Cheney 'Answers' Obama, Defends Bush Policy

Dick Cheney offered an “answer” to President Obama’s national-security speech today, standing up for the policies of the Bush administration and saying he remained “a strong proponent of our enhanced interrogation program,” CNN reports. “In the fight against terrorism,” Cheney said, “there is no middle ground, and half-measures leave you half-exposed,” Politico adds. President Bush aimed to ensure 9/11 wasn’t “a prelude to something worse.”

Acknowledging the pressures on any administration, the former vice president slammed Obama’s plans to close Guantanamo as made with “little deliberation and no plan,” the AP notes.  “When [terrorists] see the American government caught up in arguments about interrogations,” he said, “they see weakness and opportunity.” Obama, Cheney said, should make choices not based on “slogans and campaign rhetoric, but on a truthful telling of history.” (More Dick Cheney stories.)