Obama Aides: Cheney Is Just Rehashing Old Bush Administration Fights
They say the former vice president is still fighting old battles from the Bush administration
White House officials are dismissing former Vice President Cheney's attack on President Obama's national security policies yesterday as a rehash of internal debates from George W. Bush's administration. A senior Obama adviser says Cheney wants to "re-litigate" decisions from the past over allowing "enhanced interrogations," which some call torture, of suspected terrorists; holding suspects at the Guantánamo Bay detention center; and putting the Bush administration on a war footing. Obama aides say it has now become clear that Cheney and his allies were obsessed by fear of another attack, and this made them go too far, especially during Bush's first term. When other Bush advisers tried to limit Cheney's influence, it set off serious arguments internally with Colin Powell, who was then secretary of state, and others. By Bush's second term, Cheney's ultrahard line approach was pulled back under the influence of Powell's successor, Condoleezza Rice, and National Security Adviser Steve Hadley, according to Obama counselors and former Bush insiders. "Cheney is trying to make the final argument in a debate that's still ongoing from the Bush administration," says the Obama adviser. "It's all about Cheney's legacy."
For their part, Cheney allies say that he can't bring himself to remain silent, as former President Bush has done, because he is convinced that no one is standing up to Obama effectively on national security issues. He believes that he is uniquely equipped to do that job because of his long years of experience in the national security field.
Cheney is also setting the stage for a big embarrassment for Obama by calling attention to the fact that there were no successful terrorist attacks on American soil after 9/11, says a former government colleague of Cheney's. "If there is another terrorist attack, God forbid, Cheney is going to look like gold," the former official says.
A White House strategist, however, points out that survey research by Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg finds that the Democrats have caught up to the Republicans on national security issues and the public now has about the same level of confidence in both parties to protect the nation. For many years, the GOP enjoyed a big advantage on that score. The polling was conducted just prior to the Obama-Cheney back-to-back speeches Thursday.
Reader Comments
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Reply to thebob.bob of WY,
No matter how many times you repeat the lies, they are still lies.
We’ve heard, and seen bumper stickers saying, “No one died when Clinton lied ”. To believe this we would have to forget that Clinton launched 200 cruise missiles at Baghdad on the day that Monica Lewinsky testified before a grand jury. We questioned the timing of the launch of so many cruise missiles. It looked like an attempt to distract attention from her testimony. But no one had any doubt about why he did it. Hussein had already used chemical weapons repeatedly. ‘Chemical Ali’ was in charge of the WMD program, so nicknamed by the Iraqi people. Hussein never verifiably disposed of these chemicals, refusing to honor the terms of the cease-fire agreement from Desert Storm, and refusing to comply with subsequent U. N. resolutions. It is not possible for a rational human being to believe that 200 missiles could land in Baghdad and “no one died”. It is far more likely that Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, George Bush, our allies, all their advisors, most member of congress, and the intelligence communities of several countries were correct in the first place, when they all went on record agreeing on the existence of Hussein’s WMD program.
The twentieth century’s discovery of King Tut’s tomb shows how long such a large underground vault can remain hidden. Hussein could have learned from the pharaohs, to leave no one alive to remember his hiding places. On his whim, he might force you to watch your daughter being raped in front of you, or your relatives being dropped out of a helicopter. He killed his own son-in-law. He was capable of doing all these things and much worse. I vividly remember a horrific two-page color photograph, which appeared in USN&WR documenting genocide for all to see. In the background were the dead bodies of Kurds littering the landscape after an airplane had flown over their village, spraying them with poison chemicals. In the foreground was a dead baby still held in the arms of its dead mother; their faces still showing that they had spent their last moments choking on the Hussein’s chemicals. The 43rd president hadn’t even been elected yet, and no one had begun denying the existence of this WMD program. This was why Desert Storm’s cease-fire agreement included a ‘no-fly zone’.
Photographs become indelibly stamped in a person’s memory: the young man who stopped a column of tanks in Tiananmen Square by standing in front of it, the space shuttle Challenger exploding after launch. I will never forget the two-page color photograph appearing in this magazine, of a mother and child choked to death on Hussein’s chemicals. China now denies that any massacre took place in Tiananmen Square, although I remember that day very clearly. Now people on the left are in denial of this vicious act of genocide, which took the lives of 30,000 human beings, but only after they decided that doing so suits their political interests.
Reply to thebob.bob of WY,
No matter how many times you repeat the lies, they are still lies.
We’ve heard, and seen bumper stickers saying, “No one died when Clinton lied ”. To believe this we would have to forget that Clinton launched 200 cruise missiles at Baghdad on the day that Monica Lewinsky testified before a grand jury. We questioned the timing of the launch of so many cruise missiles. It looked like an attempt to distract attention from her testimony. But no one had any doubt about why he did it. Hussein had already used chemical weapons repeatedly. ‘Chemical Ali’ was in charge of the WMD program, so nicknamed by the Iraqi people. Hussein never verifiably disposed of these chemicals, refusing to honor the terms of the cease-fire agreement from Desert Storm, and refusing to comply with subsequent U. N. resolutions. It is not possible for a rational human being to believe that 200 missiles could land in Baghdad and “no one died”. It is far more likely that Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, George Bush, our allies, all their advisors, most member of congress, and the intelligence communities of several countries were correct in the first place, when they all went on record agreeing on the existence of Hussein’s WMD program.
The twentieth century’s discovery of King Tut’s tomb shows how long such a large underground vault can remain hidden. Hussein could have learned from the pharaohs, to leave no one alive to remember his hiding places. On his whim, he might force you to watch your daughter being raped in front of you, or your relatives being dropped out of a helicopter. He killed his own son-in-law. He was capable of doing all these things and much worse. I vividly remember a horrific two-page color photograph, which appeared in USN&WR documenting genocide for all to see. In the background were the dead bodies of Kurds littering the landscape after an airplane had flown over their village, spraying them with poison chemicals. In the foreground was a dead baby still held in the arms of its dead mother; their faces still showing that they had spent their last moments choking on the Hussein’s chemicals. The 43rd president hadn’t even been elected yet, and no one had begun denying the existence of this WMD program. This was why Desert Storm’s cease-fire agreement included a ‘no-fly zone’.
Photographs become indelibly stamped in a person’s memory: the young man who stopped a column of tanks in Tiananmen Square by standing in front of it, the space shuttle Challenger exploding after launch. I will never forget the two-page color photograph appearing in this magazine, of a mother and child choked to death on Hussein’s chemicals. China now denies that any massacre took place in Tiananmen Square, although I remember that day very clearly. Now people on the left are in denial of this vicious act of genocide, which took the lives of 30,000 human beings, but only after they decided that doing so suits their political interests.
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