Fuzzy Math
by matt at 6:00 am on September 11th, 2006 in Cheney, Iraq WarYour Vice President Dick Cheney (9/10/06):
“Think where we’d be if he was still there. He’d be sitting on top of a big pile of cash, because he’d have $65- and $70-oil. He would by now have taken down the sanctions” imposed by the United Nations. “He would be a major state sponsor of terror. We also would have a situation where he would have resumed his W.M.D. programs.”
Setting aside the simply false claims about the U.N. (from a man who pushed for the confirmation of a man who wanted to knock 10 floors off the U.N. headquarters), terrorist sponsorship and resumption of WMD programs are claims that have been repeatedly disproved, even by those in Cheney’s own party. Here’s the price of oil over the last nine years:
I wonder what could have happened in 2003 that shattered all the trend lines and sent the price of oil up 130%?
Leave it to Tim Russert, professional journalist, to fail to ask Dick about that.
sarabeth wrote:
Fuzzy math is when you take a minor liberty or two. Cheney is in a class by himself. Fantasy math, maybe?
But since he invited us, I thought a little about where we would be if Saddam was still there.
• Saddam would be as much and as little of a threat to the U.S. as he ever was.
• Al-Qaeda would not be anywhere near as strong as it is today.
• Osama would be dead or captured.
• Roughly 2,700 U.S. soldiers would still be alive.
• Roughly 30,000 U.S. soldiers would not be injured and maimed.
• Roughly 46,000 Iraqi civilians would still be alive.
• A heck of a lot of Iraqi soldiers would still be alive.
• 99.9% of the world’s population would never have heard of Abu Ghraib.
• We might still be able to hold our heads up high in the community of nations.
• With any luck, George Bush would not be president, and we wouldn’t have to listen to Cheney’s crap any more.
• With a different president, Katrina would have played out very differently.
• The world as well as the U.S. would be much more united, much less divided.
Posted 11 Sep 2006 at 6:24 am ¶