Let me stipulate up front that I can be a bit slow on the uptake.

Having made that admission, I now must wonder aloud why the immediate past vice president of the United States, Richard B. Cheney, should be taken seriously when he criticizes the Iran nuclear deal.

Why question it? Because Vice President Cheney and the rest of the Bush administration national security team were woefully wrong about Iraq and the conditions that lured us into the Iraq War.

Yet, there he is, out there blasting the Iran nuclear deal while actually defending the decision to go to war in Iraq. Remember the weapons of mass destruction? Or that Saddam Hussein was working to develop a nuclear arsenal of his own? Or that we’d be greeted as “liberators” by the Iraqis?

Cheney and the rest of the Bush gang said all of that.

Now we are supposed to believe him when he assesses the Iran nuclear deal as presenting a far greater risk to the United States than the terrorists who hit us on 9/11.

Cheney was wrong in 2003. He’s wrong now.

But he stands firm on the rationale he, the president, the national security team and the secretary of state all presented to the world that, by golly, Saddam was going to present a threat to the entire world. We had to take him out, Cheney said.

We weren’t greeted as liberators. The WMD? Not a sign of it anywhere. Ditto for the Iraqi nuke program.

Mr. Vice President, your miscalculation — or perhaps it was a deception — on Iraq disqualifies you from speaking out against an agreement that has far greater chances for success than the misadventure you helped create in Iraq.