“During the [2000 presidential] campaign, vice presidential candidate [Dick] Cheney also defended the decision during the 1991 [Gulf] war to not attack Baghdad. The United States, he said during an [August 27, 2000] interview on NBC’s Meet the Press, should not act as though ‘we were an imperialist power, willy-nilly moving into capitals in that part of the world, taking down governments.’ Cheney appeared to endorse the Clinton administration’s containment policy, saying that ‘we want to maintain our current posture vis-a-vis Iraq.’ ”
– Thomas E. Ricks, Fiasco, Page 25