Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Cheney Urged Bush To Attack Syria, New Book Says

Former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney urged the United States to bomb a suspected Syrian nuclear reactor in June 2007, the New York Times reported on Wednesday, quoting excerpts from Cheney’s autobiography due to be published next week.

According to Cheney, former U.S. President George W. Bush refused his demands and opted for a diplomatic approach after other advisers expressed apprehension. Foreign reports indicate that the Syria reactor was later bombed by Israel in September 2007.

“I again made the case for U.S. military action against the reactor,” the New York Times quoted Cheney as writing about a meeting on the issue. “But I was a lone voice. After I finished, the president asked, ‘Does anyone here agree with the vice president?’ Not a single hand went up around the room.”

In Cheney’s autobiography, “In My Time: A Personal and Political Memoir,” which is to be published by Simon & Schuster next week, he relates his experiences as Vice President to Bush, discussing his opinions on the United States’ nuclear weapons agreement with North Korea, his handling of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks – when Bush was away from Washington and hampered by communications breakdowns – and his stance on Bush’s approach to dealing with Iraq.

In Bush’s own memoir, published in 2010, he claims that in 2007, then-prime minister Ehud Olmert asked him to bomb a nuclear facility in Syria. Bush was given an intelligence report on the suspicious, well-concealed facility, and Olmert then asked him in a phone conservation to bomb the site, concerned that the Syrians were developing nuclear weapons with North Korean assistance.

For more, see Haaretz.com

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.