NEW YORK -- Former vice president Dick Cheney has predicted that the US will suffer a “far deadlier” terrorist attack than 9/11 before the end of the decade, likely to be a nuclear strike.
Speaking on a radio show in the US on Tuesday, the one-time doyen of the neocon movement was questioned over whether he thought America would reach the end of the decade without being hit, similar to the 2001 attacks that toppled the World Trade Centre in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington D.C.
“I doubt it,” said the former politician. “I think there will be another attack and the next time I think it’s likely to be far deadlier than the last one. You can just imagine what would happen if somebody could smuggle a nuclear device, put it in a shipping container, and drive it down the beltway outside Washington D.C.”
Expanding on the notion of a nuclear attack on the mainland US, Cheney continued: “We operated and actually trained under circumstances of how would we go about providing for a government to survive if we were having nuclear weapons from the Soviet Union falling all over the country.”
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The veteran Republican has been pilloried in recent weeks for his almost pathological reluctance to accept any sort of blame for the current crisis in Iraq, despite the fact that al-Qaeda-inspired Jihadists now occupy swathes of a territory where the terror organisation had no foothold before the 2003 invasion.
Cheney has also failed to show contrition for the 4,500 Americans who lost their lives in the war, or for the 100,000 Iraqis that perished, not to forget the trillion-dollar debt the invasion and subsequent occupation cost the US government.
Speaking on Fox News last week, the former VP blamed Barack Obama for the rise of ISIS, while indicating that US troops should sent back to Iraq, a position for which Cheney received widespread opprobrium. Fox News appears to be the only major TV network currently willing to book Cheney as a pundit.
Last week, the former VP and his daughter launched the oddly named group "Alliance for a Stronger America", with its mission to educate and advocate for the policies needed to restore American pre-eminence and power in the world. Due to Cheney’s low standing not only within the media, but also with the modern Republican Party, the former Bush administration bigwig was forced to make the announcement on YouTube.
Cheney isn't the sole cheerleader for the 2003 invasion that has failed to offer penitence in recent weeks, with US conservative commentator Bill Kristol, former US envoy to Iraq Paul Bremer, former US Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and former US vice-president Dick Cheney, all distancing themselves from the current disintegration of Iraq.