On 3rd Anniversary of War: Cheney Hits Media, Says Insurgency Still in Last Throes

By: The Associated Press and E&P Staff In a TV apperance on Sunday, Vice President Dick Cheney did not express any regret for predicting in the days before the invasion of Iraq three years ago that U.S. troops would be greeted as liberators--or his assessment 10 months ago that the insurgency was in its "last throes." On the contrary, he said the optimistic statements "were basically accurate, reflect reality."

Like Bush, Cheney touted the political progress in Iraq, pointing out that the Iraqis have met the political deadlines set for them and predicting they will form a unified government "shortly."

In an interview on CBS' "Face the Nation," Cheney flatly rejected a statement made earlier Sunday by Iraq's former interim prime minister that the increasing attacks killing dozens each day across his country can only be described as a civil war. "If this is not civil war, then God knows what civil war is," Ayad Allawi told the British Broadcasting Corp.

Instead, Cheney described the violence as the actions of terrorists who have "reached a stage of desperation."

"What we've seen is a serious effort by them to foment a civil war," Cheney said. "But I don't think they've been successful."

Cheney blamed the negative perception on news coverage of the daily violence instead of the progress being made toward democracy.

"There is a constant sort of perception, if you will, that's created because what's newsworthy is the car bomb in Baghdad," the vice president said. "It's not all the work that went on that day in 15 other provinces."

Appearing on NBC's "Meet the Press," also on Sunday, host Tim Russert asked Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) about the charges of the media carrying the wrong message from Iraq.

Murtha replied: "Well, they said the same thing about Vietnam. They said the same thing over and over and over about Vietnam. They said, 'We're winning the war in Vietnam.' That--you could go back and get quotes from Vietnam, and you?d see the same kind of, of, of reports, 'The media?s the one that?s distorting; everything?s going fine in Vietnam.' Well, everything?s not going fine in Iraq."

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In the interview, Schieffer also asked Cheney about his failure to notify the press about the shooting incident he was involved in last month.

SCHIEFFER: I must ask you about what you have called the worst day of your life: the day that you accidentally shot your friend Harry Whittington down in Texas on that hunting expedition.

You didn't make it public for almost a day. Now, you told Brit Hume the other day that you still thought that was the right way to go about it. But I just want to ask you now that you've had some time to reflect on it, could that have been better handled?

CHENEY: Well, I think it's one of those situation or circumstances that is obviously difficult and generates controversy. It's probably the first time the Secret Service ever had to worry about a protectee shooting somebody else instead of being shot at.

As the president said the other night, he's at 38 percent in the polls and as a result of this incident I shot the only trial lawyer in Texas who supported him. So people can laugh about it now, but at the time it was deadly serious.

SCHIEFFER: Well, I can imagine.

CHENEY: And I must admit the first thing I thought when I saw what had happened and rushed over to help Harry, I did not think, "Gee, I better call the press corps and tell them what's going on here."

SCHIEFFER: Sure. But later on shouldn't you have...

CHENEY: This is about 6:00 at night. By the time we got him to the hospital, and we did not know until the next morning exactly the status of his medical condition. And that's when we began to notify the press.

There have been controversy over whether we should have called the White House press corps. I didn't have any press people with me. This was a private trip, or do it the way we did it.

The way we did it I thought was appropriate, which was to have Katharine Armstrong, who was a witness to all of these events, call the local newspaper. They immediately got it, immediately put it on the wire and everybody had it.

So it struck me as a bit of a tempest in a teapot over the question of how it was announced. It was announced by us I believe in a timely fashion as soon as we knew what Harry's status was.

SCHIEFFER: Well, you do believe that elected officials owe the public an explanation for their actions?

CHENEY: Sure. I mean this was not part of my public duty and responsibility or my official duties at all. But there is bound to be interest in it when something like that happens because I am the vice president, and we treated it that way.

SCHIEFFER: All right, Mr. Vice President, thank you so much for coming.