The Unspeakable Cheney Speaks Up

The self-selected, unelected Vice President of 2000 is still intent on earning his title as worst ever. Only two weeks after being wheeled out of office, he has these gracious words about the new administration:

“When we get people who are more concerned about reading the rights to an Al Qaeda terrorist than they are with protecting the United States against people who are absolutely committed to do anything they can to kill Americans, then I worry.”

In an interview, Dick Cheney tells Politico that protecting the country is “a tough, mean, dirty, nasty business,” adding “These are evil people. And we’re not going to win this fight by turning the other cheek.

“If it hadn’t been for what we did--with respect to the terrorist surveillance program, or enhanced interrogation techniques for high-value detainees, the Patriot Act, and so forth--then we would have been attacked again. Those policies we put in place, in my opinion, were absolutely crucial to getting us through the last seven-plus years without a major-casualty attack on the U.S.”

And Cheney knows this how? Apparently by consulting the same home-cooked intelligence that told him Saddam Hussein had links to the 9/11 terrorists and was working on nuclear weapons to use against us.

His advice to the new president: “The United States needs to be not so much loved as it needs to be respected. Sometimes, that requires us to take actions that generate controversy. I’m not at all sure that that’s what the Obama administration believes.”

After leaving an economy in tatters, the former VP has no apologies, only a head-shaking comment: “It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen. The combination of the financial crisis that started last year, coupled now with, obviously, a major recession, I think we’re a long way from having solved these problems.”

We? The recession is apparently an act of nature that couldn't have been foreseen or prevented. By the logic of Cheneyworld, that's Obama's problem to solve. After winning the war on terror, you couldn't expect the Bush Administration to do everything.