Candidates Dick Cheney and Joseph Lieberman discuss Iraq during a vice presidential debate.
There isn’t really much debate. Both the former secretary of defense and the Connecticut senator support more aggressive action to achieve regime change in Iraq—and both are generally critical of Clinton administration policy.
Cheney defends his record in stopping the 1991 Gulf War short of overthrowing the Iraqi leader and marching on Baghdad by saying that Saddam’s military was “decimated” and that Iraq was “back in the box” after being ejected from Kuwait.
Cheney blames the Clinton administration for allowing sanctions to fray. If it were discovered that Iraq is rebuilding weapons of mass destruction, Cheney says the U.S. might have to consider military action. On a question regarding “taking out” Saddam Hussein, Cheney says: “We might have no other choice.”
But for all of the later criticism of the Bush administration’s supposed conspiracy to depose Saddam and go to war in Iraq, the debate proved a hawk-fest, Lieberman just as hostile towards any kind of normalization of relations, almost competing with Cheney as to who would guarantee military action.