Being Dick Cheney

Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz Cheney have been blasting President Obama. Both have said that President Obama has made the country less safe. Here are two generals that I respect on the matter on the Sunday news programs: General Colin Powell and General David Petraus. Powell was on Face the Nation and Petraus was on Meet the Press.

General Colin Powell: "To suggest that somehow we have become much less safe because of the actions of the administration, I don't think that's borne out by the facts..." President Bush created the Office of the Director of National Intelligence "and it is still under President Obama, working hard," Powell continued. "Our counterterrorism authorities and forces are hard at work. Our law enforcement officials are hard at work. We have gone after the enemy in Afghanistan with 50,000 more troops, more predators are striking al-Qaida and Taliban leaders in Pakistan. We have continued the policies that President Bush put in place with respect to Iraq. And so I don't know where the claim comes that we are less safe."


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General David Petraus: "I have always been on the record, in fact, since 2003, with the concept of living our values. And I think that whenever we've perhaps taken expedient measures, they've turned around and bitten us in the backside. We decided early on, in the 101st airborne division, we just said, we decided to obey the Geneva Conventions. In the cases where that is not true [where torture takes place or international human rights groups aren't granted access to detention sites] we end up paying a price for it, ultimately," he added. "Abu Ghraib and other situations like that are non biodegradable. They don't go away. The enemy continues to beat you with them like a stick.... Beyond that, frankly, we have found that the use of interrogation methods in the army field manual that was given the force of law by Congress, that that works... I've been on the record on that for well over a year, saying it (Gitmo) should be closed. But it should be done in a responsible matter. So I'm not seized with the issue that it won't be done by a certain date. In fact, I think it is prudent to insure that as we move forward with that, the remaining detainees are relocated and so forth... is really thought through and done in a very pragmatic and sensible manner."

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