In an August 14, 1992, speech to the Discovery Institute in Seattle, Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney said, regarding the decision to pull out of Iraq without invading Baghdad or overthrowing Saddam: " 'I would guess if we had gone in there, I would still have forces in Baghdad today. We'd be running the country. We would not have been able to get everybody out and bring everybody home.' "
– Joel Connelly, “In the Northwest: Bush-Cheney Flip-Flops Cost America in Blood,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, September 28, 2004,