The worst cause

'Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency' by Barton Gellman' - LA Times

On the question of the war in Iraq and why Cheney pushed for it as he did, Gellman adds critical insight. Whether the vice president believed that Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction is an open question, though it is clear that he knowingly lied about U.S. intelligence in this regard. What he did believe was that the war was winnable and, therefore, would make a valuable "demonstration" of U.S. power that would deter any other hostile nation from allowing itself to become a "nexus" of common purpose with the Islamic extremists who attacked New York and suburban Washington, D.C., on 9/11. The possibility of such a "nexus" was, in Cheney's view, the great threat to American security. He embraced the neo-conservatives' notion of the U.S. as liberator, bringing democratic regime change to the Mideast, as a convenient rhetorical counterweight to Jihadist propaganda. Personally, he doubted democracy even was possible in the Middle East.