Cheney on Iraq, Afghanistan: 'Three yards and a cloud of dust'

[cal04]

Refuses to talk about torture; Soured on CIA over WMD

In an interview with Vanity Fair, Vice President Cheney admits that the wars fought in Iraq and Afghanistan have not been "easy," RAW STORY has found. We got an advance copy of the article through an agreement with the magazine not to publish it in full. Vanity Fair national editor Todd Purdum had the chance to speak to Cheney twice but the Vice President refused to respond "on the record on some of the most controversial and interesting topics," some of which have already been reported in an earlier article today based on Vanity Fair's press release: link.

"Asked how he could have possibly objected to Senator John McCain’s amendment banning cruel and inhumane treatment of prisoners and detainees in American custody, Cheney declines to answer on the record, because, his aides explain, the issue touches on sensitive, classified matters," Purdum writes. When asked about Iraq and Afghanistan, the vice president replies, "It’s not easy. It’s hard." "It’s three yards and a cloud of dust," adds Cheney. "There are no touchdown passes here that suddenly we might like to see."

The first interview with Vanity Fair took place in February, shortly after the Vice President accidently shot his 78-year-old hunting companion, which wasn't reported to the press until the following afternoon. Purdum writes that the Administration is in "shambles," and suspects that that's partly why the Vice President agreed to chat with a "magazine whose editor’s criticisms of the administration are loathed by the vice president’s wife and elder daughter."

Also in the article, an unnamed former senior intelligence official tells Vanity Fair that Cheney's relationship with the CIA turned sour with regards to whether or not Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. "But Cheney is not quite like any other vice president," Purdum writes. "He runs a larger, more active national-security staff than any of his predecessors, and a former senior intelligence official told me that, while Cheney’s initial pre-war visits to ask the C.I.A. about Iraqi W.M.D. seemed supportive, the incessant demands of his staff to find evidence that wasn’t there became 'probably a different matter.'"

http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Cheney__0502.html

[billbuckhead]

1. Jeez, we got Woody Hayes running the military

What idiots.