Interview of the Vice President by Hugh Hewitt of The Hugh Hewitt Show

WASHINGTON--(Business Wire)--
via Telephone

4:58 P.M. EDT

Q Mr. Vice President, welcome back to The Hugh Hewitt Show. Good
to have you.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, good to be back.

Q This week there's been a lot of talk on the Hill about Iraq with
the Petraeus and Crocker testimony, and often the Democrats refer to
two wars, Mr. Vice President. Is it one war and two battles, or is it
two different wars?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I think it's one war. And I think if you
look at the -- there are a lot of different ways to try to verify
that, but remember Abu Musab al Zarqawi. Zarqawi was a guy who was a
Palestinian born in Jordan, imprisoned in Jordan for terrorist
activities, released in an amnesty, found his way to Afghanistan,
where he set up and ran a terrorist training camp with a
quasi-affiliation with al Qaeda. And when we went into Afghanistan, he
fled to Iraq, set up shop in Iraq, Kermal facility, where they were
trying to produce poisons up in northern Iraq, and worked out of
Baghdad; and of course then became the head of al Qaeda in Iraq,
ultimately bombing the Golden Mosque at Samarra and precipitating the
Shia-on-Sunni violence that was so difficult to deal with over there.
Then finally we killed him in '06.

With a guy like that, national boundaries don't mean anything.
This is a guy who's motivated by al Qaeda-type philosophy, and who's
determined to do everything he can to kill Americans and to bring down
those governments that don't see eye-to-eye with the al Qaeda types.
And that part of the world is full of them. And then you've got -- all
of those different regions out there are potential trouble spots.

Q Well, when you hear some of the critics of the administration's
Iraq policy say that we are diverted from the mission in Afghanistan
by virtue of the number of troops and the effort aiding Iraq, what's
the response to that?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I don't think that's the case. I think
if you look at what we've done in Afghanistan, these are situations,
obviously, where you've got to make adjustments for local
considerations. But when we went into Afghanistan, I think everybody
understood the importance of that. It was the training area for al
Qaeda; they'd set up a lot of training camps to train 20,000
terrorists there in the late '90s, some of whom came here and killed
3,000 Americans on 9/11.

But you've also got a situation there where we've got good local
support. We've got a government established under President Karzai.
They've gone about that process in accordance with their own culture
and their own history. But ultimately, they've got to be responsible
for their own sovereign territory. Same thing has to happen in Iraq.

And there is a lot of concerns in that part of the world, but
you've got to remember, hundreds of thousands, literally millions, of
people have stood up and been counted because of the United States,
because we're in the fight. You've got literally hundreds of thousands
in Iraq, for example, who've signed up for -- to be part of the
security services. You've got the millions of people who voted. You've
got those who are serving in public office, who run the risk every day
of possible assassination.

If we were to bail out on one of those countries out there,
whatever it was, and not complete the mission, and make it possible
for al Qaeda to reassert themselves, you can imagine what that would
do to the confidence of all those other people who have stuck their
necks out because the United States is leading the fight. That would
have an impact not just in Iraq, which would be severe, but it would
have an impact in Afghanistan, and Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia, and a
lot of those other places out there where they've got people and
governments who are actively engaged in the war on terror. So what
happens in Iraq has a direct bearing on all of those other locales.

Q General Petraeus testified a number of times in the last two
days that Iran is actively engaged in killing Americans in Iraq. Do
you see their tempo and their operation against the United States
increasing, Mr. Vice President, or is it fairly stable?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, it's hard to predict what direction
that's going to move in. I obviously listen to General Petraeus, in
terms of his views. He's the guy on the scene and probably has the
best fix on it. But Iran has been a bad actor in many respects. The
President talked about it today in his remarks at the White House.

They -- the way he couched it was, the Iranians have got a choice
between whether or not they want to see a successful, stable Iraq
democratically governed next-door to them, or whether they want to
continue to try to promote strife and instability, and support acts of
terror; and in the process of doing that, permanently damage their
relationship with Iraq, their next-door neighbor. The Iraqis, I think,
are getting a bellyful of the kind of activities the Iranians have
been engaged in. And frankly, I think the Iranians, as the President
said, have got to make a choice of how they want that part of the
world to work.

Q Do you -- Mr. Vice President, do you have a personal sense of
whether or not the Iranian leadership is actually motivated by this
end-times, bring-back-the-12th-Imam sort of theology that we've read
so much about?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I've read about it, too. I don't know
that that motivates all of the leadership. The one guy who talks about
it repeatedly is Ahmadinejad. And -- in other words, a report even at
one point that when he went to Iraq on a visit, that at least on one
occasion, he insisted on there being a vacant chair at the table for
the 12th Imam. And it's a -- it's hard to tell. I mean, if I look at
what his beliefs supposedly are, the allegation that the -- a return
of the 12th Imam is something to be much desired, and that the best
contribution that a man can make is to die a martyr facilitating that
return, and all that goes with it -- I always think of Bernard Lewis,
who said that mutual assured destruction during the Cold War between
the U.S. and the Soviets meant peace and stability and deterrence, but
mutual assured destruction in the hands of Ahmadinejad may just be an
incentive. It's a worrisome proposition.

Q If they actually possess nuclear weapons, do you think they're
deterable in the way that the Soviets were, or is that what you're
getting at, that they might actually use them because it's part of the
theological justification for their --

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I think we have to be careful, obviously
-- it's a difficult kind of a judgment to make. I think we do have an
obligation to listen to what they're saying. And there's a great
temptation, when he says truly outrageous things, for example, about
the destruction of Israel, for people to write that off and say, well,
he doesn't mean it, it's just rhetoric. But you can't do that. And I
certainly am -- I know the Israelis well enough, and I was just there
a couple of weeks ago, to know there isn't any way they're prepared to
ignore those kinds of statements coming out of Tehran. They have to
take them seriously, given their history. And I think they perceive
the possibility of an Iran armed with nuclear weapons as a fundamental
threat to the very survival of the state of Israel.

Q Did you talk with the Israelis in any way you can discuss about
action against Israel -- against Iran's nuclear capability?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: No, I couldn't talk about those matters here.

Q I understand. I have plunged into Doug Feith's new book. Have
you had a chance to read it yet, Mr. Vice President?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I don't -- I have a copy. Doug brought me a
copy, but I haven't had a chance to read it yet.

Q It's fascinating. But it does describe a fairly dysfunctional
United States intelligence capability and one that's endured -- I
don't -- barely up to the time he's writing the book and left the
government. Do you think the administration has fixed or fundamentally
addressed the incapacities of our intelligence community -- one, get
it right; and two, not be political, but be a fair assessor of what's
going on in the world?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I think there's several ways to look at
it. Obviously it's an enormously important question, and we have had
problems there in the past. All you have to do is look at the Iraq WMD
National Intelligence Estimate and -- and there have been other
problems over the years.

What I am impressed by at present -- I can't say that, you know,
we've got it absolutely right at this point, or that the organization
is perfected, or there can't be other changes or modifications made --
that's entirely possible. What I look to are the people. And right
now, in the team we've got at the top in terms of leading the
intelligence community, with Mike McConnell as DNI, and the -- Steve
Kappes and Mike Hayden out at the Central Intelligence Agency -- that
is as good a team as I've ever worked with. And I've worked with a
bunch of them over the last 40 years.

Mike McConnell worked for me when I was Secretary of Defense. He
was a J2 on the Joint Staff, and then later on we made him head of the
National Security Agency. Mike Hayden has, of course, had a wealth of
experience, and Steve Kappes is one of the best in the business. These
are superb professionals and I've got great confidence in them.
They've got a very, very difficult job and assignment. And in the
intelligence business, we can't guarantee that we'll always get it
right. Sometimes we blow it; sometimes we make a missed call. But I do
feel very good about the quality of the people we've got at the top
these days. Keith Alexander out at NSA is another superb officer.

So I think from that perspective, I'm as comfortable as it's
humanly possible to be in terms of the leadership that we've got
there. And the long-term prospects in terms of how successful we'll
have been, obviously the historians will have to determine.

Q Last question, Mr. Vice President. The presidential campaign, of
course, absorbing everything, and Senator Obama is talking a lot about
foreign policy. Does he strike you as someone who has a good grasp of
the intricacies of this war with the jihadists that we're in, and a
full understanding of the threats facing the United States?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, in my view, Hugh, I don't think there's
any question but what -- I don't think there's much of a choice, in
the sense that I think John McCain is head and shoulders above his
Democratic opponents, whoever it is, whether it's Obama or Clinton. I
just think the single most important issue we're faced with in this
election is the future of the republic, national security, global war
on terror, et cetera. And I've had my differences with John over the
years, but I think he's the right man for the job at this time. And I
think he's head and shoulders above a man like Senator Obama in terms
of his experience and his ability to make these decisions.

Q Vice President Dick Cheney, thanks for joining us. Always a
pleasure.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Hugh, good to talk to you.

END 5:09 P.M. EDT

White House Press Office
1-202-456-2580

Copyright Business Wire 2008