Press TV
March 12, 2014
A political activist and author says former US vice president Dick Cheney is urging “a nuclear winter” in his remarks against Russia.
“We could have mass annihilation. We could have a nuclear winter. We could have literally Armageddon, and this is what Dick Cheney is urging. It is absolute lunacy,” said Stephen Lendman, syndicated columnist and activist in a phone interview with Press TV Monday.
As tensions between Washington and Moscow continue to rise over the crisis in Ukraine, Cheney, who was one of the major architects of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, appeared on CBS News’ Face the Nation on Sunday and said the US should not take “military options” against Russia off the table.
“I worry when we begin to address a crisis, the first thing we do is we take options off the table,” Cheney said on TV. “I don’t think the administration should do that.”
He also urged the Obama administration to boost its missile systems in Poland and the Czech Republic.
Lendman criticized Cheney’s warmongering remarks on TV.
“It’s astonishing that any official – present or past – would make a public statement urging stepped up belligerence against a major nuclear power,” he said.
“America and Russia have well over 90 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons – powerful nuclear weapons. They could wipe out vast areas, each one of them,” Lendman warned. “They have long range delivery systems with pin-point accuracy.”
Lendman also criticized CBS, “a major US broadcaster,” for giving airtime to Cheney, “who I call very justifiably an unindicted war criminal, multiple times over, not just in the Bush administration, [but also] in previous administrations,… to voice sentiments likes this.”
Cheney has been accused of violating United Nations Convention against Torture over his support for the CIA’s torture techniques, like water-boarding, as the US vice president under George W. Bush.
Cheney’s remarks come as 12 US F-16 fighter jets and 300 American troops are set to arrive in Poland this week in response to the crisis in Ukraine. A US Navy guided-missile destroyer has already entered the Black Sea.
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