Former Vice President Dick Cheney said Wednesday he was right to support the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq under George W. Bush, despite many Americans now saying the decision was misguided.
Mr. Cheney, asked by Fox News commentator Juan Williams why people should listen to his opposition to President Obama’s nuclear deal Iran when he was wrong about Iraq, responded, “Because I was right about Iraq.”
“Our objective was to take down Saddam Hussein. We did it. The world’s a much better place without him,” Mr. Cheney said.
He added that former Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi eliminated his weapons program in 2003 and that the U.S. went after Abdul Qadeer Khan, who supplied materials for Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program.
“So we achieved a lot when we went into Iraq. A lot of people don’t like to talk about the rest of it. But we did the right thing then, and I’m convinced now that it was absolutely the right thing,” Mr. Cheney said.
His comments come as GOP presidential candidate Jeb Bush deals with questions about how he would have handled the Iraq war were he in the White House at the time of his brother’s presidency.
“Knowing what we know now … I would have not engaged, I would not have gone into Iraq,” Mr. Bush said in May.
• Kellan Howell can be reached at khowell@washingtontimes.com.
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