Cheney slams wrong US direction in Iraq

Cheney believes Obama never meant to leave troops in Iraq, his decision to withdraw led to current instability.

WASHINGTON: Former US vice-president Dick Cheney, an architect of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, on Tuesday defended his choices at the time, and slammed the current US course as opening the door to insurgents.

Cheney spoke to PBS television as the first of up to 300 US military advisers began their mission in Baghdad Tuesday to help the Iraqi army, and the Pentagon said the American troops were not taking on a combat role.

The primary task of the advisers was to evaluate the state of Iraqi forces and not to turn the tide against militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), which have swept across western and northern Iraq, the Pentagon's press secretary said.

Referring to an op-ed article he wrote with his daughter Liz Cheney, the former vice president and ex defense chief said: "We don't mean to be disrespectful to the president (Barack Obama), but I have got - and as did my co-author ... we feel very, very strongly that we're headed in the wrong direction.

"This administration is taking exactly the opposite direction from which we ought to be headed," Cheney stressed.

He believes Obama never meant to leave troops in Iraq - and that his decision to withdraw led to the current instability.

"The president did not want to have, I don't believe, any stay-behind force in Iraq.  I don't think it was consistent with the campaign he'd run when he campaigned against our forces in Iraq and promised to bring them all out during the course of the campaign," Cheney said.

And the former vice president still defends the choices of the George W Bush administration which he served in - saying it did the right thing in 2003 - though its intelligence (arguing Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, and ties to al Qaeda) later was shown to have been flawed.

Asked what mistakes were made, Cheney said: "It was not a flawless war, but I've never seen one that was."

Cheney also recalled how Intelligence about Hussain's WMDs seemed so clear at the time saying that then CIA chief "George (Tenet) said, 'It's a slam dunk, Mr President, slam dunk.'"

"I don't hesitate to defend what we did," Cheney said. "And with respect to whether or not we did the right thing going into Iraq, I believe it.  I don't want to argue about it.  Different people have different views."

Asked if ISIL's inroads were an intelligence failure of the United States, Cheney said: "I don't automatically assume our guys missed it. I just don't know.

"I think there's a real possibility that it didn't track with the narrative that we got Bin Laden, terrorism problems solved."