“Rarely has a U.S. president been so wrong about so much at the expense of so many” is what former Vice President Dick Cheney said about President Obama’s handling of the Iraq war. That’s easy for Cheney to say because he and George W. Bush created the mess that Obama has had to deal with.
In the editorial where Dick and daughter Liz stated their criticism of Obama’s war policy, they pick apart statements made by the POTUS that turned out to be incorrect. Cheney trying to call someone out for false statements regarding Iraq is like an icing-faced toddler saying that someone else at all the cake.
Cheney appeared on ABC’s “This Week”, after the Wall Street Journal published the Cheney-team editorial, to discuss Iraq. Host Jon Karl brought up the statement to Cheney before indicating bipartisan criticism of Cheney and gave the former veep a refresher course in incorrect statements made that go all the way back to 2002:
“Regime change in Iraq would bring about a number of benefits to the region.”
-Cheney, 2002
“We will, in fact, be greeted as liberators.”
-Cheney, 2003
“And I think they’re in the — in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency”
-Cheney, 2005
Despite a plethora of incorrect statements and outright lies, and trillions of dollars and thousands of lives unnecessarily lost, Cheney still stands by military intervention in Iraq.
But here’s the kicker, Cheney completely disregards all of the missteps regarding Iraq and said “If we spend all our time debating what happened 11 or 12 years ago, we’re going to miss the threat that is growing and that we do face.” He says that as if his and Bush’s mistakes are not important and are unrelated to the current problem.
The kind of short-sightedness and arrogance is the same thing that propelled the U.S. into the Iraq mess in the first place. And even still, Cheney keeps using 9/11 as a springboard to bolster his argument that we should be in Iraq. No, we will never forget the cost and lies, but Cheney certainly seems to have.
Josh is a writer and researcher with Ring of Fire. Follow him on Twitter @dnJdeli.
