Cheney ‘stunned’ by Ferguson section of Obama speech

Former Vice President Dick Cheney on Wednesday night blasted President Obama for invoking the Ferguson, Mo., police shooting during his speech in front of the United Nations General Assembly. 

Cheney accused Obama of comparing the events in Ferguson to the actions of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). 

{mosads}”I was stunned,” Cheney said on Fox News. “I mean, in one case, you’ve got a police officer involved in a shooting. There may be questions about it. They’ll be sorted out through the legal process. There’s no comparison to that with what ISIS is doing to thousands of people throughout the Middle East, with bloody beheadings of anybody they come in contact with. I mean, to compare the two as though somehow, there’s moral equivalence there, is, I think, outrageous.”

Obama invoked the police shooting in Ferguson of 18-year-old Michael Brown during a section of his speech calling for the Muslim world to focus on its potential and reject sectarianism and extremism. 

Obama pushed back on critics who said the United States is an imperfect messenger. He welcomed international scrutiny, saying the United States is “willing to criticize ourselves when we fall short.” 

“In a summer marked by instability in the Middle East and Eastern Europe, I know the world also took notice of the small American city of Ferguson, Missouri, — where a young man was killed, and a community was divided,” he said. “So, yes, we have our own racial and ethnic tensions. And like every country, we continually wrestle with how to reconcile the vast changes wrought by globalization and greater diversity with the traditions that we hold dear.”

Separately, Cheney said U.S. combat troops would eventually be needed on the ground in order to defeat ISIS. But he said Obama has a tendency to refuse to “accept good military advice in terms of how he actually uses the force.”

The former vice president also reiterated his predictions that the United States would likely be hit with another terrorist attack in the next decade. 

“It’s not just ISIS. ISIS front and center right now,” he said. “But I believe there’ll be another mass casualty attack against the United States.”