U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., is putting blame squarely on former Republican Vice President Dick Cheney for the current violence in the nation of Iraq, openly disagreeing with some members of his own party on what is already becoming a high politicized topic in Washington.
In an appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press , Paul — an oft speculated 2016 presidential contender — did not hold back in his criticism of Cheney’s involvement in getting the United States into a war with Iraq. The Kentucky senator and son of former presidential candidate Ron Paul challenged Cheney’s notion that President Barack Obama’s ending of the Iraq War somehow resulted in the situation the Middle Eastern nation currently finds itself in, with insurgents taking over cities in their march toward Baghdad.
“I don’t blame President Obama. Has he really got the solution? Maybe there is no solution. But I do blame those who are for the Iraq War for emboldening Iran. These are the same people now who are petrified of what Iran may become, and I understand some of their worry.”
While Paul was making his comments on NBC’s Meet the Press , Cheney was making his own appearance on ABC’s This Week and took Paul to task for what Cheney said was a misunderstanding of foreign policy and terrorism, according to a CBS News report.
“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. That didn’t work in the 1930s, it sure as heck won’t work in the aftermath of 9/11, when 19 guys armed with airline tickets and box cutters came all the way from Afghanistan and killed 3,000 of our citizens.”
U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., appeared on CBS’s Face the Nation and called Cheney’s views on the current situation “sick.”
“The fact is, what we’re seeing now is an outgrowth of that bad policy the neocons got us in, that crowd, on false pretense that said, go in there. And, as a result, ISIS was born. Let’s face that fact. It was Vice President Cheney and Condi Rice working for George W. Bush and Rumsfeld and all those folks — that’s just like, you know, a nightmare come back to haunt me, just frankly — who are basically telling us, get right back in there again. The American people don’t want it. The president doesn’t want us in.”
Paul’s criticism isn’t the first Cheney has had to sit through in recent days by an individual or group some would have considered a likely friend of the former Vice President. Fox News host Megyn Kelly took Cheney to task on his criticism of Obama, suggesting that Cheney was wrong about everything from America being greeted as liberators to the assertion that former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, both of which turned out to be false. Cheney, it should be noted, found no truth to Kelly’s points.
[Image via Senator Rand Paul | Facebook]
