Cheney gets it right on Gitmo and Iraq

ABC:

JONATHAN KARL: So, when do you think we'll be at a point where Guantanamo could be responsibly shut down?

VICE PRESIDENT CHENEY: Well, I think that that would come with the end of the war on terror.

KARL: When's that going to be?

CHENEY: Well, nobody knows. Nobody can specify that. Now, in previous wars, we've always exercised the right to capture the enemy and then hold them till the end of the conflict. That's what we did in World War II with, you know, thousands, hundreds of thousands of German prisoners.

The same basic principle ought to apply here in terms of our right to capture the enemy and hold them. As I say, the other option is to turn them over to somebody else. A lot of them, nobody wants. I mean, there's a great resistance sometimes in the home countries to taking these people back into their own territory.

...

KARL: You probably saw Karl Rove last week said that if the intelligence had been correct, we probably would not have gone to war.

CHENEY: I disagree with that. I think -- as I look at the intelligence with respect to Iraq -- what they got wrong was that there weren't any stockpiles. What we found in the after-action reports, after the intelligence report was done and then various special groups went and looked at the intelligence and what its validity was. What they found was that Saddam Hussein still had the capability to produce weapons of mass destruction. He had the technology, he had the people, he had the basic feed stocks.

They also found that he had every intention of resuming production once the international sanctions were lifted. He had a long reputation and record of having started two wars. Of having brutalized and killed hundreds of thousands of people, some of them with weapons of mass destruction in his own country. He had violated 16 National Security Council resolutions. He had established a relationship as a terror-sponsoring state, according to the State Department. He was making $25,000 payments to the families of suicide bombers.

This was a bad actor and the country's better off, the world's better off, with Saddam gone, and I think we made the right decision, in spite of the fact that the original NIE was off in some of its major judgments.

I agree with everything he said. I only wish the administration had been this clear and forthright in defending its position for the last few years. He is so right and people like Obama and the Democrats have been so wrong on these issues that you have to think it would have made a difference. We will miss Cheney's insight and judgment.