Rand Paul: Dick Cheney used 9/11 as excuse to invade Iraq for the benefit of Halliburton – Democratic Underground
Rand Paul speaking to student Republican at western Kentucky University in 2009
It’s Dick Cheney in 1995 being interviewed on why they didn’t go into Baghdad the first time under the first George Bush. And his arguments are exactly mirroring my dad’s arguments for why we shouldn’t have gone in this time. It would be chaos. There’d be a civil war. There’d be no exit strategy. And cost a blue bloody fortune in both lives and treasure. And this is Dick Cheney saying this. But, you know, a couple hundred million dollars later Dick Cheney earns from Halliburton, he comes back into government. Now Halliburton’s got a billion-dollar no-bid contract in Iraq. You know, you hate to be so cynical that you think some of these corporations are able to influence policy, but I think sometimes they are. Most of the people on these committees have a million dollars in their bank account all from different military industrial contractors. We don’t want our defense to be defined by people who make money off of the weapons.