Dick Cheney Quotes

36 Sourced Quotes

Here's what I can tell you about Don Rumsfeld. You're never going to get any credit. And you'll only know how well you're doing if he gives you more work. If that happens, you're doing fine.

Dick Cheney
What we did in Iraq was exactly the right thing to do. If I had it to recommend all over again, I would recommend exactly the same course of action.

Dick Cheney
I think we may well have some kind of presence there over a period of time... The level of activity that we see today from a military standpoint, I think, will clearly decline. I think they're in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency.

Dick Cheney
With respect to the question of relationships, my general view is that freedom means freedom for everyone. People... ought to be free to enter into any kind of relationship they want to.

Dick Cheney
My belief is, we will, in fact be greeted as liberators.

Dick Cheney
I had a reputation of being somewhat moderate, partly, I think, because I wasn't a 'bomb thrower' like some of my conservative colleagues, and partly because I got along with people all across the political spectrum.

Dick Cheney
If there's a one percent chance that Pakistani scientists are helping al-Qaeda build or develop a nuclear weapon, we have to treat it as a certainty in terms of our response.

Dick Cheney
Because if we make the wrong choice, then the danger is that we'll get hit again, that we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States, and that we'll fall back into the pre-9/11 mind set if you will, that in fact these terrorist attacks are just criminal acts, and that we're not really at war. I think that would be a terrible mistake for us.

Dick Cheney
Hugh Hewitt: Is Obama naïve, Mr. Vice President? Or does he have a far-reaching vision that only he entertains of a realigned Middle East that somehow it all works out in the end?
Dick Cheney: I don't know, Hugh. I vacillate between the various theories I've heard, but you know, if you had somebody as president who wanted to take America down, who wanted to fundamentally weaken our position in the world and reduce our capacity to influence events, turn our back on our allies and encourage our adversaries, it would look exactly like what Barack Obama's doing. I think his actions are constituted in my mind those of the worst president we've ever had.

Dick Cheney
Watching a coordinated, devastating attack on our country from an underground bunker at the White House can affect how you view your responsibilities.

Dick Cheney
[In response to "Reconstituted nuclear weapons. You misspoke."] Yeah. I did misspeak. I said repeatedly during the show weapons capability. We never had any evidence that he had acquired a nuclear weapon.

Dick Cheney
We believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons.

Dick Cheney
America has shown we are serious about removing the threat of weapons of mass destruction."..."We now know that Saddam Hussein had the capacity to produce weapons of mass destruction.... We know he had the necessary infrastructure because we found the labs and the dual-use facilities that could be used for these chemical and biological agents. We know that he was developing the delivery systems — ballistic missiles — that had been prohibited by the United Nations.

Dick Cheney
We also have to work, though, sort of the dark side, if you will.

Dick Cheney
If we're successful in Iraq, if we can stand up a good representative government in Iraq, that secures the region so that it never again becomes a threat to its neighbors or to the United States, so it's not pursuing weapons of mass destruction, so that it's not a safe haven for terrorists, now we will have struck a major blow right at the heart of the base, if you will, the geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under assault now for many years, but most especially on 9/11.

Dick Cheney
My belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators.... I think it will go relatively quickly,... [in] weeks rather than months.

Dick Cheney
I think so. I guess if I look back on it now, I don't think anybody anticipated the level of violence that we've encountered.

Dick Cheney
Principle is okay up to a certain point, but principle doesn't do any good if you lose.

Dick Cheney
You know, Paul, Reagan proved that deficits don't matter. We won the mid-term elections, this is our due.

Dick Cheney
[In response to "We have not been greeted as liberators."] "Well, I think we have by most Iraqis. I think the majority of Iraqis are thankful for the fact that the United States is there, that we came and we took down the Saddam Hussein government. And I think if you go in vast areas of the country, the Shia in the south, which are about 60 percent of the population, 20-plus percent in the north, in the Kurdish areas, and in some of the Sunni areas, you'll find that, for the most part, a majority of Iraqis support what we did.

Dick Cheney
And the question in my mind is how many additional American casualties is Saddam worth? And the answer is not very damned many. So I think we got it right, both when we decided to expel him from Kuwait, but also when the president made the decision that we'd achieved our objectives and we were not going to go get bogged down in the problems of trying to take over and govern Iraq.... Once we had rounded him up and gotten rid of his government, then the question is what do you put in its place? You know, you then have accepted the responsibility for governing Iraq.

Dick Cheney
Dick Cheney: I'm more concerned with bad guys who got out and released than I am with a few that, in fact, were innocent.
Chuck Todd: 25% of the detainees though, 25% turned out to be innocent. They were released.
Dick Cheney: Where are you going to draw the line, Chuck? How are—
Chuck Todd: Well, I'm asking you.
Dick Cheney: —you going to know? [Overtalk]
Chuck Todd: Is that too high? You're okay with that margin for error?
Dick Cheney: I have no problem as long as we achieve our objective.

Dick Cheney
This is an existential conflict. It is the kind of conflict that's going to drive our policy and our government for the next 20 or 30 or 40 years. We have to prevail and we have to have the stomach for the fight long term.

Dick Cheney
Wolf, you can come up with all kinds of what-ifs; you've got to deal with the reality on the ground. The reality on the ground is, we've made major progress. We've still got a lot of work to do. There's a lot of provinces in Iraq that are relatively quiet. There's more and more authority transferred to the Iraqis all the time.... Bottom line is that we've had enormous successes and we will continue to have enormous successes.

Dick Cheney
Senator Kerry says he sees two Americas. And that makes the whole thing mutual — America sees two John Kerrys.

Dick Cheney
The good Lord didn't see fit to put oil and gas only where there are democratically elected regimes friendly to the United States. Occasionally we have to operate in places where, all things considered, one would not normally choose to go. But, we go where the business is.

Dick Cheney
If fine speech-making, appeals to reason, or pleas for compassion had the power to move them, the terrorists would long ago have abandoned the field.

Dick Cheney
Let us rid ourselves of the fiction that low oil prices are somehow good for the United States.

Dick Cheney
If the Democratic policies had been pursued over the last two or three years... we would not have had the kind of job growth we've had.

Dick Cheney
The important thing here to understand is that the people that are at Guantanamo are bad people. I mean, these are terrorists for the most part.

Dick Cheney