Cheney Doesn't Care What You Think

Cheney: "Well, I think the important thing to keep in mind is the objective that we share with many of our friends in the region, and that is that a nuclear-armed Iran would be very destabilizing for the entire area."

As for Cheney's views on Fallon, talk about damning with faint praise:

Raddatz: "Did he still have the President's confidence when he resigned?"

Cheney: "He made the decision to resign, and he's explained it, as has Bob Gates. . . . "

Raddatz: "Were Admiral Fallon's comments helpful or hurtful?"

Cheney: "I'm not going to get into it. The Admiral had many years of distinguished service in the United States Navy, a number of American commands at very important posts around the world. I think he deserves our thanks for his service, and our best wishes now that he moves on to private life."

Conventional wisdom suggests that whatever military plans Bush and Cheney had in mind for Iran were dealt a death blow in December, after the nation's intelligence agencies publicly concluded that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program four years ago.

But it's never been entirely clear whether Bush and Cheney really believed what they were being told -- or whether they felt the intelligence community was maliciously sabotaging them. Raddatz tried to get at this issue yesterday, but Cheney avoided a direct answer:

Raddatz: "Do you believe the National Intelligence Estimate, that says they shut down their nuclear program or intentions five years ago?"

Cheney: "I think it's been -- it's important if you're going to look at the National International Estimate that we be precise in terms of what it says. And what it says is that they have definitely had in the past a program to develop a nuclear warhead; that it would appear that they stopped that weaponization process in 2003. We don't know whether or not they've restarted. . . . "

Raddatz: "But do you have high confidence they halted their nuclear weapons program in 2003?"

Cheney: "I have high confidence they have an ongoing enrichment program."