Dany: There are candidates for president and members of Congress, Republicans and Democrats,
who have suggested that the Middle East was better off and that the world was better off
with not just Saddam Hussein in power but Saddam Hussein and Bashar al-Assad and the
strong men who really characterized the Middle East for the last half-century.
Cheney: Right.
Dany: What do you say to that?
Cheney: Well, that may make sense 50 years ago.
You wanted to get behind your oceans and be safe and sound and comfortable.
But in my mind all of that ended when terrorist organizations were able to use those territories
as a base of operation to train and equip the attack of 9/11.
When 19 guys can show up over here with airline tickets and box cutters and kill 3,000 of
our people and blow up the World Trade Center, the idea that you can let that set of whatever
you want to call them, dictators...point is that Afghanistan for example had become a
safe harbor for Al Qaeda.
And Syria now is a safe harbor for ISIS.
We know they're trying to attack us, they want to hit us in the homeland.
They've already launched attacks that have threatened us and our friends and allies.
Bombing the buses in London, for example, or what happened in France a short time ago.
And they've done it here in the United States.
And so the notion that we can allow somebody like Saddam Hussein or a situation that's
happened in Libya, that it's perfectly okay what they're doing, they can't reach us, they
can't hurt us.
And that's just not true.
Muammar Qaddafi obviously got religion when we took down Saddam Hussein.
If we hadn't done that, if he'd been allowed to develop his nuclear program, then he was
overthrown by ISIS, then the debate would be, well, who's got the nukes?
Has ISIS inherited them from the old regime?
Same thing in Syria.
If the Israelis hadn't taken out that North Korean-built reactor in Syria, then today
that area, Al-Khabar in Eastern Syria occupied by ISIS, they would also now be the proud
owners of the nuclear reactor.
So developments on the ground over there are I think ultimately a direct threat to the
United States, to the safety and survival of the United States.
The technology has developed.
We are vulnerable to those organizations as long as they have access to safe harbors and
sanctuary, as long as they have the ability to acquire deadlier weapons.
Pakistan has a nuclear program, has had for years, but out of Pakistan emerged A.Q.
Khan.
He set up his own black market operation.
Libya was his biggest customer after we got Qaddafi's materials, then we went and took
down A.Q.
Khan.
But he has testified in the newspapers, in a newspaper story to the effect that the North
Koreans now have state-of-the-art centrifuge technology.
Where'd they get it?
They got it from Pakistan.
So you've already got sort of the seed of very destructive capabilities that could be
used against the United States or our friends and allies.
It's there.
It's in the Middle East.
There was one report that the Iranians paid for the last ballistic missile test by the
North Koreans.
So the ability for us to say, "Well, it's okay if Saddam stays in power..."
He's going to mess with weapons of mass destruction and he had before.
You can argue about how much was there when we went in in '03 but there's no question
he had been involved previously, that he's had them and used them.
Or the Libyan program or the Iranian program or the Pakistani program.
It's a place we have to be involved.
We're far beyond the point when you could look at it as a remote part of the world and
it's all right if there's some dictator over there mistreating his people.
It's about our safety and survival as a nation.
Dany: I want to ask you one quick question still on the Middle East before I ask you
about Russia and China, defense and then let you go.
Cheney: Okay.
Dany: Was it a mistake for the United States and NATO to help take out Muammar Qaddafi?
Cheney: I wasn't involved at that point.
I'd left the government and so I don't know everything there is to know about it.
Qaddafi had, to some extent, come around in the sense that he had surrendered his nuclear
materials to us.
And I, just as not having been part of the process, I'm reluctant to pass judgment on
it.
I think the follow-through obviously has been the destruction of Qaddafi and his regime
and ISIS now has a significant presence in Libya and that's right across the Med from
Italy and Europe.
But not having been part of the debate internally I just...I can't make that judgment.