealt with the fact that we brought down two of the worst regimes in the 20th century, the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein in Iraq.

We were forced -- when we arrived, shortly after we arrived -- to have to deal with the global war on terror, which had not been managed properly before that. We ended up inheriting this situation, which has been very challenging, but we've been very successful at it. And when you look at what we've been able to do, both in terms of our activities overseas, as well as our operations that allowed us to block any further attack against the United States here at home, I think those are great successes. And I think there aren't very many administrations that can point to successes on that scale.