Cheney, The Middle East Expert Giving Obama Advice (Picture)

In an op-ed published in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal, former Vice President Dick Cheney — along with his equally neoconservative daughter, Liz Cheney — accuses President Obama of intentionally undermining the nation’s national security interests in Iraq in an effort to take America “down a notch” in the world. It’s the latest charge levied against Obama by former Bush administration officials who orchestrated the 2003 invasion of Iraq and have since reclaimed their expertise to advise the president on how to best handle the spread of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

War architects L. Paul Bremer, Paul Wolfowitz, Doug Feith aren’t letting their false predictions about President Bush’s war in Iraq stop them from arguing in favor of muscular American military intervention — be it air strikes or boots on the ground. And they’re predictably downplaying the roles of the invasion and subsequent reconstruction policies in destabilizing the country and the region.

But the former vice president — who spent years arguing that anyone who questions the administration during a time of war is unpatriotic — goes a step further. He uses the current spike in violence to rehabilitate the Bush administration’s decision to invade and then accuses Obama of intentionally ignoring the terrorist threat and knowingly aiding American enemies. It’s as if the Bush administration left Iraq a peaceful nirvana and Obama broke it into a thousand little pieces. MOREHERE