US vice presidents past and present traded blows on Sunday with Joe Biden, accusing his predecessor Dick Cheney of trying to “rewrite history” by painting US President Barack Obama’s administration as soft on terror.
Cheney, 69, portrayed Obama and the Democrats as alarmingly naive on national security and said Biden was “dead wrong” when he stated recently that another attack on the scale of Sept. 11 terror attacks was “unlikely.”
“I think they need to do everything they can to prevent it. And if the mindset is ‘it’s not likely,’ then it’s difficult to mobilize the resources and get people to give it the kind of priority that it deserves,” Cheney told ABC television.
Biden countered that al-Qaeda was now “on the run” and said: “Dick Cheney’s a fine fellow. He’s entitled to his own opinion. He’s not entitled to rewrite history. He’s not entitled to his own facts.”
The clashes, in tit-for-tat interviews with three TV networks that allowed each to see clips of the other, were a battle royal between long-time rivals bitterly opposed on foreign affairs and national security.
Cheney, the hawkish architect of former president George W. Bush’s counter-terrorism policy, said he still supported waterboarding and suggested it could have been used on Nigerian jet bomb suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.
Employed during the Bush era to try to extract information from key al-Qaeda suspects after Sept. 11, waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques were outlawed by Obama who said they went against US ideals.
The Obama administration has repudiated Bush-Cheney tactics in the “war on terror,” with the president last March saying their treatment of prisoners had caused “incredible damage to our image and position in the world.”
Obama tried unsuccessfully to shut down Guantanamo in his first year in office as he navigated US foreign policy away from “axis of evil,” “war on terror” style politics toward a more engaged, less combative approach.
Biden said that the US authorities were getting “significant information” from Abdulmutallab and that he “continued to talk because we have handled him in a way that encouraged him to talk.”
US justice officials say the 23-year-old Nigerian, who has apparently confessed to being trained by al-Qaeda in Yemen to blow up a Detroit-bound passenger plane on Christmas Day, is cooperating well.
Biden denied Republican charges the Nigerian should have been handed over to the military and pointed out that British shoe bomber Richard Reid was treated exactly the same way as Abdulmutallab by the Bush administration in 2001.
Cheney, recalling a “major shootout” on such issues with the Justice Department when vice president, accused Obama of dangerously framing “terror attacks against the United States as criminal acts, as opposed to acts of war.”
“I think we have to treat it as a war. This is a strategic threat to the United States. I think that’s why we were successful for seven-and-a-half years in avoiding a further major attack against the United States,” he said.
Cheney defended the notorious US detention center at Guantanamo Bay and attacked Obama’s decision to try self-confessed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a civilian court in New York.
It’s “a big, big mistake,” Cheney said. “It gives him a huge platform to promulgate his particular brand of propaganda around the world. I think he ought to be tried at Guantanamo in front of a military commission.”
Cheney, who after Sept. 11 presided over expansions of executive power with little judicial oversight, is accused by some of seeking to defend systematic torture that fueled anti-US sentiment in the Muslim world.
Biden, a 67-year-old former head of the influential Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Cheney was either “misinformed” or deliberately “misinforming” the American people.
“I don’t know where Dick Cheney has been,” Biden said. “Look, it’s one thing, again, to criticize. It’s another thing to sort of rewrite history. What is he talking about?”
For all Cheney’s talk about military tribunals, Biden said the Bush administration had only tried three suspected terrorists that way, two of whom were now walking the streets, free men.
Tempting fate, Biden then went on to claim that Osama bin Laden’s followers were on the run and “not able to do anything remotely like they were in the past.”
“We’ve eliminated 12 of their top 20 people. We have taken out 100 of their associates,” Biden said. “We’ve sent them underground.”
BACKLASH: The National Party quit its decades-long partnership with the Liberal Party after their election loss to center-left Labor, which won a historic third term Australia’s National Party has split from its conservative coalition partner of more than 60 years, the Liberal Party, citing policy differences over renewable energy and after a resounding loss at a national election this month. “Its time to have a break,” Nationals leader David Littleproud told reporters yesterday. The split shows the pressure on Australia’s conservative parties after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s center-left Labor party won a historic second term in the May 3 election, powered by a voter backlash against US President Donald Trump’s policies. Under the long-standing partnership in state and federal politics, the Liberal and National coalition had shared power
NO EXCUSES: Marcos said his administration was acting on voters’ demands, but an academic said the move was emotionally motivated after a poor midterm showing Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr yesterday sought the resignation of all his Cabinet secretaries, in a move seen as an attempt to reset the political agenda and assert his authority over the second half of his single six-year term. The order came after the president’s allies failed to win a majority of Senate seats contested in the 12 polls on Monday last week, leaving Marcos facing a divided political and legislative landscape that could thwart his attempts to have an ally succeed him in 2028. “He’s talking to the people, trying to salvage whatever political capital he has left. I think it’s
CONTROVERSY: During the performance of Israel’s entrant Yuval Raphael’s song ‘New Day Will Rise,’ loud whistles were heard and two people tried to get on stage Austria’s JJ yesterday won the Eurovision Song Contest, with his operatic song Wasted Love triumphing at the world’s biggest live music television event. After votes from national juries around Europe and viewers from across the continent and beyond, JJ gave Austria its first victory since bearded drag performer Conchita Wurst’s 2014 triumph. After the nail-biting drama as the votes were revealed running into yesterday morning, Austria finished with 436 points, ahead of Israel — whose participation drew protests — on 357 and Estonia on 356. “Thank you to you, Europe, for making my dreams come true,” 24-year-old countertenor JJ, whose
UNSCHEDULED VISIT: ‘It’s a very bulky new neighbor, but it will soon go away,’ said Johan Helberg of the 135m container ship that run aground near his house A man in Norway awoke early on Thursday to discover a huge container ship had run aground a stone’s throw from his fjord-side house — and he had slept through the commotion. For an as-yet unknown reason, the 135m NCL Salten sailed up onto shore just meters from Johan Helberg’s house in a fjord near Trondheim in central Norway. Helberg only discovered the unexpected visitor when a panicked neighbor who had rung his doorbell repeatedly to no avail gave up and called him on the phone. “The doorbell rang at a time of day when I don’t like to open,” Helberg told television
RSS