Cheney: After Yemen strike, Obama owes apology to Bush

[alienken]

By Joby Warrick, Published: October 2

The Washington Post

Former vice president Dick Cheney on Sunday called last week’s CIA drone strike against al-Qaeda operative Anwar Awlaki a validation of the George W. Bush administration’s terrorist-fighting strategy, and said that President Obama should apologize for his past criticism of those policies.

Cheney endorsed the killing of Awlaki as “justified,” despite Awlaki’s U.S. citizenship, and suggested that the Obama White House was being hypocritical when it approved a deadly strike against the New Mexico-born Awlaki while condemning Bush’s use of so-called enhanced interrogation methods of al-Qaeda prisoners.

“They’ve agreed they need to be tough and aggressive in defending the nation and using some of the same techniques that the Bush administration did,” Cheney said on CNN’s Sunday talk show “State of the Nation with Candy Crowley.” “And they need, as I say, to go back and reconsider some of the criticisms they offered about our policies.”

The Obama administration defended its decision to kill Awlaki, the first U.S. citizen to be added to the CIA’s target list, saying the al-Qaeda propagandist was part of a terrorist organization actively planning attacks on the United States. A Justice Department memo providing legal justification for the strike concluded that Awlaki was not entitled to normal legal protections because he was a combatant in a war against Americans.

But that reasoning rankled Cheney, who noted that Obama had criticized Bush-era decisions that justified the harsh treatment of al-Qaeda prisoners.

“They, in effect, said that we had walked away from our ideals, or taken policy contrary to our ideals, when we had enhanced interrogation techniques,” said Cheney, who has acknowledged supporting the Bush-era use of secret prisons and waterboarding for al-Qaeda suspects. “Now they clearly have moved in the direction of taking robust action when they think it is justified.”

Asked by host Crowley if he would like an apology, he replied: “Well, I would.”

But Cheney said that the Awlaki hit “was a good strike.”

On the same broadcast, the former head of the House Intelligence Committee called on the White House to release the legal memos justifying the use of lethal force against Awlaki. Former Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) said Obama should allow a public debate about the legal basis for its fight against terrorism, avoiding what she said was excessive secrecy under Bush and Cheney.

Of Cheney’s request for an apology, she said: “I think Vice President Cheney has a rather thin skin for a guy who has been in the partisan wars as long as he has.”

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/cheney-after-...

[alienken]

I agree. Though he was born an American citizen, that citizenship was revoked and all constitutional rights along with it. What VP Cheney is talking about is that Obama was a huge critic of the Bush admin for doing exactly what Obama is doing now which is treating them like the enemy combatants that they are without a trial. Put the citizen issue to the side, Obama wanted to put the detainees in Gitmo on trial. He actually wanted to extend our constitutional rights to not only foreigners but enemies of the state!

  There was alot of heated rhetoric about the Bush admin. at the time with Obama leading the charge as a candidate. Many of us on the Rep. right are relieved to see that he lied to get elected, then continued many of the Bush policies. We were so afraid that Obama was going to have our military arrest the terrorist that we are fighting and marandize them, which would have really hurt our side in the war on terror.

[Snagg]

Tell you what, Ken - When Cheney, Bush, Rice, et al, apologize and beg their families' forgiveness for the 4,000 + plus American soldiers who died invading a non-threatening country on ginned-up evidence of weapons that never existed - THEN, MAYBE that motherfucker Cheney gets to POLITELY request an "apology" from Obama for doing what ANY responsible US president - Excepting that blundering doofus Dubya - would have done under the same circumstances.

 

Until then, Dick Cheney can crawl under his sordid little rock and die a painful, lingering death.

 

Might as well face it, Ken - Your hated Commander-in-Chief has done a far, FAR better job of killing the leaders of al-Queda and grinding what remains of their pathetic "army" into the dirt than your drooling hero Bush ever came CLOSE to accomplishing.

But then, I'm one of those who are convinced that Bush & Cheney never had ANY intention of killing bin Laden - He was far too valuable as a bogeyman, to whip idiots into spasms of fear-based, pants-wetting "HE'S-GOING-TO-KILL-US-ALL-UNLESS-YOU-VOTE-FOR-US!" pro-Republican bushwah, to them to do something as silly as actually eliminating the man who caused the death of thousands of innocent Americans. Sweet dreams.

[alienken]

Pacis, your right it has nothing to do with citizenship, but I am referring to the method of going after the terrorist. Candidate Obama wanted to treat them as criminals, arrest them,read them their rights and put them on trial. After elected he started doing that. His first executive order was to close down gitmo and put the detainees on trial but once he tried to accomplish this, he seen all the problems that would come from it and scrapped the whole idea. All you libs who had such outrage at gitmo during the Bush admin are pretty quiet about it now.

  The so called "torture", the enhanced interrogations gave us the intell to be able to hunt down the terrorist which what Obama is doing now. If he followed through with his campaign promises he would be trying to arrest them which just would not work. For the sake of National security, I'm glad he went back on his promises. I just thinks it's odd that all the uproar during the Bush admin is not there at all.

[Snagg]

Fergit it, Pacis...ken's already jammed his head back up his ass and is proudly ignoring ours and all other competing points.

 

Pro Bush-style republicanism is much like a religious cult - The ONLY reality is the one that they want to believe in, inconvenient "bad" facts are nothing but malleable material to be re-arranged and re-molded from minute to minute to fit the narrative as suits it's needs (while convenient "good" facts are carved in stone), and all who disagree with their view are evil, treasonous and beneath contempt. It's good old-fashioned Blind Faith, made an integral factor in a narrow political agenda.

[alienken]

"Torture" is a relative term. I think that sleep deprivation, extream cold, extream heat, standing for long periods of time, and water boarding are enhanced interrogation techniques and not torture when compaired to what I think is real torture like cutting off body parts, electric shock, removing finger nails,starvation, ect.

 But back to the point that I'm trying to focus on....Both sides say they want to go after terrorist. The lib dems wanted to clear out Gitmo and put them all on trial and actually arresting the enemy and read them their rights on the battlefield, then haul the to court. The bush admin and the Republicans wanted to kill and capture but capture only for intelligence gathering. Cadidate Obama and other lid critics nailed Bush all over the place for not arresting these people and now Pres Obama is killing them and adopting the Bush policy....and everyone seems to fine with that.

Where are the antiwar protesters. Where is code pink?

 Obama seems to blame Bush for everything that is wrong and would have credibility if he wasn't doing the same thing.

I'm not a Bush man. I don't support Bush no matter what. I heard a political pundit get it right, he said Bush could not win if he ran right now. He was not a fiscal  conservative and the Tea Party would take him out quickly and rightly so.

 Does anyone remember in the Bush admin when General Petrius was testifying before congress. Sen. Clinton just about called him a liar before he even spoke, Obama criticized him, and the libs called him every name in the book. Now in the Obama admin, Petrius is brought in to save the day.

 This is a serious question I have. I like to study people and I think different groups of people are interesting. Since I don't know any libs here in Texas where I live, I want to ask you this....Do you see Obama continue any of the Bush policies?

[Snagg]

It's quite simple, ken - If the enemy, whoever they may be at the moment, were treating OUR troops in the same way that you would "tolerate" ours treating theirs - "sleep deprivation, extream cold, extream heat, standing for long periods of time, and water boarding" - Would you still be refusing to call that treatment of OUR troops, "torture"...?

 

Something tells me that you wouldn't. I've read more than a few of your posts, and like most religious people, you have a very pronounced sense of the old "It's okay when WE do it" attitude - "Because we're Americans" or "Because JESUS said we can do that" or "Because WE'RE the GOOD GUYS!" - And, as a result, your arguments rarely stand on their own.

 

Torture is torture, no matter how some people try to justify it, and if we as a nation and as Americans expect to be taken seriously when we try to write the rulebook for the rest of the world, then we MUST hold ourselves to the standards by which we expect everybody else to behave. That very same attitude that you display so often, that "WE can say one thing while doing another" crapola is EXACTLY what drives both violent swine like al-Queda and peaceful-but-observant residents of other nations to believe that we can't be trusted or co-operated with  - And they'd be right.

 

Of course, everything I say here is probably peremptorily dismissed, because people with your kind of convictions are offended by the very idea that they CAN be wrong, about ANYTHING - As long, that is, as the suggestions of your errors are coming from a dirty, stinking leftie commie lib like myself. Such a rational way of looking at reality.

 

Oh, well....Just because you can't think rationally doesn't prevent me from doing so. So regarding your borderline-incoherent question - "Do you see Obama continue any of the Bush policies?" - Yeah, I see Obama continuing several Bush policies, out of pragmatism and, some might argue, finding legitimate legal justification for doing so. Just a week ago, I heard a DIRTY, STINKING, UNTRUSTWORTHY MUSLIM - Salman Rushdie, to be exact, a man who has as much or more first-hand experience with maniacal fundamentalist idiots as you do - Defending the assassination of his fellow muslim al-Awlaki on the simple grounds that al-Awlaki wasn't entitled to extradition & trial due process because he'd plainly and incontestably committed TREASON against the United States - For which the long-established penalty is death.

 

Howzabout that? THERE'S a question for YOU to answer, ken: A MUSLIM, publicly and loudly commending the due process-free, long-range execution of a member of his own faith - An utter impossibility, according to most western/christian anti-islam propagandists. How come FOX Trash News and other right-wing blathersnipes like Limbaugh or Coulter weren't cheering Rushdie's comments? Care to comment?

[alienken]

About torture...the argument that we wouldn't want the enemy to our enhanced interrogation techniques on our troops. They do and alot worse. Our military has to go through water boarding to know how to hold up if captured. I remember what the enemy did to our troops when captured. They get beheaded, killed and the body dragged through town, ect. The interrogation that goes on in Gitmo is very mild in comparison. Dont think for a second that the enemy will treat our POWs well just because we do The enemy does not play by the rules.

"A MUSLIM, publicly and loudly commending the due process-free, long-range execution of a member of his own faith"

Why would anyone think that this is impossible? Most on the conservatives that I know of say all the time that not all Muslims are radical. In fact we recognize that only a small percentage of Muslims are aligned with Al-queada and other terrorist groups. This is not a holy war. 

I'm not offended by the fact that I can be wrong and I would be more open minded to the arguments of the left if you people didn't call us so many names every time you turn around. The name calling just makes everyone defensive and takes away any persuasive argument.

 I supported Iraq war and Afganistan war from the beginning but there was actually a good argument against the Iraq war that could have persuaded many more to your side if the rhetoric wasn't so heated. The lib dems in the congress called Pres. Bush everything but a white boy and accused our troops of doing all kinds of terrible things. The defense posture goes up and the argument goes no where.

[alienken]

Our people who are intelligence experts know that there is alot of lieing. They know that if they keep someone cold for a long period of time and ask them questions, that person could say anything to make it stop. All the info gathered is compared to other sources and deemed either reliable or not. This is a very time consuming process that have lead to the different drone attacks that have recently been so successful.

 The clearist attack on Petraeus was from Hilary Clinton she said...and I'm going be memory here,  I'll suspend the attitude of disbelief  or something like that. She and others had already decided that he was lying before he even spoke. Remember the ad some libs payed for..."General be-tray-us"

 This was at the time before the "surge" when things were not going well in Iraq and some in congress was talking about giving up and bringing the troops home. Bush was nailed for his "stay the course" policy. After the surge, things were better in Iraq. I think when we pull the troops out soon, Iraq is in such a better condition than what it would have been had we pulled out we things got tough. By the way the same "surge" tactic that Patreus was criticized for, Obama had him do the same thing in Afganistan with success. Another Bush policy repeated.

 I tell you what, I know sen. Obama was in the same group as Hilary criticizing Patreus but i don't remember exactly what he said, I'll check it out. But also to the point it was everyone else in the congress and the media, and the protesters who treated Patreus like a war criminal and even said so on occasion, are know now very quiet. Too much that went on in the Bush admin era was partisian politics.

Why is nobody worried about Gitmo now when it used to be such a major issue?

No I don't know any libs. I live in the Houston, Texas area and there is not many libs around.

I do get news form other sources besides conservative sites. I watch CNN but there reporting is so bias it just gets irritating.

[alienken]

I know that "torture" tachtics isn't the only way we get info. We have spies and undercover work going on in the hot spots but info gathered in Gitmo lead us to Bin Laden. This was something that they worked on since the Bush admin. There's no interrogating now. I hope we can gather enough intell on the ground for the next strike. That's the problem with taking them out instead of capturing them our intell is going to dry up.

 In every conflict you have to win militarily and politically. Yes they did negotiate with the religious leaders but the were not the only ones who we were fighting. The surge took care of Iranian militants and also Al quiada directly.

Yes, all this talk that Iraq war had nothing to do with the war on terror... we were fighting terrorist directly.  It was a power grab. All the different insurgents groups were wanting to fill the gap left by Sadam. Bush/Chenney/ Patreaus convinced them to peacefully  work in the system, the democracy. We dont know how it's going to work out. If the wrong group is elected into power, we may have the same promblem with iraq all over again. We have alot to worry about, as the middle east countries are going into a transition into democracies, there is one major political group ready to take over...the Muslim Brotherhood.

 There was always people being let go out of Gitmo even in the Bush admin. After the detainees were captured on the battlefield, they would go through a series of interviews to determine if they were dangerous or not. Some that were let go were recaptured. That's why conservatives want to slow down the process.

[alienken]

I clicked on the youtube link and watched it. I didn't do it before because I don't have alot time on the computer. I'm not much of a typist, these responses that I make here take a while.

Sen. Obama was more respectful than Hilary was but he still criticized the surge. This was after the surge and was already claiming that the improvements made were political as you were saying also. The political improvements would not have been made without the surge. The clerics knew that they were negotiating from a position of weakness when the huge increase of U.S. military presence. They knew that they would either have to negotiate or fight them.

At the time of that hearing many Dem. senators wanted to quit while things were going bad. To Pres. Bushes credit he stayed the course and things turned out much better.

I know who the ad was paid by.. moveon.org a lib group. Where were they when Patreaus was brought in by Obama? Is there anyone out there now saying that we should quit Irag and Afgan and come home? Where were the anti-war protesters when Obama illegally got involved in Libya?  So much of this is partisian politics. 

[Snagg]

"Yes, all this talk that Iraq war had nothing to do with the war on terror... we were fighting terrorist directly.  It was a power grab. All the different insurgents groups were wanting to fill the gap left by Sadam"

 

Yes.

 

And who caused that power vacuum, allowing terrorists who weren't there to begin with, to flood into a country that had NOTHING to do with the attacks on New York, making things about a thousand times worse, all because the administration -in-charge SPECIFICALLY IGNORED INTEL THAT DIDN'T SAY WHAT THEY WANTED IT TO SAY - ?

 

ken - You were, I believe, DEFENDING the way the Bush administration "used" itel ? Can't say that I'm surprised that that particular little contradiction hadn't crossed your mind.

[Scott Free]

I don't recall any recent events in which Obama made a reference to blaming Bush for anything. Can you cite some specific references withing the past year in which Obama specifically named Bush and specifically blamed him for anything? A newspaper article? A quote? Anything?