Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly is
being applauded for grilling Dick Cheney over an op-ed in which the
former vice president and his daughter harshly — and some say
hypocritically — criticized President Barack Obama's handling of the
crisis in Iraq.
In the op-ed, published by the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, Cheney writes, "Rarely has a U.S. president been so wrong about so much at the expense of so many."
During her interview with Cheney
and his daughter Liz on Wednesday night, Kelly introduced him as "the
man who helped lead us into Iraq in the first place."
She read the quote back to the
former vice president and then said, "But time and time again, history
has proven that you got it wrong in Iraq as well, sir."
"You said Saddam Hussein had
weapons of mass destruction," Kelly told Cheney. "You said we would be
greeted as liberators. You said the insurgency was in the last throes,
back in 2005. And you said after our intervention that extremists would
have to 'rethink their strategy of jihad.' Now with almost $1 trillion
spent there, with 4,500 American lives lost there, what do you say to
those who say, 'You were so wrong about so much at the expense of so
many'?"
"Well, I just fundamentally
disagree, Reagan — uh, Megyn," Cheney replied. "You've got to go back
and look at the track record. We inherited a situation where there was
no doubt in anybody's mind about the extent of Saddam's involvement in
weapons of mass destruction. We had a situation where, after 9/11, we
were concerned about a follow-up attack. It would involve not just
airline tickets and box cutters as the weapons, but rather something far
deadlier, perhaps even a nuclear weapon."
The interview surprised plenty
of Twitter users, many of whom praised Kelly for her tough questioning
that the Cheneys, perhaps, didn't see coming. Fox News is generally
criticized for catering to conservatives.
Fox News and the Wall Street Journal are owned by News Corp.
***
In the op-ed published Tuesday, the Cheneys wrote that President Barack Obama “seems determined to leave office ensuring he has taken America down a notch” with his foreign policy. The article has drawn scathing criticism, as people have labeled Cheney, which Kelly referred to, as “the man who helped lead us into Iraq in the first place.”
Referencing one of these harsh responses, Kelly quoted The Washington Post, which wrote “There is not a single person in America … who has been more wrong and shamelessly dishonest on the topic of Iraq than Dick Cheney.”
“The suggestion is that you caused this mess,” Kelly said. “What say you?”
“There’s no surprise, frankly, that there are a lot of people now that want to blame the Bush/Cheney administration for what happened, that’s a pretty routine thing we hear from this administration,” Liz Cheney said.
[6/22/14] Rand Paul too
[6/26/14] The Cheney polemic would be outrageous even if our former vice president’s record on Iraq had been one of absolute clairvoyance. -- E.J. Dionne, Midweek
As it happens, he was wrong in almost every prediction he made about the war.
Thanks to the Cheney op-ed, we can see how Obama’s hawkish critics are out to create a double standard. Whenever they are called out for how mistaken they were about Iraq in the first place, they piously lecture against “relitigating the past” and say we must instead look forward. At the same time, many of them feel perfectly free to trash the president in extreme and even vile terms.
[6/26/14] I believe the invasion of Iraq was a mistake. Bush, Congress and most
Western world leaders were convinced WMDs existed in Iraq, so that’s
not the argument. Faulty intelligence isn’t either. It’s that Bush
provided no long-term plan to win the peace — no Marshall Plan to
integrate democracy incrementally into a country that had been under a
tyrant’s rule for 30 years. No patience for a long-term troop
commitment, as in post-war Korea, Japan and Germany. Regarding the chaos
in the streets of Baghdad after the end of fighting, Secretary of
Defense Donald Rumsfeld arrogantly said: “Democracy is messy.”
But for five-and-a-half years it’s been Obama’s Iraq, and it could soon be his defeat. Iraqi cities are being consumed by an army of terrorists beheading their way to Baghdad and undoing everything America’s brave troops fought and died to secure for the Iraqi people. Meanwhile, disengaged and indecisive, Obama continues to lead from behind, still blaming Bush, Iraq’s incompetent and sectarian Prime Minister Maliki and, well, anyone. Meanwhile, in this leadership vacuum, our enemies make deadly mischief.
The second battle of Fallujah in November 2004, the 2007 surge and American troops afforded Iraq relative security. But despite military leaders’ advice to leave troops in Iraq, Obama withdrew them in 2011, helping set the stage for today’s invading ISIS terrorists. Once troops are withdrawn from Afghanistan, a similar result is predictable.
Last week commentator and author Charles Krautheimer stated, “What Obama has never understood is that the stability of the world hinges on American deterrence.” -- Susan Page, MidWeek,
[7/2/14] Megyn Kelly shoots up in the ratings
***
In the op-ed published Tuesday, the Cheneys wrote that President Barack Obama “seems determined to leave office ensuring he has taken America down a notch” with his foreign policy. The article has drawn scathing criticism, as people have labeled Cheney, which Kelly referred to, as “the man who helped lead us into Iraq in the first place.”
Referencing one of these harsh responses, Kelly quoted The Washington Post, which wrote “There is not a single person in America … who has been more wrong and shamelessly dishonest on the topic of Iraq than Dick Cheney.”
“The suggestion is that you caused this mess,” Kelly said. “What say you?”
“There’s no surprise, frankly, that there are a lot of people now that want to blame the Bush/Cheney administration for what happened, that’s a pretty routine thing we hear from this administration,” Liz Cheney said.
[6/22/14] Rand Paul too
[6/26/14] The Cheney polemic would be outrageous even if our former vice president’s record on Iraq had been one of absolute clairvoyance. -- E.J. Dionne, Midweek
As it happens, he was wrong in almost every prediction he made about the war.
Thanks to the Cheney op-ed, we can see how Obama’s hawkish critics are out to create a double standard. Whenever they are called out for how mistaken they were about Iraq in the first place, they piously lecture against “relitigating the past” and say we must instead look forward. At the same time, many of them feel perfectly free to trash the president in extreme and even vile terms.
But for five-and-a-half years it’s been Obama’s Iraq, and it could soon be his defeat. Iraqi cities are being consumed by an army of terrorists beheading their way to Baghdad and undoing everything America’s brave troops fought and died to secure for the Iraqi people. Meanwhile, disengaged and indecisive, Obama continues to lead from behind, still blaming Bush, Iraq’s incompetent and sectarian Prime Minister Maliki and, well, anyone. Meanwhile, in this leadership vacuum, our enemies make deadly mischief.
The second battle of Fallujah in November 2004, the 2007 surge and American troops afforded Iraq relative security. But despite military leaders’ advice to leave troops in Iraq, Obama withdrew them in 2011, helping set the stage for today’s invading ISIS terrorists. Once troops are withdrawn from Afghanistan, a similar result is predictable.
Last week commentator and author Charles Krautheimer stated, “What Obama has never understood is that the stability of the world hinges on American deterrence.” -- Susan Page, MidWeek,
[7/2/14] Megyn Kelly shoots up in the ratings
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