Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid blasted Republicans and former Vice President Dick Cheney Wednesday for blaming President Barack Obama for the deteriorating situation in Iraq.
Reid, D-Nev., opened the Senate's morning session with a verbal assault on Republicans hours before he, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., are to meet with Obama at the White House about Iraq.
He had particularly harsh words for Cheney, a key architect of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, who wrote an opinion/editorial piece in The Wall Street Journal critical of Obama's handling of Iraq.
'Being on the wrong side of Dick Cheney is to be on the right side of history,' Reid said. 'To the architects of the Iraq war who are now so eager to offer their expert analysis, I say…thanks but no thanks.'
Cheney, and daughter Liz Cheney, wrote: 'Rarely has a U.S. president been so wrong about so much at the expense of so many.' They added that 'Terrorists take control of more territory and resources than ever before in history, and he (Obama) goes golfing. He seems blithely unaware, or indifferent to the fact, that a resurgent al Qaeda presents a clear and present danger to the United States of America.'
Reid went on to call the Iraq war 'the biggest foreign policy blunder in the history of the country.'
By William Douglas
McClatchy Washington Bureau