Cheney discusses terrorism, Iraq in interview

[unhappycamper]

Former Vice President Dick Cheney was a guest March 15 on CNN's "State of the Union."


Cheney discusses terrorism, Iraq in interview
By Douglass K. Daniel - The Associated Press
Posted : Sunday Mar 15, 2009 13:52:10 EDT

WASHINGTON — Former Vice President Dick Cheney said Sunday that President Barack Obama’s overturning of Bush administration terrorism-fighting initiatives are making Americans less safe. In noting the sixth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Cheney said nearly all the Republican administration’s goals there had been met.

Obama has suspended military trials for suspected terrorists and announced he will close the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as well as overseas sites where the CIA has held some detainees. The president also ordered CIA interrogators to abide by the U.S. Army Field Manual’s regulations for treatment of detainees and denounced waterboarding, part of the Bush program of enhanced interrogation, as torture.

Asked on CNN’s “State of the Union” if he thought Obama has made Americans less safe with those actions, Cheney replied, “I do.”

“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. “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.”


Rest of article at: http://armytimes.com/news/2009/03/ap_cheney_iraq_031509/%2e