Former Vice President Dick Cheney on Thursday leveled his harshest indictment yet of President Barack Obama’s approach to the war on terror, saying the president’s efforts to dismantle Bush-era policies have left the nation dangerously exposed to another attack.
“If liberals are unhappy about some decisions, and conservatives are unhappy about other decisions, then it may seem to them that the President is on the path of sensible compromise,” Cheney said. “But in the fight against terrorism, there is no middle ground, and half-measures keep you half exposed.”
“You cannot keep just some nuclear-armed terrorists out of the United States, you must keep every nuclear-armed terrorist out of the United States. Triangulation is a political strategy, not a national security strategy,” Cheney said.
He also says those who call Bush interrogation practices torture — as Obama has — are people who engage in “contrived indignation and phony moralizing on the interrogation methods applied to a few captured terrorists.”
With most Republicans wanting to move forward rather than relitigate the unpopular Bush years, Cheney stepped into the void at the American Enterprise Institute with what amounted to a rebuttal of Obama’s own national security address and a robust defense of the Bush practices.
An unapologetic Cheney gave no ground, and aimed his fire squarely at a president who, in keeping with his political modus operandi, had just sought to balance the demands of left and right.
“There is never a good time to compromise when the lives and safety of the American people are in the balance," he said.
© Janet Crain
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