Former Vice President Dick Cheney on Sunday responded to Sen. Rand Paul’s (R-KY) charge that the U.S. should not be listening to Cheney when it comes to Iraq.
On ABC’s “This Week,” Jonathan Karl asked Cheney to respond to an op-ed Paul wrote for the Wall Street Journal, in which he criticized the former Vice President.
“I was a strong supporter then of going into Iraq, I’m a strong supporter now. Everybody knows what my position is,” Cheney said. “But if we spend 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. Rand Paul, with all due respect, is basically an isolationist. He doesn’t believe we ought to be involved in that part of the world.”
Karl also asked Cheney to defend his criticism of Obama.
“It almost seems like you’re accusing the president of treason here, saying he’s intentionally bringing America down a notch,” Karl probed.
“No, my reference didn’t refer just to Iraq. It referred to the fact that we’ve left a big vacuum in the Middle East by our withdrawal from Iraq with no stay-behind agreement, by the commitment he made just a couple of weeks ago, that we’re going to completely withdraw from Afghanistan with no stay-behind agreement,” Cheney responded. “Now, I don’t intend any disrespect for the president, but I fundamentally disagree with him. I think he’s dead wrong in terms of the course he’s taken this nation and I think we’re in for big trouble in the years ahead because of his refusal to recognize reality and because of his continual emphasis upon getting the U.S. basically to withdraw from that part of the world.”
