Cheney: Don't Listen to Kennedy

Sen. Ted Kennedy is the last person to listen to in matters of national security, Vice President Dick Cheney said Sunday.

Appearing on CBS' "Face the Nation," Cheney responded to host Bob Schieffer's remark that Kennedy, D-Mass., had said on the third anniversary of the Iraq war: "It is clearer than ever that Iraq was a war that we never should have fought. The administration has been dangerously incompetent and its Iraq policy is not worthy of the sacrifice of our men and women in uniform.

"President Bush continues to see the war through the same rose colored glasses he's always used. He assures the American people we are winning while the lives of our troops hang so perilously on the precipice of a new disaster."

Said Cheney: "I would not listen to Ted Kennedy for guidance and leadership on how we ought to manage national security. I think what Senator Kennedy reflects is sort of the pre-9/11 mentality about how we ought to deal with that part of the world. We used to operate on the assumption before 9/11 that a terrorist attack, a criminal act, was a law enforcement problem.

"We were hit repeatedly in the '90s and never responded effectively. When the terrorists came to believe not only could they strike us with impunity but if they hit us hard enough that we'd change our policy."

Cheney explained that "we changed all that on 9/11. After they hit us and killed 3,000 Americans here at home we said enough's enough, we're going to aggressively go after them - go after the terrorists where we can find them and go after those states that sponsor terrorism and go after people who provide them with weapons of mass destruction.

"That kind if aggressive forward-leading strategy is one of the main reasons we haven't been struck again. Senator Kennedy's approach is pack [up] and go home and retreat behind the ocean and assume we can be safe. It was learned on 9/11 that in fact what's going on 10,000 miles away in a place like Afghanistan has a direct impact on the United States when we lost 3,000 people.

"We know now that the biggest threat of all that we face is not just another 9/11 but a 9/11 where the terrorists have something like nuclear weapons or deadly biological agents.

"The Iraq situation has to be seen in the broader context of a global war on terror. It is a global contest. You can't look just at Iraq and make decisions there with respect as to how that's going to come out without having major consequences.

"I think we are going to succeed in Iraq. I think the evidence is overwhelming. I think Ted Kennedy been wrong from the very beginning, he's the last man I'd go to for guidance as to how we should conduct national security policy."