In their first face-off before the November 2 US presidential election, the two candidates for vice-president -- incumbent Richard (Dick) Bruce Cheney, 63, and his Democratic challenger, North Carolina Senator John Edwards, 51 -- traded charges over Iraq, terrorism, and the economy.
The two candidates were seated around a semicircular table on a stage at Cleveland's Case Western Reserve University on October 5, and the nationally televised debate was moderated by Gwen Ifill of PBS.
Defending the invasion of Iraq, Cheney said: "What we did in Iraq was exactly the right thing to do. If I had it to recommend all over again, I would recommend exactly the same course of action. The world is far safer today because Saddam Hussein is in jail, his government is no longer in power. And we did exactly the right thing."
But in a shift from his earlier stand, he categorically denied that he had ever linked Hussein with Al Qeada, though "there's clearly an established Iraqi track record with terror".
Photograph: Alex Wong/Getty Images
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