Prophecy?

" I think that the proposition of going to Baghdad is also fallacious. I think if we are 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 Suddam Hussein and his government, then we'd have had to put in another government in its place. What kind of government? Should it be a Sunni government or Shi'i government or a Kurdish government or a 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 casualities 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."

--- Dick Cheney, the Washington's Institute's Soref Symposium, April 29, 1991