Cheney: Talk of blunders in Iraq is 'hogwash'

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Vice President Dick Cheney on Wednesday dismissed as "hogwash" the suggestion that blunders may have hurt the administration's credibility on Iraq and led members of Congress on both sides of the aisle to question President Bush's plan to send more troops to Baghdad.

In an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer, carried out a day after President Bush delivered his State of the Union address, the vice president was told that some Republicans in Congress "are now seriously questioning your credibility, because of the blunders and the failures."

To that Cheney responded: "Wolf, Wolf, I simply don't accept the premise of your question. I just think it's hogwash."

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee defied President Bush on Wednesday and approved a resolution declaring that sending more troops to Iraq is "not in the national interest."

"We better be damn sure we know what we're doing, all of us, before we put 22,000 more Americans into that grinder," said Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, one of the harshest Republican critics of the plan.