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Politics : Moderate Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: epicure who wrote (3570)	9/14/2003 12:12:32 PM
From: epicure	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 20773

Vice president says he doesn't know how long U.S. troops will need to stay in Iraq By JENNIFER LOVEN ASSOCIATED PRESS WASHINGTON, Sept. 14 — Vice President Dick Cheney said Sunday he does not know when the U.S. military presence in Iraq will end and hinted the Bush administration would seek more money than the $87 billion already requested to cover U.S. costs there. ''How long does it take? I don't know. I can't say. I don't think anybody can say with absolute certainty at this point,'' Cheney said on NBC's ''Meet the Press.'' Amid a rising U.S. casualty count in Iraq and continuing attacks and other resistance, the administration has faced criticism for its postwar strategy. Despite those doubts, Cheney said the U.S. occupation is seeing ''major success, major progress'' in Iraq. ''We've achieved already, when you consider we've only been there about four months, a great deal and we're well on our way to achieving our objectives,'' he said. The White House has asked Congress to approve $87 billion for military and reconstruction activities in Iraq. Asked if that would be the last such request from the administration, Cheney replied: ''I can't say that. It's all we think we'll need for the foreseeable future, for this year.'' But he defended the request. ''What's the cost if we don't act? What's the cost if we do nothing? What's the cost if we don't succeed with respect to our current operation in Iraq?'' he said. ''I think that's far higher than getting the job done right here.'' Cheney insisted that evidence will be found to back up the administration's claims that the government of ousted President Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. Such evidence has not been found, despite the administration's claims it knew where the weapons were. The suspected weapons were cited as a main rationale for going to war to oust Saddam. ''The jury is still out in terms of trying to get everything pulled together with respect to what we know,'' Cheney said. He said the U.S. team now searching Iraq for evidence of a nuclear weapons program ''will find more evidence ... that in fact (Saddam) had a robust plan, had previously worked on it and would work on it again.'' As for chemical and biological weapons, Cheney said he believes they are ''buried inside its civilian infrastructure.'' Speaking of the chief weapons hunter, Cheney said: ''David Kay's task is to look for the people that were involved in the program, to find documentary evidence to back it up, to find physical evidence when he can find that. It's a hard task, but I've got great confidence that he can do this.'' famulus.msnbc.com.