Dick Cheney on Terror

What can you do with a lovable old curmudgeon like Dick Cheney? Put him in prison for war crimes? Nah. We need him out there spouting his imbecilities to help us forget all of the mistakes made by the Cheney/Bush Administration when it came to terrorism.

Cheney has repeatedly criticized the President Obama for laxity on terrorism. Part of this criticism has been Cheney’s effort to defend his own use of torture as an interrogation technique. He recently criticized the President for not responding quickly to the Christmas Day airplane bombing attempt (President Obama took three days to publicly address the incident-- Bush took six days to respond to an identical incident with the 2001 shoe bomber, Richard Reid). Cheney said that President Obama “seems to think if he has a low-key response to an attempt to blow up an airliner and kill hundreds of people, we won’t be at war.” As we all now know, since Christmas President Obama has acted swiftly and resolutely to strengthen our defenses against terror.

Cheney contends that President Obama has hurt the image of the United States around the world by trying to engage in dialogue with Muslim nations! Funny, but the Nobel Prize Committee doesn’t seem to agree with him.

Cheney and the Republicans seem to think that President Obama should not have been vacationing in Hawaii at the time of the Christmas incident (George W. Bush holds the record for amount of time taken by a president on vacation--over 900 days). One Republican strategist, Kevin Madden, made the brainless remark that “Hawaii, to many Americans, seems like a foreign place.”

My guess is that Dick Cheney is suffering from that predicament we older people often experience--forgetfulness. He may or may not be able to distinguish his hunting companion from a quail, but he cannot remember the policies that resulted in the 9/11 attacks. He seems to forget the response of his administration in early 2001, before 9/11, when Richard A. Clarke, counter-terrorism advisor on the National Security Council, repeatedly warned of the danger of an attack from al Qaeda.

In January, 2001, Clarke made an urgent request for a meeting of the National Security Council's Principals Committee to discuss the growing al-Qaeda threat in the Middle East. Clarke also suggested strategies for combating al-Qaeda. The Cheney/Bush Administration rejected Clarke’s urgent warnings, and suggested that Clarke was exaggerating the danger and influence of Osama bin Laden.

In his book, “Against All Enemies,” Clarke charged that before and during the 9/11 crisis, Bush and Cheney were distracted from efforts against Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda by a preoccupation with Iraq and Saddam Hussein. Clarke wrote that the day after the 9/11 attack, President Bush pulled him and a couple of aides aside and "testily" asked him to try to find evidence that Saddam was connected to the 9/11attacks. In response, Clarke wrote a report, signed by the FBI and the CIA, stating there was no evidence of Iraqi involvement. The paper was quickly returned by a White House deputy with a note saying "Please update and resubmit." Bush had no interest in going after al Qaeda. He wanted Saddam Hussein.

As a result of the neglect by the Cheney/Bush Administration, there was more than a failed attempt to blow-up some powder on an airplane. There was a massive, horrible attack on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and Flight 93, with thousands of people killed. For some reason, this did not focus Bush and Cheney’s attention on Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda. For the next eight years Cheney and Bush pursued a wasteful, murderous war in Iraq, virtually ignoring the real terrorists in Afghanistan.

Now that he is an aged, blithering idiot, Cheney has forgotten all that.