Credibility, Thy Name Is NOT Cheney

Former Vice President Dick Cheney, that paragon of virtue, was interviewed over the weekend on national security matters. As you might expect, the interview was chock full of gems:

Cheney voiced support for the administration's recent decision to supply arms to Syrian rebel groups working to unseat Syrian President Bashar Assad, but said the infusion of aid may be "a day late and a dollar short."

"I think it is important that Assad go down. I think my instinct would have been to support the opposition sooner," he said. "You had an opportunity earlier to provide support without having to get American forces directly involved, and they took a pass. Now they are going to do it."

Overall, Cheney said, "I don't think it's been well-handled."

 (Emphasis mine) This from the Vice President who lied us into Iraq, claiming that there were non-existent "weapons of mass destruction" and promised that we would be "greeted as liberators"? A war from which we were only able to disentangle ourselves after ten years?

Cheney has about as much authority on matters being "well-handled" as my foot.

Source: CBS News

Then there was this:

He added that President Obama's defense of the eavesdropping programs is ineffective because Obama has been weak on security issues. Cheney complained that under Obama, the Internal Revenue Service had targeted conservative groups for extra scrutiny and the administration had made crucial errors in protecting Americans during terrorist attacks on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, last year. Four Americans, including an ambassador, were killed in those attacks. "He's got no credibility," Cheney said of Obama.

 OK...let's, as they say on cable news programs, "unpack" this a bit, shall we?

Firstly, as I have been repeatedly saying on this blog and elsewhere: what scandal? Both the Benghazi and IRS "scandals" are a bust, as neither one has any apparent connection to Obama or the White House. I know that Republicans are trying very, very hard to milk these incidents for all they are worth, but as the president said: "There's no 'there' there".

Secondly, who is Dick Cheney, of all people, to dismiss anyone as having "no credibility"? Under Cheney's watch, 9/11 happened, torture happened, Gitmo happened, lying us into an unnecessary war with Iraq happened, and accusations of being a "traitor" for not following the Dubya administration unquestioningly happened. Cheney was repeatedly found not only to be wrong, but his actions in the wake of the so-called "War on Terror" proved to be extra-Constitutional.

If Cheney wants to point to anyone who has "no credibility" on national security issues, he need only to look in the mirror.

Why are we still listening to this man as though he knows what he's talking about?