There's not enough war in the deal President Obama negotiated on Iran for Dick Cheney. In an interview with Fox News’s Sean Hannity on Tuesday night, Cheney was his
usual charming, fearmongering self.
Not since the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki nearly 70 years ago has the world been closer to the use of nuclear weapons, former Vice President Dick Cheney told Fox News’ Sean Hannity on Tuesday night. And when Iran winds up with nuclear weapons, Cheney said, it will compel others in the region to work toward getting their own.
As for the nuclear deal with Iran, Cheney called it "a lie" on the part of President Barack Obama to claimed that the accord would stop further nuclear proliferation.
"What Obama has done, has in effect sanctioned, the acquisition by Iran of nuclear capability. And it can be a few years down the road. It doesn't make any difference. It's a matter of months until we're going to see a situation where other people feel they have to defend themselves by acquiring their own capability," Cheney said. "And that will, in fact, I think put us to closer to use—actual use of nuclear weapons than we've been at any time since Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II."
You have to give him this—if anyone knows about presidentially lying when it comes to matters of war and peace, it's Dick Cheney. He was the architect of the biggest war lies this country has ever seen, a series of lies that took us into an unnecessary, long, bloody, morally and financially bankrupting war in Iraq. Notice as well how Cheney is able to skip over the long years of nuclear brinksmanship of the Cold War, including the Cuban Missile Crisis which he most definitely lived through and should have been interested in, since he was in college at the time and
was studying foreign policy. Maybe all that that just slipped his mind.
Here's a fun part, too. Cheney tells Hannity, "When we took down Saddam Hussein in '03, Qaddafi gave up his nuclear materials and that let us wrap up [Pakistani nuclear scientist] A.Q. Khan." You might remember the name A.Q. Khan, and the Bush/Cheney administration's probable role in spiking an investigation "that might have revealed Pakistan's top nuclear scientist helped share nuclear secrets with Iran, North Korea and Libya." And don't forget that Valerie Plame Wilson was also investigating A.Q. Khan as an undercover agent for the CIA. While she was undercover. Before Scooter Libby, Cheney's chief of staff, outed her. But, yeah, Cheney and Bush "wrapped up" A.Q. Khan.
The last person who should be taken seriously on this, or really any, issue is Dick Cheney. But as long as there's a Fox News and a Sean Hannity, he'll have a megaphone.