Yes, their failure in the attacks on 9-11 gave the neo-cons the golden opportunity to pass all the measures that they had drooled over for years, and all of them proved dismal and complete failures.
Worse than that, since leaving office Dick Cheney has been trying to act like he is some kind of "expert" on national security or foreign policy by critisizing the overturning of some of his ruinous policies from 8 years of failure. Well, now his counterpart in Obama's Administration is calling him out on it.
Vice-President Joe Biden is calling Cheney on his failures, and telling him thanks but no thanks for the unneeded advice:
WASHINGTON – Vice President Joe Biden said Tuesday his predecessor, Dick Cheney, is "dead wrong" when he says President Barack Obama's national security policies are making the United States less safe. Biden said the exact opposite is true and added that President George W. Bush's vice president was part of a dysfunctional decision-making system.
"I don't think he is out of line, but he is dead wrong. ... The last administration left us in a weaker posture than we've been any time since World War II: less regarded in the world, stretched more thinly than we ever have been in the past, two wars under way, virtually no respect in entire parts of the world," Biden said. "And so we've been about the business of repairing and strengthening those. I guarantee you we are safer today, our interests are more secure today than they were any time during the eight years" of the Bush administration.
http://news.yahoo.com/...
Of course, Biden knows what he is talking about. The Bush years representing not only the unraveling of our economy and infrastructure, but disasterous years in our country's morale and standing in the world.
Of course, Cheney used a failed argument to re-endorse his own failed policy:
"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," Cheney said.
"I think that's a great success story. It was done legally. It was done in accordance with our constitutional practices and principles," he said. "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.
Cheney fails to mention that inaction from an incompetent administration allowed these attacks to begin with. And of course, the stealing of generations of Constitutional protections is only legal if you use the fear of your own failure to push it through. Indeed President Obama campaigned against this and won a huge victory. I just hope he re-considers his most recent view on FISA.
Biden then went on to detail exactly why Cheney had become such a dangerous person to our country and indeed the world and why our new approach is so much better:
"Look, everybody talks about how powerful Cheney was," Biden said. "His power weakened America, in my view. Here's what I mean by that. What I mean by that was, there was a divided government."
He said Cheney had his own sort of national security council and there was the actual National Security Council.
"There was (Secretary of State Colin) Powell, who didn't agree with Cheney," Biden said, "and Cheney off with (Defense Secretary Donald) Rumsfeld."
Biden promoted Obama's administration as more conducive to better decision making.
"The strength of this administration is that the president and I work in concert. I am very straightforward in my views. I am as strong — I hold them as strongly as I ever have."
But he said those decisions are made with one National Security Council, "a united national security team."
I can tell you one thing. I breathed a huge sigh of relief when Joe Biden was sworn in as Vice-President and Dick Cheney was ushered out the door as the complete misguided, power-hungry, greedy failure that he was. I am proud to have a new Vice-President that understands the role of his office and chooses betterment of the country over his own personal interests and misguided beliefs.
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