SkygreenLeopard
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CIA chief believes Cheney almost wants US attacked | Quote: | 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)
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coastie
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| Quote: | CIA Director Leon Panetta doesn't really think former Vice President Dick Cheney wants to see his country attacked, the intelligence agency said Tuesday.
The CIA, through spokesman Paul Gimigliano, walked back a controversial statement Panetta recently made to The New Yorker while arguing that his quote was misinterpreted in the first place.
"The director does not believe the former Vice President wants an attack. He did not say that," Gimigliano said. "He was simply expressing his profound disagreement with the assertion that President Obama's security policies have made our country less safe. Nor did he question anyone's motives."
The statement comes after Cheney said Monday that he hopes his "old friend Leon was misquoted."
Others had harsher words, with Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., calling on the CIA chief to "retract immediately" his statement, arguing that the director crossed the line.
"I disagreed with the Cheney policy on interrogation techniques, but never did it cross my mind that Dick Cheney would ever want an attack on the United States of America," the former GOP presidential candidate told FOX News Monday. "And it's unfair, and I think that Mr. Panetta should retract, and retract immediately.
"By the way, I hear morale is not at an all-time high over at the CIA under Mr. Panetta's leadership," he said.
Panetta, a long-time Washington insider with scant intelligence experience, has been caught in the middle of a political war during his first few months on the job. First, he had to deal with morale issues as President Obama cracked down on the rules for detainee interrogations. Then he stepped up to dispute House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's allegation that the CIA misled Congress about the use of "enhanced" interrogation techniques.
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http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2...im-cheney-wants-country-attacked/
I know, I know. It's from foxnews, but the statement is retracted (unless, of course, foxnews made the whole thing up).
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Outsider
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| Quote: | | Cheney said Obama's reversal of Bush-era policies were "unwise in the extreme" that would make the American people less safe. |
Whatever Panetta meant, the Cheney statement was not in the interest of America.
Of course, moral among the former Cheney & Bush cronies is low, they won't be having everything done their way any more. Where Obama and Panetta are failing is not immediately sending the Cheney & Bush political cronies packing. When they do that, then moral can be built from there.
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