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Cheney: The Iraq War just like pardoning Nixon
In an interview, the veep compared the political pressure on Gerald Ford not to pardon Nixon to the political pressure to get the hell out of Iraq. In both cases, he asserts, history will hold that the respective presidents did the right thing, regardless of polls.
Quotes after the jump.
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I had the experience, for example, of working for Jerry Ford, and I've never forgotten the travails he went through after he had been president for 30 days when he issued the pardon of former president Nixon. And there was consternation coast to coast.
[snip]
Except that when Ford pardoned Nixon, 4,000 Americans didn't have to die. A small distinction, I guess.
[snip]
Thirty years later, nearly everybody would say it is exactly the right thing to do, that if he'd paid attention at the time to the polls he never would have done that. But he demonstrated, I think, great courage and great foresight, and the country was better off for what Jerry Ford did that day. And 30 years later, everybody recognized it.
And I have the same strong conviction the issues we're dealing with today -- the global war on terror, the war in Afghanistan and Iraq -- that all of the tough calls the president has had to make, that 30 years from now it will be clear that he made the right decisions, and that the effort we mounted was the right one, and that if we had listened to the polls, we would have gotten it wrong.