Joining a Fox News panel on Sunday morning, former Vice President Dick Cheney slammed President Obama's foreign policy as "weak," saying the current administration's reticence to get tough with Russian autocrat Vladimir Putin is to blame for the ongoing crisis in Ukraine.
"He's demonstrated repeatedly, I think, that he in fact can be pushed around, if you will, by Putin," Cheney said of Obama. Cheney went on to claim that Putin was "taking advantage of this opportunity when he thinks we have a weak president to try to restore the old Soviet Union."
But when host Chris Wallace noted that Putin had also made aggressive moves toward a Russian neighbor during Cheney's time in the White House — effectively annexing a chunk of Georgia despite Washington, D.C.'s clear disapproval — the man who bragged of authorizing war crimes was a bit less strident.
He granted that the situations were "reminiscent" of one another, but insisted his administration could not similarly be accused of weakness because it "provided various kinds of supplies" to the Georgian side. Worth noting: Reports indicate that, at the time, Cheney pushed for a more combative stance vis-a-vis Russia on the part of the Bush administration. He was overruled.
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