WASHINGTON — Vice President Dick Cheney called President-elect Barack Obama's national security lineup "a pretty good team."

In a wide-ranging interview with ABC News with 35 days left in the Bush administration, Cheney also again defended going to war in Iraq.

"I must say, I think it's a pretty good team," Cheney said of Obama's national security choices, in a segment of the interview broadcast today on "Good Morning America."

"I'm not close to Barack Obama, obviously, nor do I identify with him politically. He's a liberal. I'm a conservative," he said.

But the vice president also said he thinks "the idea of keeping (Bob) Gates at defense is excellent. I think (retired Gen.) Jim Jones will be very, very effective as the national security adviser."

And Cheney said while "I would not have hired" Hillary Rodham Clinton to be secretary of state, "I think she's tough. She's smart, she works very hard and she may turn out to be just what President Obama needs."

Cheney also urged the incoming administration to "carefully assess the tools put in place to fight terror" and to not cast aside strategies he said worked for the current administration.