Vice President Dick Cheney dismissed suggestions that blunders may have hurt the Bush administration’s credibility on Iraq.

In an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, conducted a day after the State of the Union address, Cheney was asked to respond to some Republicans who “are now seriously questioning your credibility, because of the blunders and the failures.”

To that, the V.P. answered:

“Wolf, Wolf, I simply don’t accept the premise of your question. I just think it’s hogwash.”

Cheney said the Bush administration is committed to moving ahead with its plan to send additional troops to Baghdad, even if Congress passes its non-binding resolution in opposition.

“It won’t stop us,” he said, echoing Bush’s remarks that the approval of Congress is not needed. “And it would be, I think, detrimental from the standpoint of the troops.”

If the U.S. were to pull out of Iraq, Cheney believes the U.S. would simply validate the terrorists’ strategy. He says Americans will stay to complete the task, and show we have the stomach for the fight. Not doing that would be the biggest threat, he says.

“The notion that somehow the effort hasn’t been worth it, or that we shouldn’t go ahead and complete the task, is just dead wrong,” he added.

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said Thursday that Cheney’s Iraq war policy is out of touch with reality.

“To have Vice President Cheney suggest we have had a series of enormous successes in Iraq is delusional. I don’t understand how he can continue to say those things when the president calls them a slow failure,” Durbin said.

Cheney said the ouster of Saddam Hussein was the right move.

“The world is much safer today because of it,” he said. “There have been three national elections in Iraq. There’s a democracy established there, a constitution, a new democratically elected government. Saddam has been brought to justice and executed, his sons are dead, his government is gone. And the world is better off for it.”

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