George Will suggests a number of hard-hitting questions for senators to ask secretary of state nominee Condoleezza Rice during her confirmation hearing. Among them, Will wants to know whether Rice would agree with the secretary of defense during the first Iraq war, who stated: "Once you've got Baghdad, it's not clear what you do with it. It's not clear what kind of government you would put in place of the one that's currently there now. Is it going to be a Shia regime, a Sunni regime or a Kurdish regime? Or one that tilts toward the Baathists, or one that tilts toward the Islamic fundamentalists? How much credibility is that government going to have if it's set up by the United States military when it's there? How long does the United States military have to stay to protect the people that sign on for that government, and what happens to it once we leave?" The defense secretary skepticly raising these questions was none other than the current vice president, Dick Cheney.

Exactly when and by what means, in the twelve years between issuing these remarks and marking himself as the chief administration hawk balking at these very same warnings, did aliens steal Dick Cheney's brain?

Maybe aliens didn't steal his brain. Maybe he's just a really smart guy who understood the problems we would face and believed Saddam had to go anyway or the situation in the Middle East would create more and more drastic dangers for the rest of the world. Either that or aliens stole his brain.

I think aliens stole his brain but a very long time ago. He was a hawk in the 80s along with the neocons in general but communism was the enemy. They consistently freaked out at Reagan for dealing with Gorby man to man and for signing arms reduction treaties. They flipped out over Reagan's withdrawal of the marines from Beirut as well. These were Cheney's views also (and Quayle's by the way).

I think that Cheney's reasonableness as illustrated in that quote had more to do with the balance of power in 41's cabinet being unfavorable to the hardline neocons than anything else. A situation which has changed significantly with 43. Otherwise . . . the aliens (neocons) didn't steal his brain until 9/11.

Great column by Will tho. It is nice to see that even though he still yaps about the greatness of FDR, Moynihan, globalization, deficit spending, concession in the culture wars, etc., that he is at least thinking like a conservative again on some issues.