First of all, Dick Cheney was the architect of the Iraq invasion after 9/11, which even conservatives agree (including all the GOP candidates) was a huge mistake. Cheney says we had faulty intelligence and that Saddam was a bad guy, both of which are/were true. But as this blog has attested, it was easy to see that the intelligence in Iraq was faulty, if not actually manipulated by Cheney and his cronies. When it comes to the Middle East, the man is simply wrong, at best — a liar at worst.
Which is why it is odd that he bothers to go out an public and opine about the Iran nuclear deal. But he does. And he is so… evil… that even Chris Wallace at Fox News — at Fox News — catches him behaving badly:
Wallace pointed out that Cheney had eight years to deal with Iran’s nuclear program and failed to do it.
“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,” Wallace noted. “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?” the Fox News host asked.
“I don’t think of it that way,” Cheney replied. “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.”
“But the centrifuges went from zero to 5,000,” Wallace pressed.
“Well, they may have well have gone but that happened on Obama’s watch, not on our watch,” Cheney wrongly insisted.
“No, no, no,” Wallace fired back. “By 2009, they were at 5,000.”
“Right,” Cheney grumbled. “But I think we did a lot to deal with the arms control problem in the Middle East.”
Is it dementia? Or some sort of severe cognitive dissonance that is causing him to double down on the Bush Administration’s persistent foreign policy failures? As John Cole says, Cheney “has since passed that stage and now his only argument is ‘things were better when we were in charge.’ That’s it. That’s all he’s got.” Indeed.
We should remember that the Iran was encouraged to continue to develop its nuclear weaponization because of the Bush-Cheney invasion of Iraq. As one of the three countries in the so-called axis of evil, they saw what happened to Iraq — a country that stopped pursuing WMD and destroyed most of theirs to make us happy. And they saw what didn’t happen to the nuclear armed North Korea – a country that continues to develop WMD unabated for the most part. And Iran decided it wanted to be more like North Korea. Yet, another by-product of the Iraq war. This is what happens when you destabilize a region: you throw the cards up in the air and they might not come down in a way that is an improvement.
But Cheney’s going to talk anyway.
Maybe it has something to do with Colin Powell speaking in favor of the Iran Nuclear Agreement last week.
You know who should not be speaking at all on the agreement? Trump:
Donald Trump says the Iran nuclear deal would force the United States to defend Iran if it were attacked by Israel.
“One of the clauses in the nuclear deal reached between world powers and Iran last week guarantees that the world powers will assist Iran in thwarting attempts to undermine its nuclear program,” Israel Hayom, a newsletter, said July 20.
But experts told PolitiFact Florida in late July that such interpretations are, at best, exaggerated. The aim of the provision, they said, is to protect nuclear materials from theft (say, if terrorists tried to steal Iranian assets) or from sabotage (with the intent of causing a hazardous-materials threat to health).
For years, in both Republican and Democratic administrations, the United States has pushed countries around the world to improve security for their nuclear material and facilities, said Matthew Bunn, a professor at Harvard and an expert on nuclear theft and terrorism. This agreement furthers that goal, he said.
“It has nothing to do with helping Iran protect its nuclear facilities from a military attack” of the kind that Israel or Egypt might carry out, Bunn said. “It’s about protecting against thieves and terrorists who might want to steal nuclear material or sabotage a nuclear facility.”
Of course it is false. All you have to do is apply common sense.
P.S. For what it is worth, the deal is going to pass Congress by a veto-proof majority….
All summer long, the question in the congressional debate over the Iran deal has been whether opponents could muster a veto-proof majority to block the agreement from taking effect.
Now it looks like President Obama might not have to use his veto pen at all.
Within minutes of each other Tuesday, three more Senate Democrats—Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, Gary Peters of Michigan, and Ron Wyden of Oregon—all came out in favor of the nuclear deal, bringing the total number of supporters in the Senate to 41. That means Democrats have enough votes to filibuster a resolution of disapproval and block it from coming to a final vote.
UPDATE: The White House just came out with this video….
Yes a thousand times.