All Entries Tagged With: "Cheney"
Cheney: Execute Terrorists If Cuba Prison Must Close
(c) newsmax Monday, June 1, 2009 8:59 PM
Former Vice President Dick Cheney said Monday that the only alternative to holding some suspected terrorists indefinitely would be to execute them, arguing against the Obama administration’s plans to close the Guantanamo detainee prison.
"If you’re going to be engaged in a world conflict such as we are, such as the global war on terrorism, if you don’t have a place where you can hold these people, your only other option is to kill them," Mr. Cheney said.
"And we don’t operate that way."
The former vice president’s statements only raise the stakes in fierce debate with his critics, who believe Mr. Cheney presided over the formulation of interrogation techniques that they regard as torture and remains unapologetic for approving waterboarding and other harsh methods used.
Mr. Cheney bases his argument on the view that suspected terrorists should be considered prisoners of war and said such persons "ought to be held until the end of the conflict.
He also criticized the Obama administration for failing to think through its plans to shutter Guantanamo.
"The administration made a mistake of the president issuing an order that he wants it closed within a year, but didn’t have a clue as to how to proceed," Mr. Cheney said. "And now they’re having trouble because they’re having to come up with a plan of some kind."
Mr. Cheney, who has become the most prominent figure to defend the Bush administration’s record on terror and national security, spoke and took questions at a lunch honoring journalism award winners at the National Press Club.
The former vice president said that the Guantanamo Bay prison is "a fine facility" and that the White House will have a "very difficult" time closing it, because of the legal, political and diplomatic challenges associated with indefinite detention.
Mr. Obama has indicated that even after Guantanamo’s closure, the government will still hold some detainees in prolonged detention. He has also restarted the military commissions process to try some detainees there instead of in civilian courts, following a Bush-era policy.
In arguing for the continued use of Guantanamo, Mr. Cheney cited recent press reports that said about 14 percent of the more than 500 prisoners released from Guantanamo have returned to what he called that jihad business. However, more recent reporting has indicated that the recidivism rate among freed detainees is likely much lower.
Mr. Obama’s decision to close Guantanamo, however, was praised by Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu during a visit to Washington.
For the psychological atmosphere the symbolic issues are important, Mr. Davutoglu said during an interview with a small group of journalists at his Washington hotel. Many things in our region are psychological.
But on the domestic political front, one of the leading contenders for the Republican nomination to run against Mr. Obama in 2012, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, took aim at the president’s foreign policy and defense budget cuts.
Mr. Romney characterized Mr. Obama’s last two trips abroad as a tour of apology and criticized signs from the White House that they might back off a missile defense system in Eastern Europe.
"Arrogant, delusional tyrants can’t be stopped by earnest words and furrowed brows," Mr. Romney said. "Action, strong bold action coming from a position of strength and determination, is the only effective deterrent."
North Korea and Iran were two of the topics that Mr. Cheney admitted the Bush administration did fall short on.
We didn’t bat 1,000. No question about it. And Iran and North Korea are still out there, Mr. Cheney said in response to a question about the growth of nuclear programs in both regimes during the eight years that Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney were in office. I wish we could have done more, but those are problems that are passed on to the next administration.
But Mr. Cheney did assign responsibility to the CIA for both the pre-war intelligence prior to the invasion of Iraq, and for proposing the enhanced interrogation techniques that have been the cause of so much controversy.
The former vice president also said that al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is not the threat he once was.
I don’t think he can have much impact in terms of managing the organization, because that link between Obama and the people under him is pretty fragile, Mr. Cheney said, inserting the president’s first name for bin Laden’s, a gaffe committed in the past by numerous politicians.
I don’t think he has the capacity to do as much harm as he did at one point, but we ought to still continue to chase him, Mr. Cheney said of bin Laden.
Military Deaths Nearly Half Under Bush Compared To Clinton Years
The Far Left was enraged today with Dick Cheney.
The Vice President declared that the Iraq War was worth it.
He also announced that most of our objectives had been reached .
The Bush-bashers still feign outrage that the US lost 4,226 heroes liberating Iraq.
Of course, they weren’t too upset about military losses when the Clinton’s were in charge.
Numbers from Iraq Coalition Casualties and CRS report to Congress (pdf)
The Iraq War historically has been a great success.
The Telegraph reported today:
The number of American troops killed during the eight years of the War against Terror has been fewer than those slain capturing two islands in the Second World War, and in Britain we have lost fewer soldiers than on a normal weekend on the Western Front. As for civilians, there have been fewer Iraqis killed since the invasion than in 20 conflicts since the Second World War.
Vice President Cheney talked more about the success in Iraq with Jim Lehrer today on the "News Hour":
THE VICE PRESIDENT: We now find ourselves in the situation where we’re five years later; we’ve achieved most of the objectives that you would have set out in the spring of ‘03 when we launched into Iraq. We’ve got the violence level down to its lowest level since ‘03. We’ve had three national elections, a constitution written, a new government stood up, new army recruited and trained, the Iraqis increasingly able to take on responsibility for themselves. And we’ve now entered into a strategic framework agreement with the new Iraqi government that will provide for the ultimate withdrawal of U.S. forces.
You could not have asked for much more than that in terms of the policies that we started on in ‘03.
Q But Mr. Vice President, getting from there to here, 4,500 Americans have died, at least 100,000 Iraqis have died. Has it been worth that?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: I think so.
Q Why?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Because I believed at the time what Saddam Hussein represented was, especially in the aftermath of 9/11, was a terror-sponsoring state so designated by the State Department. He was making payments to the families of suicide bombers. He provided a safe haven and sanctuary for Abu Nidal and other terrorist operations. He had produced and used weapons of mass destruction, chemical and biological agents. He’d had a nuclear program in the past. He killed hundreds of thousands of his own people. And he did have a relationship with al Qaeda.
We’ve had this debate that keeps people trying to conflate those arguments. That’s not to say that Saddam was responsible for 9/11. It is to say as George Tenet, the CIA Director, testified in open session in the Senate, that there was a relationship there that went back 10 years. This was a terror-sponsoring state with access to weapons of mass destruction. And that’s the greatest threat we faced in the aftermath of 9/11, that the next time we found terrorists in the middle of one of our cities, it wouldn’t be 19 guys armed with airline tickets and box cutters, it would be terrorists armed with a biological agent, or maybe even a nuclear device.
And so I think given the track record of Saddam Hussein, I think we did exactly the right thing. I think the country is better off for it today.
It’s too bad that Cheney wasn’t out giving that same talk each week.
It is also too bad that the media continues to keep this information from the American public.
Today there is a democracy in the Middle East where there was once a brutal regime.
Was it worth it?
Here is the Vice President discussing the War in Iraq and amazing progress that has occurred since the Bush Surge in 2007:
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