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Cheney: US less safe under Obama
2009-03-15
WASHINGTON (AFP) - President Barack Obama has made Americans more vulnerable to attack, former vice president Dick Cheney said Sunday in a trenchant defense of his own divisive prosecution of the "war on terror." Asked by CNN if Obama had made the nation less safe by dismantling former president George W. Bush's anti-terror policies, Cheney said bluntly: "I do." In his first television interview since leaving office, Bush's number two blasted Obama's decision to close down the Guantanano Bay prison camp, end harsh interrogations and shutter secret CIA detention sites abroad. In his latest reversal of Bush policies, Obama Friday dropped the "enemy combatant" designation for terror suspects and vowed to draw on international law for his administration's detention policy at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. "I think those programs were absolutely essential to the success we enjoyed of being able to collect the intelligence that let us defeat all further attempts to launch attacks against the United States since 9/11," Cheney said. "I think that's a great success story. It was done legally. It was done in accordance with our constitutional practices and principles," he said, though that stance is bitterly disputed by civil rights campaigners. "President Obama campaigned against it all across the country. And now he is making some choices that in my mind will, in fact, raise the risk to the American people of another attack." Cheney acknowledged that he had pressed Bush to take a harder line against Iran and North Korea, disagreeing with his former boss's emphasis on diplomacy, and trumpeted Iraq today as a success story. He was blunt in denouncing Obama's pick to become the new US ambassador in Iraq, Christopher Hill, whose dealings as chief nuclear negotiator with the North Korean regime angered Cheney. "He's not the man I would have picked for that post. He doesn't have any experience in the region. He's never served in that part of the world before. He doesn't speak the language," the former vice president said. And Hill has "none of the skills and talents" of outgoing ambassador Ryan Crocker, who Cheney said shares the credit with former Iraq commander General David Petraeus for "the success we've seen now in Iraq." Cheney said he thought Hill's diplomacy with North Korea was a waste of time, but was overruled by Bush. "I didn't think the North Koreans were going to keep their end of the bargain in terms of what they agreed to, and they didn't," he said. Cheney lifted the lid on another burning dispute with Bush in the administration's final days, as he lobbied hard for a presidential pardon for his former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. Libby was sentenced in mid-2007 to 30 months in prison after being found guilty of lying to federal investigators over whether White House officials leaked the name of a CIA officer whose husband opposed the Iraq war. Bush later commuted the sentence but refused to expunge the conviction by exercising his pardon powers, and Cheney did not conceal his displeasure with the former president. "I was clearly not happy that we, in effect, left Scooter sort of hanging in the wind, which I didn't think was appropriate. I think he's an innocent man who deserves a pardon," he said. Cheney, who is working on a book about his four-decade career in Washington, said he was getting used to modern technology and driving around in his own car from his home in the city's Virginia suburbs -- with the Secret Service in tow. He is still getting used to not receiving daily CIA briefings but said "I get on the BlackBerry and get a lot (of news) there," and also now owns a Kindle electronic book sold by Amazon.com.
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