Dick Cheney to GOP: Obama's foreign policy led to ISIS expansion

Former Vice President Dick Cheney met with House Republicans during a closed-door meeting Tuesday, according to various news reports, and urgedthem to adopt a more aggressive approach to combat terrorism.

Cheney, whose legacy as former President George W. Bush's number two is forever entwined with the Iraq war, came just a day before President Obama isset to address the nation on his strategy to combat the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

According to the Washington Examiner, Cheney told participants that the president's policies led to the expansion of ISIS in the region and suggested that the might not be capable of spearheading a strategy to defeat them.

A source told The Guardian newspaper it was "tantamount to a pep talk" before the president's speech.

Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, who are more isolationist, including Sen. Rand Paul, R-Kentucky, the message was welcome.

"Hopefully it sticks with a lot of my colleagues, who, y'know, have kind of had this creep toward isolationism in the Congress lately," Kinzinger told reporters, according to The Hill. "Hopefully this will be an awakening that we have to be very strong and very serious."

Still, Kinzinger said that Cheney "wasn't anything berating necessarily to Republicans," indicating he was not looking to fuel conflict within the Republican ranks.

Last June, Paul told NBC News that the president's critics, like Cheney, should take a look in the mirror.

"I don't blame President Obama," Paul said. "Has he really got the solution? Maybe there is no solution."

Though he was heavily critical of Mr. Obama, Cheney reportedly did not weigh in on whether there should be current U.S. military involvement in the Middle East, according to news reports.

In his own interview earlier this summer, Cheney defended his role in pushing for the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

"I was a strong supporter then of going into Iraq, I'm a strong supporter now. Everybody knows what my position is. There's nothing to be argued about there," he told ABC News. "But if we spend our time debating what happened 11 or 12 years ago, we're going to miss the threat that is growing and that we do face."

He also singled out Paul for criticism at the time, saying the senator simply doesn't understand the nature of the threat posed by terrorism.

"Rand Paul, with all due respect, is basically an isolationist. He doesn't believe we ought to be involved in that part of the world," Cheney said. "That didn't work in the 1930s, it sure as heck won't work in the aftermath of 9/11, when 19 guys armed with airline tickets and box cutters came all the way from Afghanistan and killed 3,000 of our citizens."