When the C-SPAN producer toiling in obscurity last month reached for the tape, he had no clue how juicy a nugget he had unearthed. The tape was labeled simply, "Life and Career of Dick Cheney"; dated April 15, 1994.
When he found it in the archives, the producer was just looking for something mildly interesting to help fill the 12-hour Cheney marathon planned by C-SPAN 3. The "Life and Career of Dick Cheney," produced for C-SPAN's "American Profile" series, seemed like a good bet for the marathon; after all, those interviews were personality-based and less wonky, letting viewers get a real feel for Dick and his wife/political partner, Lynne.
But instead of love and marriage, the "Life and Career" tape offered up a much younger looking Cheney saying that a U.S. invasion to capture Baghdad and topple Saddam Hussein would be, well, a quagmire.
At the time of the interview 13 years ago, Cheney was the ex-defense secretary, camped out at the American Enterprise Institute and contemplating a run for president. Asked why he didn't think U.S. forces should have gone on to Baghdad during the first Persian Gulf War, he asked rhetorically, "How many additional dead Americans is Saddam worth?" He added, "It's a quagmire if you go that far and try to take over Iraq."
The now famous "quagmire" tape, which has gotten over half a million views on YouTube, may well have remained buried in the archives for another decade (and doesn't Cheney wish it had!) if it hadn't been for that one C-SPAN producer, an affable young Irishman named Emmanuel Touhey.
Touhey didn't have time to review the entire hour-long tape before airing it, so he had no idea he was about to spark a firestorm on the Internet. And, at first, no one seemed to notice.
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/sleuth/
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