Former Vice President Dick Cheney warned that there is a “high probability” that terrorists will attempt a catastrophic nuclear or biological attack in coming years, and said he fears the Obama administration’s policies will make it more likely the attempt will succeed.
In an interview Tuesday with Politico, Cheney unyieldingly defended the Bush administration’s support for the Guantanamo Bay prison and coercive interrogation of terrorism suspects.
And he asserted that President Obama will either backtrack on his stated intentions to end those policies or put the country at risk in ways more severe than most Americans — and, he charged, many members of Obama’s own team — understand.
“When we get people who are more concerned about reading the rights to an Al Qaeda terrorist than they are with protecting the United States against people who are absolutely committed to do anything they can to kill Americans, then I worry,” Cheney said.
Protecting the country’s security is “a tough, mean, dirty, nasty business,” he said. “These are evil people. And we’re not going to win this fight by turning the other cheek.”
Citing intelligence reports, Cheney said at least 61 of the inmates who were released from Guantanamo during the Bush administration — “that’s about 11 or 12 percent” — have “gone back into the business of being terrorists.”
The 200 or so inmates still there, he claimed, are “the hard core” whose “recidivism rate would be much higher.” (Lawyers for Guantanamo detainees have strongly disputed the recidivism figures, asserting that the Pentagon data have inconsistencies and omissions.) Cheney called Guantanamo a “first-class program,” and “a necessary facility” that is operated legally and with better food and treatment than the jails in inmates’ native countries.
But he said he worried that “instead of sitting down and carefully evaluating the policies,” Obama officials are unwisely following “campaign rhetoric” and preparing to release terrorism suspects or afford them legal protections granted to more conventional defendants in crime cases.
The choice, he alleged, reflects a naive mindset among the new team in Washington: “The United States needs to be not so much loved as it needs to be respected. Sometimes, that requires us to take actions that generate controversy. I’m not at all sure that that’s what the Obama administration believes.”
(Source: Politico)
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11 Responses
I am afraid Dick Cheney may be right on this subject. The detainees held at Guantanamo are the real hard core threats and should not ever be allowed back to where they came from. To those sad Liberals that worry about the so-called rights of these savages..I say thay have no rights. Legal protections under our USA system of justice should be reserved for citizens or those here with valid reasons and paperwork…all illegals or terrorist suspects should have no protections. Our safety is paramount and nothing else should stand in the way. G-d help us all if Mr. Obama is weak in keeping us safe.
Cheney is so straightforward and sober -i miss him already. Cant you at least give him a better picture there?- that one looks like he is one of Americas most wanted.
He’s absolutely right on all counts.
Hashem Yishmor.
Chehney was and is a great friend of Israel. A good man who defended this country well and who unfortunately was hounded by the foolhardy liberals.
#2, that definitely isn’t a flattering picture. It makes him look like he’s addressing Senator Leahy.
He will not be right, B’ezras Hashem.
Lev Melachim B’yad Hashem.
Keep up the daavening, folks.
Cheney speaks? We have to make a shechiyanu.
I’m afraid #6 might not be proven right.
The gemara says “Megalgelin z’chus al yedai zackai umegalgelin choiv al yedai chayav.”
I want to add one of my own. “Megalgelin sh’tus al yedai shoiteh.”
Cheney is a mean and vindictive man as, to me, evidenced by his comment because he is angry that the new administration is trying to blot out as much of the worst presidency in history. There is no evidence, only pure speculation, that our intelligence agencies will be any less on the ball concerning this matter of critical importance. Coupled with the fact that the new president is not despised like the former, I pray the likelihood of what Cheney speaks about has lessened and not increased. Bush/Cheney let it everything fall apart. There have been no new attacks in England, thank heaven, either.
Further, the likelihood of such a catastrophe, heaven forbid, would have had its development during Bush/Cheney as they neglected securing our borders during the War on Terror. I hope he is not intimating that he knows they crossed our borders and is POLITICIZING such a threat. But that would be just like those two. I am so glad they are gone!
as can be seen by my screen name I am not a fan of hope and change but if a terror attack it would be totally BUSH-CHENEY’s fault, since they allowed over 500,000 Muslims to migrate here LEGALLY during their socalled “war on terror”