Cheney addressing the latest attempt by Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab to blow up an airliner in flight said in his acerbic statement:

He seems to think if he gives terrorists the rights of Americans, lets them lawyer up and reads them their Miranda rights, we won’t be at war. He seems to think if we bring the mastermind of 9/11 to New York, give him a lawyer and trial in civilian court, we won’t be at war. He seems to think if he closes Guantanamo and releases the hard-core al Qaeda-trained terrorists still there, we won’t be at war.”

Cheney also said Obama outwardly “pretends we aren’t at war” and he repeated his months-long criticism that the new president has made America “less safe.”

Cheney also asked in his patented sardonic way:

Why doesn’t he want to admit we’re at war? It doesn’t fit with the view of the world he brought with him to the Oval Office. It doesn’t fit with what seems to be the goal of his presidency: social transformation, the restructuring of American society.”

Cheney seems to think we are at war with a state. Wrong. We are at war with an ideology. There are no western fronts to line up the artillery and blast them to smithereens, or unload the latest 30,000 Massive Ordnance Penetrator bomb on the communication center. Even Patton couldn’t pull this one off.

These guy’s communication center is a cave somewhere in Afghanistan or Pakistan.

Cheney blasts the current administration for the exact same decision the Bush administration made with Richard Reid, you know, the shoe bomber? Bush was on vacation when that incident happened. 6 days later he made a comment.

Reid was tried, convicted and sentenced in Federal court. Same with Zacarias Moussaoui.

Apparently, Cheney doesn’t have any faith in a U.S. Justice Department when he is not pulling the strings. I guess he is also still pissed that Scooter Libby didn’t get off scott free.

Cheney is trying to put the Obama administration in as bad a light as he can so he hopes the public will forget just what deep shit the Bush administration (with his blessing, of course) put us in. Their administration drove us to the brink of financial insolvency, started a war with a country that had zero to do with the 9/11 attacks, and alienated the U.S. from all but our stanchest allies.  

9/11 happened on the Bush/Cheney watch. We should never forget that. They had the intelligence that Bin Laden was going to try something, but they sat on that. Then they blamed Iraq, and started that war and basically forgot about Afghanistan.

White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer wrote on the official White House blog:

It is telling that Vice President Cheney and others seem to be more focused on criticizing the Administration than condemning the attackers…

For seven years after 9/11, while our national security was overwhelmingly focused on Iraq — a country that had no al Qaeda presence before our invasion — Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda’s leadership was able to set up camp in the border region of Pakistan and Afghanistan, where they continued to plot attacks against the United States…

Meanwhile, al Qaeda also regenerated in places like Yemen and Somalia, establishing new safe-havens that have grown over a period of years. It was President Obama who finally implemented a strategy of winding down the war in Iraq, and actually focusing our resources on the war against al Qaeda…

Seven years of bellicose rhetoric failed to reduce the threat from al Qaeda and succeeded in dividing this country. And it seems strangely off-key now, at a time when our country is under attack, for the architect of those policies to be attacking the president.

Strangely off-key indeed. Turn in your U.S. lapel pin Mr. Cheney. If you think our government isn’t doing all that’s humanly possible to protect you, then leave. Your vitriolic partisan bullshit is no longer relevant.

“The president of the United States is supposed to lead the free world, not follow it,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. “He’s been timid and passive more than I would like.”

“I’d like to see the president be stronger than he has been, although I appreciate the comments that he made yesterday,” McCain said. “I think we ought to have America lead.”

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said a slow or muted U.S. response risks undermining the aspirations of Iranian voters to change or question their government.

“If America stands for democracy and all of these demonstrations are going on in Tehran and other cities over there, and people don’t think that we really care, then obviously they’re going to question, ‘do we really believe in our principles?’” Grassley said.

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Well, the 8 years under Bush went really well for Middle Eastern relationships, right?  Threats and carrying the big stick only incited the Iranian leadership to call for America’s demise. Now that we have an administration that understands foreign policy, we should give it a chance.

“Romney, speaking at the U.S. Navy Memorial in Washington, said Obama’s slash to the nation’s ballistic missile defense system was a “grave miscalculation” that puts America at risk. And Obama cannot continue expanding government while cutting defense spending, Romney said.

“The president’s planned budgets and multitrillion dollar deficits, financed by a level of borrowing never before attempted by any nation, puts our whole economy in jeopardy,” Romney said in the speech, sponsored by the conservative Heritage Foundation. “He may take us past the tipping point and create a crisis of confidence in the dollar that would burden us for years.”

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Classic FUD, and molding what’s really happening to his own liking. Defense spending down under Obama? No, actually a proposed 4% increase in the latest budget.

This is why the Republicans were beaten so soundly. No new idea’s, no fresh approaches, only repackaged, old, tired and worn out policies.

And torture? See this 2007 quote (from The Huffignton Post) from his National Security Campaign adviser back in 2007 .

A congressman from the 6th Congressional District (Littleton)until he retired last year, Tancredo has made statements over the years threatening to bomb Mecca, calling Miami a Third World city and suggesting the U.S.-Mexico border wall separate Brownsville, Texas, from the rest of America.
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Wow – this guy is a piece of work. This is worse than straight FUD…this is racist FUD. The Republican Party must be so proud, and Rush too…oh, wait, he is the Republican Party! So he is proud of himself too? Or the just the Party? So confusing as to who is in charge these days.