The senator has got his facts wrong. I have not suggested theres a con — Dick Cheney

"Senator, frankly you have a record in the Senate thats not very distinguished. Youve missed thirty-three out of thirty-six meetings in the judiciary committee, almost 70% of the meetings in the intelligence committee, youve missed a lot of key votes on tax policy, on energy, on medicare reform. Youre hometown newspaper has taken to calling you senator gone. Youve got one of the worst attendance records in the United States Senate. Now, in my capacity as Vice-President I am the president of the Senate. The presiding officer, Im up in the Senate most tuesdays when theyre in session, the first time Ive ever met you is when you walked onto this stage tonight"

"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."

"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."

"The good Lord didnt 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."

"Oil remains fundamentally a government business. While many regions of the world offer great oil opportunities, the Middle East with two thirds of the worlds oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies, even though companies are anxious for greater access there, progress continues to be slow."

"Because if we had gone to Baghdad we would have been all alone. There wouldnt 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 were willing to invade Iraq. Once you got to Iraq and took it over and took down Saddam Husseins government, then what are you going to put in its place? Thats a very volatile part of the world. And if you take down the central government in Iraq, you could easily end up seeing pieces of Iraq fly off. Part of it the Syrians would like to have, the west. Part of eastern Iraq the Iranians would like to claim. Fought over for eight years. In the north, youve got the Kurds. And if the Kurds spin loose and join with Kurds in Turkey, then you threaten the territorial integrity of Turkey. Its a quagmire if you 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 the families it wasnt 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, how many additional dead Americans is Saddam worth? And our judgment was not very many, and I think we got it right."