openpolitics.com

Some Ask What George W. Bush Would Have Done With Different Iraq Data

“Did the president make the right decision? Obviously, I thought so and still do,” Donald H. Rumsfeld, the former defense secretary, said for the Bush administration history. “I mean, I think he was faced with a whole set of reasons which seemed to me to be persuasive then and now.”

Former Vice President Dick Cheney, asked during an NBC interview a few years ago, said the decision was still the right one. “Oh sure,” he said. “It was sound policy that dealt with a very serious problem and that eliminated Saddam Hussein.”

.. “Instead,” he added, “as a result of our actions in Iraq, one of America’s most committed and dangerous enemies stopped threatening us forever.” And with the troop increase that he ordered that helped turn around the war before he left office, Mr. Bush argued that “25 million Iraqis went from living under a dictatorship of fear to seeing the prospect of a peaceful, functioning democracy.”