Combative Cheney defends controversial decisions

Washington: Vice-President Dick Cheney offered an unabashed defence of the Bush administration's claims of broad executive powers on Sunday, mocking criticism from Vice-President-elect Joe Biden and saying the president "doesn't have to check with anybody" before launching a nuclear attack.

In an interview with Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday, Cheney fired back at Biden's contention that he was probably "the most dangerous vice-president" in US history. He also ridiculed Biden for mistakenly citing Article I of the US Constitution, rather than Article II, in talking about executive branch powers during an October debate.

"If he wants to diminish the office of the vice-president, that's obviously his call," Cheney said of Biden. "President-elect Obama will decide what he wants in a vice-president and apparently, from the way they're talking about it, he does not expect him to have as consequential a role as I have had during my time."

Waterboarding

Cheney, speaking less than a month before he and President Bush leave the White House, was blunt and unapologetic about his central role in some of the most controversial issues of the past eight years, including the invasion of Iraq, warrantless surveillance of US citizens, and harsh interrogation tactics. Cheney also said he disagreed with Bush's decision to remove embattled Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in 2006, saying that "the president doesn't always take my advice". "I was a Rumsfeld man," Cheney said.

"I'd helped recruit him and I thought he did a good job for us."

In an interview with ABC News last week, Cheney suggested the administration would have gone to war with Iraq even without erroneous intelligence showing that Saddam Hussain had developed weapons of mass destruction. Cheney also said in that interview that he approved of the administration's use of coercive interrogation tactics, including a type of simulated drowning known as waterboarding, against Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, the alleged mastermind of the September 11, 2001, attacks, and others.

'Disgraceful policies'

Elisa Massimino, executive director of Human Rights First, said in a statement that Cheney "persists in defending these disgraceful policies of abuse which have been rejected by senior retired military leaders and experienced interrogators as ineffective and counterproductive".

But Cheney said he was untroubled by opinion polls that he and Bush are among the most unpopular White House occupants in modern times.

In discussing his views of broad executive power on national security issues, Cheney said Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt "went far beyond anything we've done in a global war on terror", and said that all US presidents since 1973 have viewed the War Powers Act — which gave Congress the role of declaring war — as unconstitutional.

Do you think the Bush administration should be more honest about their performance in the War on Terror? Do you expect any major changes from the Obama presidency in its approach towards the war?

It is like a fish bone stuck in your throat... No one can do anything about it.I think it is like a hand is stuck in the cookie jar and the US cannot, or will not, let go of the cookie. Not now, not ever.
Habib M. Balfagi
Abu Dhabi,UAE
Posted: December 23, 2008, 09:35

I believe so but I do not expect the Bush administration to be honest.
Aamir
Karachi,Pakistan
Posted: December 23, 2008, 08:26