what eye thynk: Not that it is stopping him from taking his sneer on the road; but no one--except maybe far-right, Republican congressional warmongers--believe anything Cheney has to say about the Middle East these days. (And I'm not sure even they truly believe him, but are simply too weak-minded to break from the party mantra.)
New York magazine's Jonathan Chait recently wrote, "Bush and Cheney may have rhetorically opposed the Iranian nuclear program. In reality, they allowed it to blossom... Measured by results, rather than sound bites, Cheney was the greatest thing that happened to the radical regime in Iran since it took power."
Even uber-conservative, I-Heart-War Senator and presidential candidate Lindsey Graham (R-So.Carolina) conceded, "I think the Bush administration, they were a miserable failure when it came to controlling Iran's nuclear ambition."
While the TV screen flashed the fact that Iran had zero known nuclear centrifuges at the beginning of the Bush/Cheney era and more than 5,000 at the end, the viewing audience was treated to this bit of attempted of equivocation:
Mr. Wallace: "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: "Well, 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."
Mr. Wallace: "But the centrifuges went from zero to 5,000."
Cheney: "Well, they may well have gone, but that happened on Obama's watch, not on our watch."
Mr. Wallace: "No, no, no. By 2009, they were at 5,000."
Cheney: "Right. But I think we did a lot to deal with the arms control problem in the Middle East. What we did not do is what Obama did. He never had a military option on the table.In the words of President Obama, "Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean that every problem is a nail."
The ex-VP added: "(President Obama) always dealt from a position of weakness, which I don't think we would have done."
Right, you and your cute little W puppet would have preferred to further tank the economy by borrowing another couple billion dollars to start yet another war and send even more young Americans to die. That would have really given Junior the chance to show up Poppy Bush once and for all, to say nothing of feeding your own voracious ego.
(Were you and your W-arionette already planning his costume for the big victory speech? Maybe beginning with a parachute jump onto the mall in D.C.? That would have been impressive with the added bonus of the opportunity to twist the knife in W's parachute-loving daddy's heart.)
Through diplomacy--with no cost to American lives and only the minimal expenditure of the dollars needed to fly diplomats to the Middle East to talk--(It's not a big word, Dick. I think you could learn it if you tried. Maybe drop that upper lip a bit first.) President Obama's "position of weakness" yielded a deal along with Germany, France, Great Britain, Russia and China that will see Iran reduce their nuclear centrifuges from today's total of 20,000 to about 5,000 first-generation IR-1 models.
Cheney is in D.C. today to condemn the Iran Nuclear Agreement in a speech to members of a conservative think tank. Considering his laughable grasp of the facts, I guess all the other Washington comedians were busy.
Really, when you can't even get an 'atta boy" from Fox or Lindsey Graham, it's time to go home.
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