Obama vs. Cheney- No holds barred!

Posted here at The Weekly Standard is the entire content of Dick Cheney’s speech this morning at AEI. It is a substantial and powerful speech. It was a no-holds barred match this morning. Obama standing in his corner with the beautiful backdrop of the Archives around him and the the Constitution of the United States directly behind him and his teleprompter in front. Cheney standing at a simple podium at American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research reading from paper. If these two had been in a cage…wow! In my opinion Cheney delivered a couple of drop kicks that would have toppled the President if only they had been in a cage!

“Yet for all these exacting efforts to do a hard and necessary job and to do it right, we hear from some quarters nothing but feigned outrage based on a false narrative. In my long experience in Washington, few matters have inspired so much contrived indignation and phony moralizing as the interrogation methods applied to a few captured terrorists.”

I might add that people who consistently distort the truth in this way are in no position to lecture anyone about “values.” Intelligence officers of the United States were not trying to rough up some terrorists simply to avenge the dead of 9/11. We know the difference in this country between justice and vengeance. Intelligence officers were not trying to get terrorists to confess to past killings; they were trying to prevent future killings. From the beginning of the program, there was only one focused and all-important purpose. We sought, and we in fact obtained, specific information on terrorist plans.

Those are the basic facts on enhanced interrogations. And to call this a program of torture is to libel the dedicated professionals who have saved American lives, and to cast terrorists and murderers as innocent victims. What’s more, to completely rule out enhanced interrogation methods in the future is unwise in the extreme. It is recklessness cloaked in righteousness, and would make the American people less safe. “

This next one was a direct round house kick to the kidneys:

“The administration has found that it’s easy to receive applause in Europe for closing Guantanamo. But it’s tricky to come up with an alternative that will serve the interests of justice and America’s national security.”

In contrast there was Obama as a child flailing his arms trying to delfect the blows! There is nothing to quote from BO’s speech, because it was exactly the same as every other campaign speech. He said nothing. Then Cheney delivers an upper-cut;

“This might explain why President Obama has reserved unto himself the right to order the use of enhanced interrogation should he deem it appropriate. What value remains to that authority is debatable, given that the enemy now knows exactly what interrogation methods to train against, and which ones not to worry about. Yet having reserved for himself the authority to order enhanced interrogation after an emergency, you would think that President Obama would be less disdainful of what his predecessor authorized after 9/11. It’s almost gone unnoticed that the president has retained the power to order the same methods in the same circumstances. When they talk about interrogations, he and his administration speak as if they have resolved some great moral dilemma in how to extract critical information from terrorists. Instead they have put the decision off, while assigning a presumption of moral superiority to any decision they make in the future.

If only they had been in a cage…