Cheney says US should destroy downed drone, Obama wants it back

PressTV

WASHINGTON, Dec 13: Former US Vice President Dick Cheney has criticized the US President Barack Obama for failing to destroy the spy drone recently downed in Iran. Iranian army officials have said they would tweak the drone's technology to serve Iranian needs Cheney said in an interview with CNN on Monday that Obama should have ordered an airstrike to quickly destroy the downed high-tech unmanned aerial aircraft to prevent the Islamic Republic from subjecting it to examination. He also said Obama was presented with three options for recovering or destroying the UAV, but he rejected all of them. "The right response to that would have been to go in immediately after it had gone down and destroy it," Cheney said, adding, "You can do that from the air. You can do that with a quick air strike.” Iranian Army's electronic warfare unit successfully brought down the US RQ-170 Sentinel stealth aircraft with minimal damage on Sunday, December 4, 2011. The drone had been part of a US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reconnaissance mission, involving the US intelligence community stationed in Afghanistan. Instead of apology... Iran's Foreign Ministry Spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast says the US's official demand from Iran to return an intruding American drone to the US is a “forward escape tactic” that comes instead of an apology for its flagrant intrusion into the Iranian airspace. It seems that US President Barack Obama has forgotten that the United States has violated Iran's airspace and engaged in an intrusive spying operation as well as interfering in the nation's internal affairs, which are all in violation of international law, Mehmanparast told reporters at his weekly press conference on Tuesday. The US needs to understand that what it has done in violating the Iranian airspace is a sort of measure that can threaten global peace and security, he added.