Dick Cheney truly understood Iraq. Seriously.

People have called Dick Cheney a lot of things, but he is not a stupid man. In fact, he has shown more true insight into the U.S. military involvement with Iraq than any other member of the Bush administration. I'm serious. Unfortunately, it was during the other Bush administration.

On the invading of Iraq:

"Should we, perhaps, have gone in to Baghdad? Should we have gotten involved to a greater extent then we did? Did we leave the job in some respects unfinished? I think the answer is a resounding "no." One of the reasons we were successful from a military perspective was because we had very clear-cut military objectives. The President gave us an assignment that could be achieved by the application of military force. He said, "Liberate Kuwait." He said, "Destroy Saddam Hussein's offensive capability," his capacity to threaten his neighbors -- both definable military objectives. You give me that kind of an assignment, I can go put together, as the Chiefs, General Powell, and General Schwarzkopf masterfully did, a battle plan to do exactly that. And as soon as we had achieved those objectives, we stopped hostilities, on the grounds that we had in fact fulfilled our objective.

I think that the proposition of going to Baghdad is also fallacious. I think if we were going to remove Saddam Hussein we would have had to go all the way to Baghdad, we would have to commit a lot of force because I do not believe he would wait in the Presidential Palace for us to arrive. I think we'd have had to hunt him down. And once we'd done that and we'd gotten rid of Saddam Hussein and his government, then we'd have had to put another government in its place.

What kind of government? Should it be a Sunni government or Shi'i government or a Kurdish government or Ba'athist regime? Or maybe we want to bring in some of the Islamic fundamentalists? How long would we have had to stay in Baghdad to keep that government in place? What would happen to the government once U.S. forces withdrew? How many casualties should the United States accept in that effort to try to create clarity and stability in a situation that is inherently unstable?

I think it is vitally important for a President to know when to use military force. I think it is also very important for him to know when not to commit U.S. military force. And it's my view that the President got it right both times, that it would have been a mistake for us to get bogged down in the quagmire inside Iraq."

Man, those were the days, weren't they? Back when Dick Cheney recognized that the military could handle military missions, i.e. breaking stuff, and not much else. That was back when Dick Cheney understood that Iraq was "inherently unstable" and that the strongman would have to be replaced by one of the factions and we would have to be that "weakman's" muscle to make him strong enough to hold power. That was back when he understood that we would have to take casualties to keep the puppet regime in power and that that regime wouldn't be secure after we left. That was before he ran Halliburton and later decided to tell America that "My belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators."

He even addressed the nuts and bolts of invading Iraq:

"I am personally persuaded that there are thousands of Americans home with their families today, and more on the way home who would not be coming home at all, if it hadn't been for the President's decision to double the force when he did last November to make certain that we could prevail in the shortest possible time and at the lowest possible cost.

One of the lessons that comes out of all of this is we should not ask our military personnel to engage "a little bit" in a war. If you are going to go to war, let's send the whole group; let's make certain that we've got a force of sufficient size, as we did when we went into Kuwait, so that we do not suffer any more casualties than are absolutely necessary."

Here, Cheney is showing that Donald Rumsfeld was woefully incapable of filling his shoes as Secretary of Defense. Cheney in 1990 knew that an overwhelming force was worth building up because it would insure success while minimizing losses. Rumsfeld wasn't as astute, with his "Surely 125,000 would suffice."

Dick Cheney's 1991 assessment of our military operations against Iraq appear especially ironic when looked at after our 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008 operations against Iraq, which he himself sold to the country as a war that would last "weeks rather than months."

In light of the disastrous war and occupation that he helped sell the country, in light of the breakdown of recruiting and retention that the military is suffering, Cheney's closing remarks are especially telling:

"I think the friends of the United States, not only in the Middle East but around the world, can look to the United States with renewed confidence that we have not only the capacity to protect our friends and observe our commitments, but we have the will to protect our friends and keep our commitments. And that, too, is a very significant development."