In a recent interview with the New Yorker Magazine, CIA director, Leon Panetta lambasted former Vice President Dick Cheney over remarks he made during a speech to the American Enterprise Institute on May 21.
Cheney, in the aforementioned speech, defended the Bush administration's "enhanced" interrogations of al Qaeda prisoners and asserted that Obama's decision to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility made “the American people less safe”. Cheney also called the decision "recklessness cloaked in righteousness.”
The New Yorker Magazine goes on to say that Mr. Panetta had learned "the details of Cheney’s speech when he arrived in his office, on the seventh floor of the agency’s headquarters. An hour earlier, he had been standing at the side of President Barack Obama, who was giving a speech at the National Archives, in which he argued that America could 'fight terrorism while abiding by the rule of law'."
Panetta, according to the New Yorker Magazine, 'responded to Cheney’s speech with surprising candor'. “I think he [Cheney] smells some blood in the water on the national-security issue," said Panetta. "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. I think that’s dangerous politics.”
But the question begs to be answered: When Panetta stated that "I think Cheney smells some blood in the water on the national-security issue", was he not, in essence, conceding that there, in fact, is "some blood in the water" to be smelled as a result of Barack Obama's perilous policies?
And here's another question that's begging for an answer: In his speech to the National Archives - delivered shortly before Mr. Cheney's address [as
CNN noted at the time, Obama's speech preceded Cheney's] - Obama stated that President Bush had made America less safe by keeping Guantanamo Bay open.
"Rather than keeping us safer,"
Obama argued, "the prison at Guantanamo has weakened American national security."
Why then, did Leon Panetta and the rest of the Liberal elite denounce Mr. Cheney's remarks, when Obama himself - just moments earlier, in the presence of Leon Panetta - had uttered remarks that were identical to Mr. Cheney's.
What's more, during the Bush presidency as well, Barack Obama consistently accused Mr. Bush of making decisions that left America less safe.
Case in point: On July 15, 2007, Obama stated as follows:
“We could have significantly reduced our risks had we pursued better polices over the last several years. As a consequence of bad decisions, we are more at risk and less safe than we should have been at this point..."
But truth be told, there is a marked distinction between Cheney's critique of Obama and Obama's criticism of Mr. Bush:
Mr. Cheney - as Leon Panetta inadvertently and foolishly conceded - "smells some blood in the water on the national-security issue" as a result of Barack Obama's asinine policies. Barack Obama, on the other hand, never did smell any blood in the water during Bush's presidency. For indeed, Mr. Bush consistently stood firm against the terrorists, hence, there was never any blood in the water to be smelled.
Thus, Obama's criticism of Mr. Bush - a president who refused to kowtow to terrorists - was nothing more than a subterfuge, a scare tactic, campaign rhetoric at its worst. Conversely, Mr. Cheney's critique of Obama is based on veritable facts, hard truths and a political reality that is staring all of us right in the face.....
