Cheney rebuffs Bill Clinton’s criticism on Iraq

Former Vice President Dick Cheney on Wednesday rebuffed Bill Clinton’s comments from a day earlier in which Clinton placed blame on the Bush administration for the current crisis in Iraq. 

“Well, I usually haven’t looked at Bill for advice. He doesn’t call me very often,” Cheney said on Fox News’s “Fox and Friends.” “He also warned about weapons of mass destruction and the possibility that if Saddam had them, which they believed he did, that he would someday use them.”

{mosads}In 1998, when Clinton was president, the U.S. over a four-day period bombed targets in Iraq that could have been used to produce, store and deliver weapons of mass destruction. Saddam Hussein was Iraq’s president at the time. 

At an event for the Clinton Global Initiative on Tuesday, Clinton responded to Cheney’s latest criticisms of the Obama administration’s foreign policies.

“I believe if they hadn’t gone to war in Iraq, none of this would be happening,” Clinton said in an interview that will air Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” 

“Mr. Cheney has been incredibly adroit for the last six years or so attacking the administration for not doing an adequate job of cleaning up the mess that he made. I think it’s unseemly,” he added. “And I give President Bush, by the way, a lot of credit for trying to stay out of this debate and letting other people work through it.” 

Cheney and his daughter, Liz, recently blasted President Obama’s strategy in Iraq in an op-ed published in The Wall Street Journal. The piece sparked outrage because of the justification Cheney used for the 2003 invasion.

“Rarely has a U.S. president been so wrong about so much at the expense of so many,” the Cheneys wrote.