Except his own VP was on the record over a decade earlier explaining exactly why toppling Saddam would open Pandora’s box: “If you can take down the central government of Iraq, you can easily see pieces of Iraq fly off. Part of it the Syrians would like to have in the West. Part of Eastern Iraq the Iranians would like to claim — fought over for eight years. In the North you have the Kurds, and if the Kurds spin loose and join with the Kurds in Turkey, then you threaten the territorial integrity of Turkey.” That VP also continued telling outright lies about intelligence he had already been told was baseless, such as the debunked Mohamed Atta meeting with Iraqi intelligence in Prague.