WASHINGTON, June 14 (Reuters) – CIA director Leon Panetta says it’s almost as if former vice president Dick Cheney would like to see another attack on the United States to prove he is right in criticizing President Barack Obama for abandoning the “harsh interrogation” of terrorism suspects.
“I think he smells some blood in the water on the national security issue,” Panetta said in an interview published in The New Yorker magazine’s June 22 issue. “It’s almost, a little bit, gallows politics. When you read behind it, it’s almost as if he’s wishing that this country would be attacked again, in order to make his point.”
Cheney, who was a key advocate in the Bush administration of controversial interrogation methods such as waterboarding, has become as a leading Republican critic of Obama’s ban on harsh interrogations and his plan to shut the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. In a blistering May 21 speech, Cheney said Obama’s reversal of Bush-era policies were “unwise in the extreme” that would make the American people less safe.
Panetta called Cheney’s actions “dangerous politics.”
He told The New Yorker he had favored the creation of an independent truth commission to look into the detainee polices of former President George W. Bush. But the idea died in April when Obama decided such a panel could be seen as politically vindictive.
Found by Ian Warner.
as would Bush, Rumsfeld, KBR, XE…….and every other republican politico
That evil Dick needs to die.
That’s the problem with these guys…hard to say if they really want an attack…but there’s no doubt they’d take advantage of the situation if an attack occurred. They are, after all, masters at fear politics. Otherwise how does a doofus like Bush get re-elected in the middle of a horrid and useless war? Easy….you’ll die if you elect those soft liberals. Cheney said so.
No, no way.
How about we look at it in a more sane, rational manner?
Imagine you are a parent and you are saying to your child “Don’t play on the freeway. I SAID DON’T PLAY ON THE FREEWAY!!
I’VE BEEN ON THAT FREEWAY, AND I KNOW WHAT NOT TO DO!!”
Is it so impossible to conceive in our hate-Cheney-at-any-cost minds that he actually wants to keep our country safe? That he honestly -and with possibly good reason- believes that the Obama administration is going about our national security all wrong, and is trying to make us safer?
After all, this entire article is about a conflict between Leon Panetta and Cheney, and takes Panetta’s point of view. What if Panetta is wrong? What if Cheney is right?
Since when in this democracy (or so it was the last time I looked) that voicing a dissenting voice was not allowed?
Don’t kill the messenger.
“Would Cheney like to see US Attacked Just to Prove a Point?”
That’s about as possible as Obama wanting the “surge” to fail for Bush… Very possible.
Ever since Cheney left his bunker, his mission is to improve his awful legacy.
I am certain he would be delighted. In fact, ANY attack anywhere will be a huge propaganda initiative by him and his cronies.
We can only hope Obama extradites him to Spain or he gets arrested in Vermont and bubba gets a crack at his crack.
Yes, they will probably hire more terrorists to do another 9/11 on us so we will become more obedient and fearful.
If there is another attack on the US, it won’t be due to less torture. It will be due to a continuation of the foreign policy that has instilled hatred for the US worldwide, and our continuing insistence to occupy the majority of the world. Torture or none, Obama has decided to continue the foreign policy that enables Jihadists to recruit common people. Its hard to get a populace worked up in religious fervor, but it’s quite easy to get them worked up when you can point to the remains of schools and hospitals that were hit with US bombs.
Looks like Obama’s thin skin is starting to show. Cheney’s recent talks certainly took Obama to the wood shed.
Panetta’s comment is just like a kid who lost the argument and responds with WAHHHH!
Of course he wants another attack. Chaney and his cronies profit from war.
This sounds like the plot of this last season of “24”, doesn’t it?
No one wants another attack. Not to say that he wouldn’t say, “Told you so.” Beside we did have another attack. Some Muslim terrorist shot up a recruiting station and killed a US service member right out of boot camp.
Was this guy appropriately named or what?
Of course they want an attack. Other than that, the Republican party has nothing. They’ve lived by the Southern Strategy, and now they’re dying by the Southern Strategy — the angry (old) white male is a shrinking demographic. Fear, fear, fear. They somehow believe another terrorist attack will make Americans trust Republicans again, ignoring that the worst terrorist attack in American history occurred on a Republican’s watch, less than a week after he ignored his advisers’ advice (“Al Qaeda determined to strike in U.S”).
Cheney and Limbaugh and the other Republicans who are so desperately hoping that Obama will fail and that more Americans will die in a terrorist attack, solely to benefit their partisan political ambitions, are traitors, plain and simple. And should be dealt with as such.
Is Cheney back on the Halliburton payroll yet? If so then the chances of him rooting for an attack go up dramatically so he could make more money on it.
Sharing below the sad letter from my Texas Republican Senator
Below “update” exemplifies the sad, unproductive lies that the GOP resorts to in order to herd their sheep, keep the job while stifling the resolution of problems in our country.
U.S. Senator John Cornyn
Friday, June 12, 2009
It’s been a busy first few months in office for the Obama Administration. First, President Obama took over the banking system, then he bought you a car company. All said and done, in the 144 days since President Obama took office, he and Congressional Democrats are already on the way to meeting their goal of doubling the debt in five years and tripling it over the next decade. But they aren’t done yet. Now Democrats want to get in the health insurance business….blah blah ..
I love the stupid people think torture works. Whats even more funny is the morons who think it doesn’t. The fear of it works…. Just not the act of actually doing it. But if you KNOW said government wont do it… Heh they’re clearly morons.
Oh well, At least I can rest knowing the western world will die because the rest of the world will out breed them.
I wanted to see the economy collapse due the stupidity of a mortgage-based spending style economy?
Does this make me evil?
On topic:
This smells like the usual partisan politics where one guy accuses another guy of something.
While your attention is distracted, the government steals your money and spends it in an inappropriate and wasteful manner.
Only the Red people and the Blue people fall for this trick.
#16 Dallas
Interesting letter. I didn’t see any un-truths in it. Are you opposed to reading about O’Mans accomplishments and goals?
In the first sentence it reads “CIA director Leon Panetta says it’s almost as if…”
In other words, Cheney didn’t say anything. It was the current (Democrat) CIA director having a leftie day-dream about that evil Cheney!!
So Panetta would like to see the US attacked – so he could blame Cheney because Panetta imagined that Cheney might say it.
Is anyone a little worried that the head of the CIA is working out strategies based on his own day-dreams?
#16 Which part of the letter was a lie?
Cheney’s bonehead war did U.S. in. Cheney sucks. Why do I have to see / hear about Cheney any more? Cheney should hang. No ankle restraints. Needs to kick on the video.
Where was Cheney and this passion when he was in the VP chair?
Where was the public speaking, fist shaking?
Where was his zeal?
Nowhere.
Now that he is out of power he grew a pair of balls. Of course now he can’t be taken to task if anything goes wrong.
He is no more than an adult version of the kid that walks a block away and shouts taunts knowing he has a head start if you start to run towards him.
Coward.
Cursor_
If nothing else, Cheney’s behavior has made it abundantly clear who was really running things. Bush has slunk away to his Dallas home — has even made a public appearance yet? — while Cheney makes the rounds trying to justify the “Bush” administration’s actions. Has there ever been a more empty suit occupying the White House? Historians may have to weigh in on this one…
We up to 7,000 dead yet?
It’ll be 12,000 before ye know it. Way to go Cheney!
The Obama administration caved again!
Today’s release: CIA’s Paul Gimigliano, suggests that Panetta didn’t mean to say this at all: he issued a clarification of CIA chief Leon Panetta’s explosive suggestion that Dick Cheney is hoping for a terrorist attack to vindicate his national security policies.
Never mind!
Hee, hee.
Whether Cheney is right or wrong (and most here seem to think he’s not just wrong but the Devil incarnate) it greatly concerns me that the head of the CIA finds enough free time to publicly taunt him. The director of the CIA needs to devote his time to locating, examining and countering the foreign threats to the US and leave public pronouncements concerning politics to the press secretary.
Maybe he does. I still remember after 9/11 when people were talking about this as a new Pearl Harbor.
Nevertheless, the CIA director should not be making such partisan comments.
If George Tenet had done this to Democrats, the left would be in uproar.
#4
Ah-Yea
“Imagine you are a parent and you are saying to your child “Don’t play on the freeway.”
We are not children! its more like blind faith that what you believe is right despite all the evidence to the contrary The country voted and came to the consensuses that we need to live by the values we claim to stand for.
#5 paddy-0
-“Would Cheney like to see US Attacked Just to Prove a Point?”
That’s about as possible as Obama wanting the “surge” to fail for Bush… Very possible.-
I’m sure Obama wanted the surge to work not his choice but as long as that was going to be our course of action lets hope for the best and work with it.
any practical citizen would want that.
—
BIG difference between Obama and the NeoCon regime is he is willing to chance the plan to fit the facts on the ground. And of course Dick is not hoping for an attack. Dick is wrong but loves his country. That’s why he took 911 as a reason to hop on Iraq and try to make it what he thought would be best for the US. He knew full well they had nothing to do with 911 and had no Nukes but also knew that would be his only change to invade. He lied to us to do what he thought was right for the country in the big picture.
We are not children! Dick if you couldn’t sell your war on its own merits don’t sell it on a lie.
Obama success against these extremists is showing up again and again as the moderates gain power all over the world, notice how the extremists are starting to squirm.