| 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. (Reporting by David Morgan; Editing by Alan Elsner) |
RESPONSE
Coming from the man who has absolutely no intelligence experience, no law enforcement experience, and no clue what he is talking about.
Well, I take that back. He has a clue of what he is talking about – the constant undermining of our past administration and the splitting of America.
This guy is a political joke. He is a mouth for the democratic party and nothing more. He has no experience to be in the position he was given. Absolutely, none!
The fact is, Cheney in no way is advocating an attack. This mere deflection of the truth by Leon Panetta does nothing but entice the enemy. And he knows it.
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