Former vice president Dick Cheney has claimed that people are going to be shocked by his new book, but former Secretary of State Colin Powell said Sunday that the tome was just full of “cheap shots.”

Cheney told NBC’s Jamie Gangel last week that there would be “heads exploding all over Washington” when his new memoir “In My Time” was released.

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“My head isn’t exploding and I haven’t noticed any other heads exploding in Washington, D.C.,” Powell told CBS’ Bob Schieffer Sunday. “What really sort of got my attention was this way in which he characterized it, it’s going to cause heads to explode. That’s quite a visual and in fact, the kind of headline I would expect to come out a gossip column, that’s the kind of headline you might see one of the supermarket tabloids write.”

“It was not the kind of headline I would have expected to come from a former Vice President of the United States of America. Mr. Cheney had a long and distinguished career and I hope his book that’s what he would focus on, not these cheap shots that he’s taking at me and other members of the administration who served to the best of our ability for President Bush.

“Did the conversations, I mean, the atmosphere within the White House while you were there, how would you characterize it?” Schieffer asked. “I mean, obviously there were disagreements but was it — were these angry disagreements because I know he, in some ways he’s no kinder to your successor, Condoleezza Rice, than he was to you?”

“Well he’s taken the same shots at Condi, with an almost condescending tone,” Powell recalled. “She tearfully did this, or that. And he’s taken the same shots at George Tenet. And he has also, in some ways, indicated he didn’t always approve of what President Bush was deciding. And there’s nothing wrong with saying you disagree.”

“But it’s not necessary to take these kind of barbs and then try to pump a book up by saying heads will be exploding. That’s even on the headline section of the Nixon Foundation to sell the book. I think it’s a bit too far. I think, Dick overshot the runway with that kind of comment, if that’s how he plans to sell his book.”

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Watch this video from CBS’ Face the Nation, broadcast Aug. 28, 2011.



