The Ghost of Dick Cheney
By NewHampster on January 14, 2009 at 7:20 PM in Barack Obama, Current Affairs, Dick Cheney
Ahh! Newsweek(which I call Newsweak) makes my week once more with this weeks cover story titled, “What would Dick do?” and inside as “Obama’s Cheney Dilemma”.
Cheney pushed for expanded presidential powers. Now that he’s leaving, what will come of his efforts? The new president won’t have to wait long to tip his hand.
By Stuart Taylor Jr. and Evan Thomas | NEWSWEEK
Published Jan 10, 2009
From the magazine issue dated Jan 19, 2009
Dick Cheney, who will step down as vice president on Jan. 20, has been widely portrayed as a creature of the dark side, a monstrous figure who trampled on the Constitution to wage war against all foes, real and imagined. Barack Obama was elected partly to cleanse the temple of the Bush-Cheney stain, and in his campaign speeches he promised to reverse Cheney’s efforts to seize power for the White House in the war on terror.
It may not be so simple. At a retirement ceremony recently for a top-level intelligence official, the senior spooks in the room gave each other high-fives. They were celebrating the fact that terrorists have not attacked the United States since 9/11. In the view of many intelligence professionals, the get-tough measures encouraged or permitted by George W. Bush‘s administration—including “waterboarding” self-proclaimed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed—kept America safe. Cheney himself has been underscoring the point in a round of farewell interviews. “If I had advice to give it would be, before you start to implement your campaign rhetoric, you need to sit down and find out precisely what it is we did and how we did it, because it is going to be vital to keeping the nation safe and secure in the years ahead,” he told CBS Radio.
Obama, who has been receiving intelligence briefings for weeks, already knows what a scary world it is out there. It is unlikely he will wildly overcorrect for the Bush administration’s abuses. A very senior incoming official, who refused to be quoted discussing internal policy debates, indicated that the new administration will try to find a middle road that will protect civil liberties without leaving the nation defenseless.
Obama is going to face some difficult choices—and right away. By Feb. 20, a month after Inauguration Day, the incoming administration must decide whether to urge the Supreme Court to allow continued detention of one Ali al-Marri. Al-Marri is a Qatari graduate student who had legally entered the United States and settled in Peoria, Ill., with his wife and five children. He was seized in 2001 as a suspected terrorist—the long-feared Qaeda sleeper agent, sent to the United States to conduct a suicide attack when given the signal by his terrorist controllers. (Reportedly, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, under intense interrogation, corroborated al-Marri’s identity.)
Words, Just words. I fear that phrase will gain meaning over the next few months as more and more we see the real Barack Obama who always had his fingers crossed during the debates and never really meant anything he said except maybe, “You’re likeable enough Hillary”.
Cross posted from Partizane. Home of the inaugural PUMA Bawl all day live chat.
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