Cheney: Obama Lacks Honesty, Credibility

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Cheney: Obama Lacks Honesty, Credibility

Sunday, June 16, 2013 11:17 AM

By: Audrey Hudson

Former Vice President Dick Cheney said Sunday that President Barack Obama has lost his integrity in the wake of numerous scandals that have rocked the administration including the Benghazi attack and IRS targeting of conservatives.

“The problem is the guy has failed to be forthright and honest and credible on things like Benghazi and the IRS, so he’s got no credibility,” Cheney told "Fox News Sunday."

The IRS targeting is “one of the worst abuses of power imaginable” and was not guided by regional bureaucrats but from a “higher-up” in Washington, Cheney charged.

“It clearly was used for political purposes to go after a particular category of organizations,” Cheney said. “That is the kind of gross abuse of power that everybody is legitimately concerned about. I have trouble believing that two guys in Cincinnati dreamed this scheme up I just don’t think that’s true.”

The former defense secretary also questioned the Obama administration’s failure to send a military team to Benghazi to rescue the ambassador and other U.S. personnel during an attack by al-Qaida-linked terrorists last year.

“We should have been on that step before that ever happened,” said Cheney, who noted that armed forces were stationed an hour away and should have been deployed.

“If you’re not going to be ready in Libya of all places, then where are you going to be ready?”

Cheney criticized Obama’s recent pick of Susan Rice to be his national security adviser and said that she too suffered from a credibility shortage.

Rice was the U.N. ambassador to the United States when the Benghazi terror assault occurred, but delivered inaccurate information when she acted as the administration’s spokesperson about the cause of the attack.

“She appears to have been part of the cover-up. She went out and peddled the party line that had been put together at the State Department. I question … someone’s judgment who was so flawed that they took what was apparently very bad information and peddled it as aggressively as she did. I think what she did was a huge mistake,” Cheney said.

The Benghazi attack is further proof that the war on terrorism is not winding down as Obama insists, but continues to spread across North Africa, Cheney said.

“The threat is bigger than ever. So he is just dead wrong on the status of the threat,” Cheney said.

On the recent disclosures by a NSA employee that the Obama administration has been collecting millions of phone records on Americans, Cheney sided with the government and said the leaker should prosecuted and sent to jail.

However, on Obama’s statement that he had to “scrub” Bush-era surveillance programs with new safeguards, Cheney dismissed the president.

“I don’t pay a lot of attention, frankly, to what Barack Obama says,” Cheney said. “I am obviously not a fan of the incumbent president.”

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