Powell reviews Cheney: You undercut George Bush more than I ever did, bub

This is from awhile ago — Face the Nation on Aug. 28 — but I’ve wanted just to put it on the record here.

They are cheap shots. I mean, several of the ones he tosses at me — you know, he takes great credit for my resignation in 2004. Well, President Bush and I had always agreed that I would leave at the end of 2004. After the election, I stayed on for three more months because I wanted to and because there were some conferences that I wanted to attend and because Dr. Rice hadn’t been confirmed. So there’s no news there.

He says that I went out of my way not to present by positions to the president but to take them outside of the administration. That’s nonsense. The president knows that I told him what I thought about every issue of the day. Mr. Cheney may forget that I’m the one who said to President Bush, if you break it, you own it; and you have got to understand that, if we have to go to war in Iraq, that we have to be prepared for the whole war, not just the first phase. And Mr. Cheney and many of his colleagues did not prepare for what happened after the fall of Baghdad. And I persuaded the president to take the case to the United Nations to see if it could be solved without war. And if it couldn’t be solved without war, we would have people aligned with us.

Mr. Cheney went out immediately after the president made that decision and uncut it by giving two speeches to two veterans’ groups that essentially said he didn’t believe it would work. That’s not the way you support a president.

Then he also says that, you know, I was not supportive of the president’s positions. Well, who went to the United Nations and, regrettably, with a lot of false information? It was me. That wasn’t Mr. Cheney. I supported the president. I support the president’s decisions. I gave the president my best advice.