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This is the first time I’ve ever seen eye-to-eye with Dick Cheney on any issue. Transcript follows below.

Q: “Do you think the U.S. or U.N. forces should have moved into Baghdad?”

A: “No.”

Q: “Why not?”

A: “Because if we’d gone to Baghdad, we would have been all alone, there wouldn’t have been anybody else with us. It would have been a U.S. occupation of Iraq. None of the Arab forces that were willing to fight with us in Kuwait would be willing to invade Iraq.

“Once you got to Iraq and took it over, took down Saddam Hussein’s government, then what are you gonna put in it’s place? That’s a very volatile part of the world, and if you take down the central government in Iraq, you could easily end up see pieces of Iraq fly off.

“Part of it, the Syrians would like to have to the west. Part of eastern Iraq, the Iranians would like to claim, fought ’em for it for eight years. In the north you’ve got the Kurds. If the Kurds spin loose and join with the Kurds in Turkey, then you threaten the territory and integrity of Turkey. It’s a quagmire, if you try to go that far and try to take over Iraq.

“The other thing is casualties. Everyone was impressed with the fact that we were able to do our job with as few casualties as we had. But for the 146 Americans killed in action and for their families, it wasn’t a cheap war. And the question for the President, in terms of whether or not we went on to Baghdad and took additional casualties in an effort to get Saddam Hussein, was home many additional dead Americans was Saddam worth? And our judgment was, not very many, and I think we got it right.”