Former Vice President Dick Cheney blasted President Obama as “the worst president of my lifetime” on Tuesday, but stopped short of echoing former Alaska governor Sarah Palin’s call for the president’s impeachment.
“Jimmy Carter might have been a better president than Barack Obama, and I didn’t think I would ever say that,” Cheney said during an interview Tuesday with CNN.
{mosads}Cheney said he was “not prepared at this point to call for the impeachment of the president,” but said he was encouraged by House Speaker John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) lawsuit challenging the delay in the ObamaCare employer mandate.
“I think he is the worst president of my lifetime. I fundamentally disagree with him. I think he’s doing a lot of things wrong,” Cheney said.
The former vice president also looked to pin blame on the situation in Iraq on Obama, saying the Bush Administration “made good decisions” and left a “very stable situation” in the country.
“By the time we left office, Iraq was in relatively good shape,” Cheney said. “The plan was to have a stay-behind force that could continue to train the Iraqis and provide capabilities they didn’t have themselves, intelligence, air and so forth. And what happened was, that stay-behind agreement was never negotiated.”
Cheney said responsibility for the current sectarian violence was “primarily” the fault of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki and President Obama.
“Obviously, Maliki bears some of the responsibility — but Obama’s failure to provide for a stay-behind force is what created the havoc we see in Iraq today,” Cheney added.
The White House has dismissed Cheney’s criticism of its Iraq policy, with former press secretary Jay Canry saying it was “pretty clear President Obama and our team here have distinctly different views on Iraq.”
The administration has also dismissed Palin’s call for impeachment.
Attorney General Eric Holder quipped Palin “wasn’t a particularly good vice presidential candidate” and is “an even worse judge of who ought to be impeached and why” when asked about the comments during an interview with ABC News.