Cheney: Iraq invasion was well worth the effort
“If you look back on those five years it has been a difficult, challenging but nonetheless successful endeavour... and it has been well worth the effort,” Mr Cheney told a news conference in Baghdad after meeting Iraqi leaders.
The Iraq war is a big issue in the US presidential campaign. As it enters it sixth year, the war has cost the US economy $500 billion (€317bn) and seen nearly 4,000 US soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqis killed.
Shortly after Cheney spoke, a woman wearing a suicide vest blew herself up in a cafe in the southern holy Shi’ite city of Kerbala, killing 32 people and wounding 50, police and health officials said. Bombs in Baghdad killed four and wounded 13.
Cheney arrived as Republican presidential candidate John McCain was meeting Iraqi leaders as part of a Senate Armed Services Committee fact-finding mission.
“I was last in Baghdad 10 months ago and I sense that, as a result of the progress that has been made since then, phenomenal changes in terms of the overall situation,” Mr Cheney said after meeting Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.
The US second-in-command said there had been a “remarkable turnaround” in security after 30,000 extra troops were sent to Iraq last year to help reduce sectarian violence that threatened civil war.
Despite the improved security, however, about four million Iraqis are still displaced.
