JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Dick Cheney is often described as a chief architect of America's war on terror in the early 2000s and its invasion of Iraq. But in Iraq, he's better remembered as a key figure behind the destruction of the country. NPR's Jane Arraf, who covered the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, brings us this report.
JANE ARRAF, BYLINE: Cheney, as President George W. Bush's second-in-command, was convinced that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. He said this a few months before the U.S. invaded in March 2003.
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DICK CHENEY: There is no doubt that he is amassing them to use them against our friends, against our allies and against us.
ARRAF: That's not what U.N. weapons inspectors in Iraq were finding. Cheney relied on faulty intelligence, some of it planted by Iraqis in exile, a government in waiting. Cheney predicted that U.S. forces would be welcomed by the Iraqi people and that the operation would take just weeks. U.S. forces stayed for eight years.
While many Iraqis welcomed the toppling of Saddam Hussein, the occupation was intolerable. U.S. actions such as disbanding the Iraqi army led to an insurgency and the creation of the Sunni militant group al-Qaida in Iraq. Shia fighters also rallied to fight the Americans. Civil war broke out. As many as 211,000 Iraqi civilians were killed during the invasion and occupation. That's according to research from the Iraq Body Count project, and it's a conservative estimate. More than 4,500 U.S. military personnel were killed and another 32,000 wounded according to the U.S. military.
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MUNTADHAR AL-ZAIDI: (Non-English language spoken).
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AL-ZAIDI: (Non-English language spoken),
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ARRAF: In 2008, when Iraqi journalist Muntadhar al-Zaidi threw a shoe at President George W. Bush, it reflected Iraqi rage at the false assumptions that launched the war and its deadly unintended consequences. Even as the U.S. was mired in fighting, Cheney, during a vice presidential debate, defended the invasion.
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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 right - same course of action.
ARRAF: Cheney said the U.S. wanted Iraq to protect all its people and respect human rights. For decades, Shia Muslims had been an oppressed majority in Iraq. With Saddam and his largely Sunni regime gone, that changed, and Shia Iran went from being Iraq's greatest enemy under Saddam to its closest ally. More than 20 years later, the Iraqi government is struggling to bring Iran back to militias fully under state control.
There was one ethnic group so grateful to Cheney that for years, people named their sons after him. Cheney as defense secretary was instrumental in the U.S.-led no-fly zone that protected Iraqi Kurds in 1991, allowing them to break away from Saddam's control. A decade later, Cheney and the U.S. stumbled into a long-term occupation of Iraq and changed the course of history.
Jane Arraf, NPR News, Amman. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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