Bush-era vice president Dick Cheney savaged President Barack Obama for his alleged Iraq policy failure Wednesday, warning that a shrinking US military posture could fuel terrorism.
In a blistering op-ed in that Wall Street Journal, Cheney accused Obama of pursuing "fantasy" policies that weaken the US armed forces, embolden terror networks like the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria and reduce Washington's ability to influence global events.
"Rarely has a US president been so wrong about so much at the expense of so many," Cheney said in a column co-authored by daughter Liz Cheney, a senior State Department official in the George W. Bush administration.
"Too many times to count, Mr. Obama has told us he is 'ending' the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as though wishing made it so. His rhetoric has now come crashing into reality."
Cheney called for a fundamental reversal of the Obama doctrine.
Cheney was a chief architect of the 2003 US invasion of Iraq and subsequent occupation.
Obama campaigned for president in 2008 on a call to end the conflict and in 2011 withdraw the last US troops still in Iraq.
He now faces tough choices about possible military re-engagement there amid raging sectarian violence that threatens to tear Iraq apart.
Cheney sought to pin the blame for Iraq's unrest squarely on Obama, AFP reports.
Cheney also attacked the president for talking climate change or going golfing while Iraq burns.
"He seems blithely unaware, or indifferent to the fact, that a resurgent Al-Qaeda presents a clear and present danger to the United States."
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