Controversial former Vice President Dick Cheney brushed off criticism by George H.W. Bush, who said in a new biography that members of his son's administration damaged the reputation of the United States.
Bush Senior's comments were made in a new biography about the 41st president, Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey Of George Herbert Walker Bush. "Just iron-ass. His seeming knuckling under to the real hard-charging guys who want to fight about everything, use force to get our way in the Middle East," Bush said about Cheney's response to the September 11, 2001 attacks.
He also said he believed Cheney had acted too independently of his son, George W. Bush, and that caused him harm. Bush Senior suggested Cheney's hardline actions were influenced by his more conservative family members, namely his wife Lynne and daughter Liz.
Cheney brushed those remarks aside.
"We smile about it, we laugh about it," Cheney, now 74, responded on Fox News. "Same with my daughter, with Liz. It's his view, perhaps, of what happened, but my family was not conspiring to somehow turn me into a tougher, more hardnosed individual. I got there all by myself."
Cheney also told Fox News he felt complimented by Bush's remarks about his "iron ass" approach to foreign policy, though Bush clearly didn't mean it in a positive way.
"I took it as a mark of pride," he responded. "The attack on 9/11 was worse than Pearl Harbor, in terms of the number people killed, and the amount of damage done. I think a lot of people believed then, and still believe to this day that I was aggressive in defending, in carrying out what I thought were the right policies."
Cheney also served in the elder Bush's administration, and said he wasn't miffed by the now-91-year-old's opinions.
"The diary's fascinating, because you can see how he felt at various key moments of his life," Cheney told Fox. "So I'm enjoying the book. I recommend it to my friends. And proud to be a part of it."
Cheney and Rumsfeld have a legacy as the architects of Operation Iraqi Freedom, the disastrous 2003 invasion of the country under false pretenses it was harboring weapons of mass destruction. Many -- including President Obama -- have linked the resulting power vacuum with the rise of the Islamic State.
The war cost the United States $806 billion, according to U.S. News in 2011, with civilian Iraqi deaths counted between 145,000 and 166,000, according to the tracking website Iraq Body Count, while according to the Washington Post, nearly 4,500 American soldiers died.
Watch Cheney's remarks, as posted by Fox News, here:
