Cheney defends Bush's national security policies
WASHINGTON -- Former vice president Cheney presented a full-throated defense of the Bush administration's handling of terror suspects today, while bluntly arguing that President Obama's decisions have exposed the country to greater threat from attack.
Calling waterboarding and other controversial Bush-era interrogation methods "torture," as Obama has done, "is to libel the dedicated professionals who have saved American lives, and to cast terrorists and murderers as innocent victims," Cheney said in a speech this morning at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.
"What's more," Cheney added, "to completely rule out enhanced interrogation methods in the future is unwise in the extreme. It is recklessness cloaked in righteousness, and it would make the American people less safe."
Cheney spoke moments after Obama concluded his own speech at the National Archives. The president reiterated that he had banned the harsh techniques as inconsistent with American values. Obama's speech was piped into the room where a crowd awaited Cheney.
In an address replete with barbs aimed at his critics, Cheney argued that the debate over "the tough questioning of killers," as he put it, was symptomatic of a broader misconception, among Democrats and others, "about the threats that still face our country."
Recent polls show Cheney is popular among Republicans but far less popular among independents and Democrats.
Terrorists hate the United States for what it is, not what it does, Cheney asserted, and "when they see the American government caught up in arguments about interrogations, or whether foreign terrorists have constitutional rights, they don't stand back in awe of our legal system and wonder whether they had misjudged us all along. Instead the terrorists see just what they were hoping for — our unity gone, our resolve shaken, our leaders distracted. In short, they see weakness and opportunity."
Directly rebutting Obama assertion that the United States "lost its way" after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Cheney contended that the Bush administration will be vindicated by history for having done exactly what was required to keep the country safe.
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