Cheney says Biden should give credit for Iraq to Bush

There has been a lot made of Vice President Biden’s comments to Larry King where he stated that he believed Iraq would be one of the great achievements of the Obama administration.

Responding to Biden’s apparent attempt to take credit for the positive results of the surge and other decisions that Senators Obama and Biden had opposed, Cheney had this to say about Iraq:

“If they’re going to take credit for it, fair enough, for what they’ve done while they’re there,” Cheney said Sunday. “But it ought to go with a healthy dose of ‘thank you, George Bush’ up front and a recognition that some of their early recommendations, with respect to prosecuting that war, were just dead wrong.”

…

Asked about Biden’s comments, former Vice President Cheney said, “If they had had their way, if we’d followed the policies they’d pursued from the outset or advocated from the outset, Saddam Hussein would still be in power in Baghdad today.”

Senator Barack Obama campaigned on his opposition not only of the Iraq war, but that he would fight President Bush’s decision to increase troop levels in Iraq (the surge) and later claimed that the surge was making things worse in Iraq:

Senator Obama January 2007:  “I am going to actively oppose the president’s proposal. I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there. In fact, I think it will do the reverse.”

Senator Obama November 2007: “Not only have we not seen improvements, but we’re actually worsening.”

Senator Obama May 2008: “We don’t need more spin about the surge that was supposed to get the Iraqis to step up. We don’t need more leaders who just see what they want to see in Iraq. It’s time to recognize where we are in Iraq.”