'I Don't Have Any Reason to Believe That Anybody in the Agency Did Anything Illegal'

I'm really going to miss Dick Cheney. There may only be 12 days left in his term as Vice President, but he'll drive the left insane until the day he dies, and probably more so posthumously.

Vice President Dick Cheney said Thursday that he sees no reason for President George W. Bush to pre-emptively pardon anyone at the CIA involved in harsh interrogations of suspected terrorists. "I don't have any reason to believe that anybody in the agency did anything illegal," he said.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Cheney also said that Bush has no need to apologize for not foreseeing the economic crisis.

"I don't think he needs to apologize. I think what he needed to do is take bold, aggressive action and he has," Cheney said.

"I don't think anybody saw it coming," he said.

During a wide-ranging interview lasting about 25 minutes, Cheney also said Iran remains at the top of the list of foreign policy challenges that President-elect Barack Obama will face. He said an "irresponsible withdrawal" from Iraq now would be ill-advised. And he said he's confident that North Korea helped Syria build a reactor — a site that Israel suspected of being a nuclear installation and bombed in 2007.

After Obama takes the oath of office on Jan. 20, the 67-year-old Cheney plans to possibly write a book and spend time with his wife, Lynne, their two daughters and six grandchildren. He and his wife will split their time between their house in Virginia and their hometown of Casper, Wyo.

An avid angler, Cheney said the first river he wants to fish is the South Fork of the Snake River on the Wyoming-Idaho border.

Cheney is leaving the White House after a government career that spans four decades. He joined the Nixon administration in 1969, serving at the Cost of Living Council, the Office of Economic Opportunity and within the White House. He was President Ford's chief of staff. Cheney was elected in 1977 as the sole congressman from Wyoming and re-elected five times to the House. He was defense secretary from March 1989 to January 1993, directing Operation Desert Storm in the Middle East.

Here's a man who has ably served his country for over 40 years and never has been there to promote himself or preen for the cameras. A dedicated patriot with a resume longer than most and he's treated like shit by an angry mob hellbent on personal destruction. All those years and look at the gratitude.

Yet he's always done what he knows is right. There's never any equivocating, making nice with his enemies or time to pretend he's something other than he is. And I really respect that. It's nice to see him jab the angry left in the eye one last time, remind them how insipid they are and point out the obvious.

Maybe Dick can get a nice gig commenting at Fox News in between fishing outings, cash in on the lecture tour and fill in on the EIB Network just to savor the paroxysms of rage from the hyperventilating nutroots.