New Delhi – Former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney has criticized Russia’s alleged interference in the U.S. presidential election, calling it a hostile act.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin made a serious attempt to interfere in the 2016 election and other democratic processes in America, Cheney said.
“In some quarters, that would be considered an act of war,” Cheney said in a speech Monday at a conference in New Delhi.
Cheney said the Cold War was long over but Putin is on a course to re-establish Russian power following the collapse of the former Soviet Union.
“Putin has aspirations of trying to correct what he sees as a disaster. He has designs on the Baltics. He wanted Crimea and he took it. And he is trying to undermine NATO,” Cheney said.
Russian cyber interference is “the kind of conduct and activity that we’ll see going forward,” he said.
But he also warned that Russia should not “underestimate the weight that we as Americans assign at Russia’s attempts to interfere in our democratic processes.”
Cheney’s accusation comes at a time when both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives intelligence committees are investigating possible Russian interference in the election that brought President Donald Trump to power.
Among the other threats faced by the United States, Cheney listed an aggressive China, North Korea, Iran and the terror threat posed by the Islamic State group.
He described North Korea as the “most dangerous part of the world with an unpredictable head of government” who is developing nuclear warheads and missiles to add to his stockpile.
Cheney said these threats come at a time when the U.S. military is at a “significantly diminished level” following eight years of budget cuts under the Obama administration.
The U.S. budget debate in the coming weeks will focus on how to allocate more funds to rebuild the military and restore the relationships that the United States had with its allies and adversaries in the past, he said.
the KILLING & MURDER of FOUR AMERICANS in BENGHAZI is much WORSE than any Russian influence!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
> “In some quarters, that would be considered an act of war,” Cheney said
Does that mean that the U.S. has committed acts of war on how many countries, as it is clear the U.S. meddled in more foreign elections than I care to count.
Dick Cheney, along with George W. Bush, were the two individuals most responsible for the U.S. involvement with the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and the continued occupation, throughout 2009, when Cheney and Bush left. Both Cheney and Bush floated false stories of “weapons of mass destruction”, which were never found. Bush and Cheney were birds of the same feather. Both had prior arrests for drunk driving; I believe Cheney had two such arrests. Also, both were blase’ towards military service. Cheney had multiple deferments, and stated that “he was not interested, as it wasn’t a priority for him”. Bush, on the other hand, was able to get into an Air National Guard unit, because of his family connections. Then, once he got into that unit, he deliberately avoided going to meetings, or performing his quota of flying time. I don’t know how they can sleep at night, knowing that thousands of Americans were killed and wounded, and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were killed, because of an unnecessary war, which they started.