General Predicts Victory Despite "Undeniably Difficult" Challenge; Also Says Capturing Bin Laden Key to Defeating al Qaeda
Cheney: Obama 'more radical' than seen
by Mark Silva
President Barack Obama, bowing to other leaders of the world, fails to understand the concept of "American exceptionalism,'' former Vice President Dick Cheney contends.
"There's never been a nation like the United States of America in world history, and yet when you have a president who goes around and bows to his hosts and then proceeds to apologize profusely for the United States, I find that deeply disturbing,'' Cheney says in an interview that FOX News will air tonight. "That says to me this is a guy who doesn't fully understand or share that view of American exceptionalism that I think most of us believe in."
The Republican also contends that Obama is a "more radical'' Democrat than he first appeared to be yet stops short of calling Obama, as some critics have, a socialist: "I don't want to use that kind of a label."
"I saw him when he got elected as a liberal Democrat, but conventional in the sense of sort of falling within the parameters of the national Democratic Party,'' Cheney says in the interview with FOX's Sean Hannity airing tonight at 9 pm EST and again tomorrow, same time. "I think he's demonstrated pretty conclusively now during his first year in office that he's more radical than that, that he's farther outside the parameters if you will of what we've traditionally had in Democratic presidents in years past."
Cheney, a former congressman who has served four presidents in his party, says this of the coming midterm elections: "Prospects for the Republicans in 2010 are very good... I think we'll pick up a lot of seats.
"Right after Obama was elected, there was the view that he was invincible,'' Cheney tells hannity. "He could raise more money than anybody else. He had this machine that smashed the Clinton campaign and then won the national election, and that he'd be around for eight years and now I think that has changed fairly dramatically."
At the same time, Cheney is reluctant to suggest party names for 2012: "At this point I'd be reluctant to pinpoint anybody. It might hurt them more than it would help them coming from me."
Cheney maintains that Obama has shown the world a dangerous lack of understanding about the war on terror. He maintains that the Obama Justice Department's planned trial of the 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and al-Qaida accomplices in a federal courtroom in New York will make him "a hero in certain circles.''
The former vice president calls the trial of the terrorist known as KSM and others in criminal court "a huge mistake...
"He'll be able to go in whenever he's up on the stand and proselytize, if you will, millions of people out there around the world including some of his radical Muslim friends and generate a whole new generation of terrorists,'' Cheney says. "I think it will make Khalid Sheikh Mohammed something of a hero in certain circles, especially in the radical regions of Islam around the world.
" It will put him on the map. He'll be as important or more important than Osama Bin Laden, and we will have made it possible."
The former vice president, who has accused the president of "dithering'' with the decision about a new U.S. troop deployment in Afghanistan, says in the interview with Hannity:
"Everybody is watching. The Taliban are watching, the al-Qaida are watching, the Afghans who are on our side are watching, and when they see hesitation, uncertainty, lack of clarity from an American president, they begin to think the Americans aren't going to be here very long.... Then you see governments in that part of the world start to shift their alliances and their friendships. For example, just in the last two weeks the prime minister of Kuwait has gone to Iran on an official visit, the first time in 30 years. Why did he do that? Well, he wants to make sure he's got a foot in all camps."
Cheney says this, however, about the president's plan to start drawing down troops from Afghanistan in July 2011:
"It's better than withdrawal now."
"This notion of uncertainty, the difficult time he has putting it together, all of this feeds into the basic al-Qaeda strategy,'' Cheney contends. "Remember the way al-Qaida operates and what their underlying plan is'if you kill enough Americans, you can change American policy.'
"When they see (the president) announce in advance that there's going to be a withdrawal 18 months down the road, they come to the point where they feel like their strategy, their worldview has been validated and in the meantime, your task of trying to control the situation, trying to put down the Taliban and so forth, has simply gotten harder because you're weak and indecisive when you made the decision to do it,'' Cheney says.
"The Obama administration is now going back to that pre-9/11 concept that this is all about individual crimes and a problem for law enforcement,'' Cheney contends. "It's not a war to be fought and prosecuted as we ordinarily would prosecute it."
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