Raw Story provides necessary context to the latest missive from US Vice President Dick Cheney:
George W. Bush has made the world a more hopeful place.
This from Vice President Dick Cheney, who spoke to a crowd of Oklahoma Republicans Friday evening.
“When the history is written, it will be said this is a safer country and more hopeful world because George Bush was president,” Cheney said, according to Oklahoma’s Tulsa World.
Of Iraq, Cheney quipped: “Our strategy is the right strategy. The only way we can lose is to quit.”
If the US departs, he said, it would show America “doesn’t have the stomach for a fight.” Cheney himself received five draft deferments to avoid service in the Vietnam war.
To justify a US presence in the wartorn region, Cheney cited the Russian experience in Afghanistan.
“We were engaged in that country, lending support to the mujahadeen against Soviet forces,” he said. “Afterwards, everybody walked away and forgot about Afghanistan. What followed was a civil war and the emergence of the Taliban. In 1996, Osama Bin Laden was invited into Afghanistan. He trained thousands of terrorists, some of whom were part of the attacks here on the United States.”
He didn’t mention the the US pulled out of Afghanistan as well, after the defeat of the Soviets, or that US business, including those in Texas during George W. Bush’s term as governor, engaged in business with the Taliban regime.