New video footage of Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) shows him suggesting that former Vice President Dick Cheney pushed invading Iraq to help out Halliburton, where Cheney used to work.
The footage was resurfaced on Monday by Mother Jones’ David Corn. Paul, speaking at Western Kentucky University in 2009, said that in 1995 Cheney said that invading Baghdad would be a “disaster.” But, Paul continued, years later, after Cheney served as CEO of Halliburton, he was very much for invading the country.
“There’s a great YouTube of Dick Cheney in 1995 defending Bush number one. He’s being interviewed, I think, by the American Enterprise Institute. And he says it would be a disaster, it would be vastly expensive, it would be civil war, we’d have no exist strategy He goes on and on for five minutes —Dick Cheney saying it would be a bad idea,” Paul said in the clip. “And that’s why the first Bush didn’t go into Baghdad. Dick Cheney then goes to work for Halliburton, makes hundreds of millions of dollars —their CEO. Next thing you know, he’s back in government, it’s a good idea to go into Iraq.”
TPM reached out to AEI to find the video Paul was referencing and will update when we have it.
The video’s resurfacing came a few days after Cheney jabbed at Paul and other isolationists within the GOP during a private GOP fundraiser in Las Vegas. Cheney didn’t specifically call out Paul but in discussing the 2016 presidential campaign he said he worried about isolationist candidates, a clear hit at Paul who is regularly mentioned as a possible 2016 contender.
“One of the things that concerns me about the campaign, that I’m worried about is what I sense to be an increasing strain of isolationism, if I can put it in those terms, in our own party,” Cheney said.
Watch the video below. Paul’s comments on Cheney invading Iraq start at about 6:00:
Paul could have been referring to a 1992 speech Cheney gave to the Detroit Economic Club as Secretary of Defense, posted to YouTube in 2007 by Democrats. You can watch that video below:
This post was updated.
