In an interview last week, Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld said, "You know, wars are unpredictable and
post-war recoveries are unpredictable. Most countries
have a very difficult time. I've been reading statements
about how long it took the United States to move towards
a democracy and history books on Japan and Germany,
and some of the Eastern European countries. It's never
been easy, it's always difficult, it's frequently violent and
sometimes it's even ugly. It was Jefferson who said that
one ought not to expect to be transported towards
democracy on a feather bed." (7/16/04) His comments,
while an accurate portrayal of the last year of instability in
Iraq, are a far cry from predictions made by Secretary
Rumsfeld and other Bush Administration officials before
the war began.
Vice President Cheney
"I really do believe that we will be greeted as liberators. I've
talked with a lot of Iraqis in the last several months myself, had them
to the White House. The president and I have met with them,
various groups and individuals, people who have devoted their lives
from the outside to trying to change things inside Iraq. And like
Kanan Makiya who's a professor at Brandeis, but an Iraqi, he's
written great books about the subject, knows the country intimately,
and is a part of the democratic opposition and resistance. The read
we get on the people of Iraq is there is no question but what
they want to the get rid of Saddam Hussein and they will
welcome as liberators the United States when we come to do
that." (Cheney, Meet the Press, 3/16/03)
"I think that the people of Iraq would welcome the U.S. force as liberators; they
would not see us as oppressors, by any means. And our experience was after the
Gulf War in '91 that once the United States acted and provide leadership that in fact,
the community, the region was more peaceful for some considerable period of time.
That is what made possible a lot of progress in peace process between the Israelis and
Palestinians back in the early '90s." (Cheney, CNN American Morning, 9/9/02)
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld
"Think of the faces in Afghanistan when the people were liberated, when they moved
out in the streets and they started singing and flying kites and women went to
school and people were able to function and other countries were able to start
interacting with them. That's what would happen in Iraq." (Media Roundtable,
9/13/02)
Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz
"The Iraqi people understand what this crisis is about. Like the people of France in the
1940s, they view us as their hoped-for liberator. They know that America will not
come as a conqueror. Our plan, as President Bush has said, is to remain as long as
necessary, and not one day more. And the Iraqis also recognize that the economic and
political reconstruction of their country will be difficult. It will take their best efforts with
the help of the United States and our coalition partners. But they are driven by the
dream of a just and democratic society in Iraq." (Wolfowitz, Remarks to VFW
conference, 3/11/03)
[Rejecting Army Secretary Eric Shinseki's assessment that the mission would require
large numbers of troops for a long duration:] "We can't be sure that the Iraqi people will
welcome us as liberators, although based on what Iraqi-Americans told me in Detroit a
week ago, many of them - most of them with families in Iraq - I am reasonably
certain that they will greet us as liberators, and that will help us to keep
requirements down. In short, we don't know what the requirement will be, but we can
say with reasonable confidence that the notion of hundreds of thousands of American
troops is way off the mark." (Wolfowitz, House Budget Committee, 2/27/03)
"Until the regime is gone it's going to be very hard to do anything. Even in cities that
are liberated. I think when the people of Basra no longer feel the threat of that regime,
you are going to see an explosion of joy and relief." (Wolfowitz, News Conference,
3/25/03)
Secretary of State Colin Powell
"I hope we would be seen as liberators. I think that might well be the case. The
Iraqi people must be getting tired of living under a dictatorial regime that has used its
wealth, the wealth of its people, to develop weapons of mass destruction, to invade
neighbors, to threaten the world and to bring this crisis down on the Iraqi people. The
Iraqi people are hurting. And if only that $20 billion a year of oil revenue that is
available to it would be used for good and not evil, would be used to build the country
rather than build weapons, then perhaps if Iraqi people saw that that situation was
going to change, they might welcome that change rather than resist it." (Powell, Meet
the Press, 2/9/03)
"We understand the implications of such a change of regime action and have made a
commitment, to ourselves, anyway, as we start down this road that we would have
obligations to see it through. We would hope that if it came to that, there would be
such a sea change in the region, rather than it being seen as an assault, it would
be seen as a liberation, and it would be seen as the beginning of a new era in that
part of the world, as Mr. Lantos has spoken of. And we are working our way through
the issues that have been raised by such contingency. And it's another reason why we
went to the international community last week, because if we ever get to that point, we
want the international community in there; it will take the international community to
help stabilize the situation and create the kind of region that we talked about earlier."
(Powell, HIRC, 9/19/02)
Press Secretary Ari Fleischer
"The point, again, to be - to work with our international coalition, to work through the
U.N., to work through our military, to make certain that there is stability in the region.
But I think that can be a force for stability and a force for improvement of people's lives.
And take a look at what's happening in Afghanistan now, and the event that the
president had in Afghanistan today to mark what's happened in the improvement of
people's lives from where they were a year ago. The fact is that people want to be free.
Around the world, it doesn't matter what country they are, whether it's the United States
or anywhere in the world. Nobody wants to live under a brutal dictatorship. And the
people of Afghanistan view the United States as liberators...Now that's not to predict
what the ultimate outcome could be if we go to war, because nobody is saying a war will
not have difficulties and there would not be casualties. My point is, the likelihood is
much more like Afghanistan, where the people who live right now under a brutal
dictator will view America as liberators, not conquerors." (Fleischer, Press Briefing,
10/11/02)
Chief of Staff Andrew Card
"I think the Iraqi people are crying out for liberation and freedom. And they've been
denied it. They've been living in fear for a very long time. They're a very industrious
people, and they have an awful lot to contribute to their own society as well as to the
world, and they've been denied that chance to do so...I think the Iraqi people would
welcome freedom with jubilation." (Andrew Card, Fox News Sunday, 1/26/03)
