Kerry on Cheney criticism: ‘Please’

by Mario Trujillo - 06/19/14 7:49 AM ET

Secretary of State John Kerry scoffed at former Vice President Dick Cheney’s criticism of the Obama administration’s handling of foreign policy.

{mosads}”This is the man that took us into Iraq saying this, please,” Kerry said in a terse statement on NBC’s “Today” show before moving on in the interview.

Kerry defended the administration’s approach in Iraq, Syria and the broader region during another portion.

“There is plenty of time going down the road here for people to have postmortems and make decisions,” Kerry said. “We are the largest single donor of humanitarian assistance. We are deeply engaged in working with our allies and friends in the region.”

Cheney and his daughter Liz penned an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal Wednesday asserting, “Rarely has a U.S. president been so wrong about so much at the expense of so many.”

The op-ed came ahead of their announcement that the two were starting a social welfare group to “restore” U.S. foreign policy strength. It received immediate blowback from Democrats, who noted Cheney did not mention the Bush administration’s tenure.

“If there is one thing we can all agree on here, it’s that we should not be taking advice on Iraq from Dick Cheney,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said. “We already tried it your way and it was the biggest foreign policy blunder in United States history.”

“Which president was he talking about?” White House press secretary Jay Carney said about Cheney’s op-ed.

“It’s obviously always good to hear from former Vice President Cheney,” he continued in a sarcastic tone.

In the op-ed, the Cheneys wrote President Obama is unwilling to face hard truths about Iraq as terrorists take “more territory and resources than ever before in history.”

“It will require sustained difficult military, intelligence and diplomatic efforts — not empty misleading rhetoric,” they wrote. “It will require rebuilding America’s military capacity — reversing the Obama policies that have weakened our armed forces and reduced our ability to influence events around the world.”

—Updated 8:32 a.m.

Tags Dick Cheney Foreign policy John Kerry