Cheney: 'No question' Putin thinks Obama is weak
Former Vice President Dick Cheney said there is "no question" that Russian President Vladimir Putin believes President Barack Obama is weak, and that the United States should not take military options off the table in its response to Russia's military intervention in Ukraine.
"I worry when we begin to address the crisis, the first thing we do is take options off the table,” Cheney said on CBS' "Face The Nation" Sunday. “There are military options that don’t involve putting groups on the ground in Crimea.”
Among them: military training "for the Ukrainians themselves," Cheney said.
Cheney then criticized what he called President Barack Obama's reflexive urge to say "no military," and the administration's "indecisiveness" in Syria — which has allowed Putin to run "roughshod" over the region.
"There's no question Putin believes [Obama] is weak," Cheney said. “We have created an image around the world, not just to the Russians, of weakness and indecisiveness. The Syrian situation is a classic. We got all ready to do something, a lot of the allies signed on, at the last minute Obama backed off.”
Last week on "Face The Nation," Secretary of State John Kerry called Putin's "invasion" of Crimea a "brazen act of aggression" and said there were "a broad array of options" available, but limited the talk to sanctions.
"The last thing anybody wants is a military option in this kind of a situation," Kerry said on "Meet The Press." "We want a peaceful resolution through the normal processes of international relations."
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