Dick Cheney has been pounding the conservative media circuit lately promoting his latest book effort at revisionist history, “Exceptional: Why the World Needs a Powerful America,” co-authored by his daughter Liz Cheney.
The Cheneys have also been promoting war in the Middle East, claiming President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran is a mistake – essentially the end of American civilization as we know it.
However, as The Washington Post reported last week, “It is far from clear that Cheney’s arguments, calcified in the intervening years, wield much influence anymore, even within his own party, or that they should. Rather than a slugfest, this feels like a swan song.”
Even the people at Fox News, once a place of refuge for Cheney, have turned against Dick Cheney, particularly when it comes to his seemingly never ending lies about war.
Most recently, Cheney appeared on Fox News Sunday and was “grilled about his opposition to the Iran nuclear deal by Chris Wallace.” During the interview, Cheney attempted to blame President Obama for “walking away from the Middle East” and creating a “huge vacuum,” but Wallace called him out, asking: “In fairness, didn’t you leave President Obama with a mess?” The interview started with Wallace questioning Cheney’s assertion that Obama’s deal with Iran was akin to Neville Chamberlain appeasing Adolph Hitler in Munich in 1938. Cheney refused to back down, responding:
If you look at what happened with respect to [Obama’s] Iranian deal, the only winners are Iranians. The losers are the United States, are the friends and allies of the United States in the region, the Israelis, the Saudis and others. I think it’s a big deal, a major, major defeat — in my mind — in terms of our position in the region.
Wallace responding by pointing out that Cheney had failed for eight years to address Iran’s nuclear program:
You and President Bush, the Bush-Cheney administration, dealt with Iran for eight years, and I think it was fair to say that there was never any real, serious military threat. Iran went from zero known centrifuges in operation to more than 5,000. So in fairness, didn’t you leave — the Bush-Cheney administration — leave President Obama with a mess?
Cheney replied:
I don’t think of it that way. There was military action that had an impact on the Iranians, it was when we took down Saddam Hussein. There was a period of time when they stopped their program because they were scared that what we did to Saddam, we were going to do to them next.
Wallace continued his attacking, stating: “But the centrifuges went from zero to 5,000.” Cheney persisted, wrongly noting: “Well, they may have well have gone but that happened on Obama’s watch, not on our watch.” “No, no, no,” Wallace responded, adding that “By 2009, they were at 5,000.” “Right,” Cheney conceded and tried to salvage the interview by insisting: “But I think we did a lot to deal with the arms control problem in the Middle East.”
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