Key Republican makes house call to Cheney

House Homeland Security Chairman Mike McCaul (R-Texas) paid a visit Tuesday to a man well-versed in matters of national security and terrorism: former Vice President Cheney.

{mosads}McCaul told The Hill he drove out to Cheney’s home in McLean, Va., to discuss the terror threat from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), and the escalation of violence in Iraq. Cheney served as secretary of Defense under President George H.W. Bush and as vice president under George W. Bush.

Cheney “just thinks that by withdrawing completely out of Iraq, not having a residual force, that if you’re not there, you can’t shape world events and you’re kind of held hostage,” McCaul said in an interview. 

The former vice president touched on “the idea that we’ve failed to leave a residual force like we have in 30-plus countries, like we have after wars, and our failure to engage with [former Prime Minister Noori al-Maliki] and the Sunni tribes,” McCaul said. 

A former Cheney staffer who now works on McCaul’s committee connected the two men. They chatted for about an hour over Starbucks coffee.

“He agrees with me that the world under this president has become more dangerous,” McCaul said. 

“Despite his narrative that al Qaeda has been decimated and the threat is over, the culmination of ISIS disproved that and it defies [Obama’s] narrative and his legacy.”