Cheney says U.S. withdrawal from Iraq now ‘wrong medicine’

BAGHDAD / IraqiNews.com: U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, warning against impulsive U.S. action in Iraq, says that whether the struggling nation backslides into a cycle of violence partly depends on how President-elect Barack Obama decides to pull out American forces. “An irresponsible withdrawal now is exactly the wrong medicine,” Cheney said in an interview Thursday with The Associated Press. Cheney is leaving the White House after a government career spanning four decades, including stints as defense secretary, President Gerald R. Ford’s chief of staff and a longtime congressman from Wyoming. In a broadcast interview earlier this week, the vice president dismissed as “urban legend” the notion that he played his role as second-in-command like a wizard, controlling the levers of the Bush presidency from behind the scenes. Strong-willed to the end, Cheney defended the Iraq war against critics, saying that while there is much work left to do, much progress has been made. Obama has said he wants all combat troops out of Iraq by the spring of 2010, leaving behind a residual force of trainers, air controllers, advisers and logistics soldiers until the end of the mission. “I hear a lot of people, among our critics, who keep saying `Iraq’s a mess, pull out.’ Well, that’s not true. It’s not a mess,” Cheney said. “We have made major progress. We have come close to achieving a significant proportion of our objectives.” SH (S) 1