Pat Dollard | Young Americans

Don’t blame Bush team for economic woes

Cheney says economic woes are not Bush team’s fault, cites global financial problem

WASHINGTON — Don’t blame the Bush administration for all the country’s economic problems.

That’s the message from former Vice President Dick Cheney.

President Barack Obama constantly talks about the enormous economic troubles that he inherited when he took office in January. Cheney agrees that Obama did indeed came into power amid very difficult economic circumstances.

But Cheney says he doesn’t think the Bush administration can be blamed for creating the economic woes. Cheney says it’s a global financial problem. He says the idea that fault can assigned to the previous administration is “interesting rhetoric” but he doesn’t think people care about that.

Cheney spoke on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
(AP)

Politico:

Obama uses recession for Dem policies

By MIKE ALLEN

Vice President Cheney charged Sunday morning on CNN that President Obama is using the recession “to try to justify” what is probably the largest expansion of federal authority “in the history of the Republic.”

“I worry a lot that that they’re using the current set of economic difficulties to try to justify a massive expansion in the government, and much more authority for the government over the private sector,” Cheney said in his first television interview since leaving office. “I don’t think that’s good. I don’t think that’s going to solve the problem.”

Speaking to host John King on “State of the Union,” Cheney said he think the programs Obama has proposed “in health care, in energy and so forth constitute probably the biggest – or one of the biggest – expansions of federal authority over the private economy in the history of the Republic.”

“I worry very much that what is being done here is saying, ‘We’ve got an economic crisis, there’s we’re fundamentally the health program in America,’” Cheney said. “I don’t think that’s right.”

Cheney has been largely out of sight for the past two months, as he and his wife, Lynne, set up their new home in Northern Virginia. But as he was in a recent interview with POLITICO, Cheney is still free with his opinions and much more aggressive in defending the administration’s legacy than President Bush has been so far.

Cheney pushed back against effort by Democrats to blame President Bush for the current economic valley, saying the Bush administration is not responsible “for the creation of those circumstances.”

“I think there’s no question but what the economic circumstances that he inherited are difficult ones,” Cheney said. We said that before we left. I don’t think you can blame the Bush administration for the creation of those circumstances. It’s a global financial problem.

“We had, in fact, tried to deal with the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac some years before, with major reforms that were blocked by Democrats on the Hill – [House Financial Services Chairman] Barney Frank and [Senate Banking Chairman] Chris Dodd. So I think the notion that you can just sort of throw it off on the prior administration – that’s interesting rhetoric, but I don’t think anybody really cares a lot about that. What they care about is what’s going to work, and how we’re going to get out of these difficulties.”

In the exchange likely to get the most attention, Cheney told King he thinks Obama has made the U.S. less safe by modifying Bush administration policies on detention and interrogation of terrorist suspects. Here is the exchange:

KING: Since taking office, President Obama has done these things to change the policies you helped put in place. He has announced he will close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. He has announced he will close CIA black sites around the world, where they interrogate terror suspects. Says he will make CIA interrogators abide by the Army Field Manual, defined waterboarding as torture and ban it, suspend trials for terrorists by military commission, and now eliminate the label of enemy combatants. I’d like to just simply ask you, yes or no, by taking those steps, do you believe the president of the United States has made Americans less safe?

CHENEY: 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. I think that’s a great success story. It was done legally. It was done in accordance with our constitutional practices and principles. 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.

KING: That’s a pretty serious thing to say about the president of the United States…

CHENEY: Well…

KING: … and commander in chief of the military. So I want to give you a chance, because many people will say, Vice President Cheney just said Barack Obama, President Obama is making us less safe, more at risk, which you just said. I want to give you a chance — and take as much time as you want — to prove it. Because you put that list up there, and I know you say there have been three cases, I believe, of waterboarding in the past, and you say that specific things have been prevented. I know some of this is classified intelligence, but now that you’re out of government, to the degree that you can, tell the American people, because of those tactics, because of those, yes, sometimes extreme tactics, we stopped this.

CHENEY: Well, I would say that the key to what we did was to collect intelligence against the enemy. That’s what the terrorist surveillance program was all about, that’s what the enhanced interrogation program was all about.

CNN:

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration has endangered Americans and opened the country to further attack by reversing Bush administration anti-terrorism policies such as harsh interrogations of suspects, former Vice President Dick Cheney said Sunday.

Cheney told CNN’s “State of the Union” that the Bush administration’s “alternative” interrogation techniques were “absolutely essential” to preventing further assaults like the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington.

Critics said those techniques amounted to the torture of prisoners in American custody.

“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 said.

Since taking office in January, Obama has announced plans to close the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to halt the military trials of suspected terrorists there, and to make CIA officers follow the Army field manual’s rules on interrogations.

During Sunday’s wide-ranging interview, Cheney also defended the Bush administration’s economic record, arguing he and former President Bush handled multiple crises as best they could.

“Stuff happens, and an administration has to be able to respond to that and we did,” Cheney told CNN’s “State of the Union.”

The Bush administration took office with a budget surplus and left with deep deficits and higher unemployment.

But Cheney said the administration had to grapple with the September 11, 2001 al Qaeda attacks and the resulting war in Afghanistan, as well as the disaster of 2005’s Hurricane Katrina.

He also defended the invasion of Iraq, which the administration launched in 2003. Obama has begun to wind down the widely unpopular war, but Cheney said: “We’ve accomplished nearly everything we set out to do.”