The SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER is reporting that Cheney has changed his position on Iraq:

In an assessment that differs sharply with his view today, Dick Cheney more than a decade ago defended the decision to leave Saddam Hussein in power after the first Gulf War, telling a Seattle audience that capturing Saddam wouldn’t be worth additional U.S. casualties or the risk of getting “bogged down in the problems of trying to take over and govern Iraq.”
Cheney, who was secretary of defense at the time, made the observations answering audience questions after a speech to the Discovery Institute in August 1992, nearly 18 months after U.S. forces routed the Iraqi army and liberated Kuwait.
. . . .
Last week, Cheney attacked Kerry for his alleged inconsistencies. “Senator Kerry … said that under his leadership, more of America’s friends would speak with one voice on Iraq. That seems a little odd coming from a guy who doesn’t speak with one voice himself. By his repeated efforts to recast and redefine the war on terror and our operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, Senator Kerry has given every indication that he lacks the resolve, the determination and the conviction to prevail in the conflict we face.”
Cheney’s office did not respond to requests for comment about his 1992 statements, nor did the White House. The Bush-Cheney re-election campaign, also asked about the 1992 statements, did not respond.

The trascript was discovered by Seatle Post-Intelligencer columnist Joe Connelly, who wrote in his “In the Northwest” column today entitled Bush-Cheney flip-flops cost America in blood:

The Bush-Cheney campaign has gleefully labeled John Kerry a flip-flopper. But what of Bush-Cheney flip-flops? They’re getting a lot less ink, but America is paying a price in blood.
Little noticed, and worthy of lengthy consideration, is a speech delivered by then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney in 1992 to the Discovery Institute in Seattle.
The words of our future vice president — defending the decision to end Gulf War I without occupying Iraq — eerily foretell today’s morass. Here is what Cheney said in ‘92:
“I would guess if we had gone in there, I would still have forces in Baghdad today. We’d be running the country. We would not have been able to get everybody out and bring everybody home.
“And the final point that I think needs to be made is this question of casualties. I don’t think you could have done all of that without significant additional U.S. casualties. And while everybody was tremendously impressed with the low cost of the (1991) conflict, for the 146 Americans who were killed in action and for their families, it wasn’t a cheap war.
“And the question in my mind is how many additional American casualties is Saddam (Hussein) worth? And the answer is not that damned many. So, I think we got it right, both when we decided to expel him from Kuwait, but also when the president made the decision that we’d achieved our objectives and we were not going to go get bogged down in the problems of trying to take over and govern Iraq.”

John Edwards imediately picked up on this in a speach today in West Virginia. From the New York Times:

Edwards Says Bush Administration of Botching Iraq Plans
Seizing on a published report that Vice President Dick Cheney had warned of getting “bogged down” in Iraq 12 years ago, Senator John Edwards today accused the Bush administration of botching plans for occupying Iraq and made clear it would be a topic during presidential debates.
“He knew — that’s the worse part about this — he knew how dangerous this was,” Mr. Edwards told a crowd here. “They knew that there were enormous predictors of what would be happening there and they still didn’t have a plan even though they knew what might be coming.”

San Francisco Chronical reporter Marc Sandalow takes an indepth look at Bush’s evolving rhetoric regading the Iraq war.

Record shows Bush shifting on Iraq war
President Bush portrays his position on Iraq as steady and unwavering as he represents Sen. John Kerry’s stance as ambiguous and vacillating.
“Mixed signals are the wrong signals,” Bush said last week during a campaign stop in Bangor, Maine. “I will continue to lead with clarity, and when I say something, I’ll mean what I say.”
Yet, heading into the first presidential debate Thursday, which will focus on foreign affairs, there is much in the public record to suggest that Bush’s words on Iraq have evolved — or, in the parlance his campaign often uses to describe Kerry, flip-flopped.
An examination of more than 150 of Bush’s speeches, radio addresses and responses to reporters’ questions reveal a steady progression of language, mostly to reflect changing circumstances such as the failure to discover weapons of mass destruction, the lack of ties between Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist network and the growing violence of Iraqi insurgents.
. . . .
Yet a close look at the record makes it difficult to support Bush campaign chairman Ken Mehlman’s description of the upcoming debate as a “square-off between resolve and optimism versus vacillation and defeatism.”
A careful reading of Bush’s statements on Iraq reveals many instances of consistency, just as The Chronicle’s examination of Kerry’s words found consistency in the Democratic challenger’s statements. Over and over, Bush stated that the tragedy of Sept. 11, 2001, changed the way Americans — including the commander in chief — viewed the threat of terrorism and lowered the threshold of risk Americans were willing to accept.

Read the rest of the news analysis here.