Cheney makes case for pre-emptive strike on Saddam; says US fears nuclear blackmail

Vice President Dick Cheney made the administration’s strongest argument yet on the need for a pre-emptive strike against Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

In a Monday address to the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW), Cheney opened with a line favored by the VFW leadership – healthcare – but devoted his speech adding much-needed coherency to the administration’s often muddled message about what to do about Iraq.

“This nation will not live at the mercy of terrorists or terrorist regimes,” Cheney told the veterans. Those urging legalistic approaches to wait until the US can prove Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, Cheney said, have flawed reasoning. “We will not simply look away, hope for the best and leave the matter to some future administration to resolve,” he stated.

Inaction “could bring devastating consequences for many countries, including our own,” the vice president said. “Armed with an arsenal of these weapons of terror and seated atop 10 percent of the world’s oil reserves, Saddam Hussein could then be expected to seek domination of the entire Middle East, take control of a great portion of the world’s energy supplies, directly threaten America’s friends throughout the region and subject the United States or any other nation to nuclear blackmail.”