Mr. Cheney Still Selling Fear Angers Dems

Dems angered by Cheney warnings

by David S. Cloud

Former Vice President Dick Cheney’s warnings about the risks of closing Guantanamo Bay prison and changing other Bush-era policies this week angered Democrats and some top counter-terrorism experts, who said Cheney was reviving the same scare tactics voters had rejected in electing Barack Obama.

Cheney made his comments in an interview this week with Politico in which he unyieldingly defended the detention facility and coercive interrogations of terrorism suspects — and warned that changing course would invite another mass-casualty terror attack potentially worse than the ones on Sept. 11.

Many experts, even those who disagree sharply on most issues with Cheney, concur that a large-scale unconventional attack remains the most dangerous national security threat, if not necessarily the most likely. Obama himself has warned of such a catastrophic attack.

But Cheney’s comments revived a debate that will long outlast the presidential campaign — over what are the best tactics to prevent another attack, and whether the U.S. is more or less safe with Guantanamo open, by using harsh interrogation techniques and other controversial steps that Mr. Obama has taken steps to terminate.

February 5, 2009, Senate Intelligence Committee, Leon Panetta, CIA Director Nominee

CIA Director-designate Leon Panetta took on a right-wing myth head on, saying that even in the hypothetical ticking bomb case — OMG theres a bomb hidden in Times Square that this detainee knows about we better waterboard him or everyone will die GET ME JACK BAUER — you shouldnt torture anyone.  We dont have to choose between our safety and our ideals, Panetta said. If there ever is a ticking time bomb — and the scenario pretty much doesnt exist in the real world, since it presumes too much and therefore isnt a genuine case — Panetta said hed urge everything possible within the law to get that information If you talk to [FBI Director] Bob Mueller, talk to [Sen.] John McCain, talk to Gen. [David] Petraeus, they believe that information can be obtained without resulting to extraordinary measures. Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) tries to get Panetta to carve out a loophole. Panetta doesnt bite. No one is above the law, Panetta says.

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“It’s ludicrous to think that the way Cheney articulated is the only salvation for the U.S. against the threat of Al Qaeda terrorism,” said Roger Cressey, who served as a counterterrorism official at the National Security Council during the Clinton and Bush administrations. “For every positive that came out of the Bush policies, there have been many more negatives.”

James Carafano, a homeland security expert at the Heritage Foundation, argued that Cheney was right to emphasize the dangers of future attacks. He argued that keeping in place many of the most controversial elements of the Bush administration’s counterterrorist tactics was vital to prevent future attacks.

“If you actually start to unravel some of these things, then you are going to create new vulnerabilities,” he said.

Obama’s argument is that such tactics make the country less safe by inciting anti-U.S. feeling among Arabs and Muslims. What is needed, administration aides say, is more attention on stabilizing Afghanistan and on eliminating Al Qaeda havens in Pakistan, which he has promised to carry out.

But even Obama has been careful about how far he goes in dismantling Bush terror policies.

While he has issued an executive order banning harsh interrogation techniques, the order leaves open the possibility of the CIA employing such methods on prisoners captured in the future. And while has called for a plan to close Guantanamo within a year, he has not committed himself to any steps that would require release of the 14 so-called “high value” Al Qaeda detainees.

Nor has Mr. Obama revealed whether he plans changes in the wiretapping rules governing when the National Security Agency can intercept calls and emails involving U.S. residents as part of terrorism investigations. During the campaign, Obama voted for a measure later signed by Bush that allows the warrantless wiretapping program to be reviewed by a secret federal intelligence court.

In his interview, Cheney implied that the new administration was scrapping all the Bush methods. But Carafano argues that the differences on the most sensitive counter-terrorism tactics will end up being more rhetorical than real — and that Obama is like to keep in place much of the Bush approach.

“It’s a largely rhetorical discussion, and most Americans will be satisfied with a rhetorical switch,” he argued.

The White House had no comment on the Cheney interview, according to Ben Chang, a spokesman at the National Security Council.

Other Democrats were outraged at Cheney’s assertions that the new administration will backtrack on protecting Americans. “It’s time to retire the fear card,” said Rep. Jane Harman, a California Democrat. “I’m sure that [Cheney] feels that he operated correctly during his years in the vice presidency. I get that. But I think there was a huge cost to the approach he took.”

Joseph Cirincione, a nonproliferation expert at The Ploughshares Fund, added: “The Bush-Cheney policies increased this threat as terrorist movements grew, while efforts to prevent them from getting nuclear weapons withered from lack of funding. Osama bin Laden is now entrenched in nuclear-armed, unstable Pakistan, closer than ever to the nuclear weapon he seeks.”

Cheney claimed there is a “high probability” of an attempted nuclear or biological attack in coming years. “Whether or not they can pull it off depends whether or not we keep in place policies that have allowed us to defeat all further attempts, since 9/11, to launch mass casualty attacks against the United States."

Another nonproliferation specialist, Brian Finley of the Henry L. Stimson Center, noted in a release late last year that, under Bush, U.S. government spending on preventing nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons proliferations has remained “largely static,” increasing only marginally from $1.25 billion in 2005 to $1.4 billion in 2007.

In an interview this week with CNN, Obama argued for reaching out to Arabs and Muslims, emphasizing that the vast majority bear the U.S. no ill will and have little sympathy for terrorists but were alienated by many Bush administration’s policies and decisions.

Moving to close the Guantanamo Bay facility, seeking a peace deal between Israeli and Palestinians, and other steps will help heal relations — and help keep the country safe from another attack by removing some of the irritants that gave terrorists fertile ground in which to recruit, administration officials say.

“We, I believe, can win over moderate Muslims,” Obama told CNN.

Cheney said in the interview that the new administration was populated with officials more interested in “reading the rights” to terrorists than killing them. “Cheney is very devious in trying to characterize the Obama administration as naive idealists. They are realistic and they will use force whenever necessary to protect Americans,” Cressey said.

Some experts also took issue with Cheney’s claim that the Guantanamo Bay prison was a “necessary facility” and a “first-class program.”

Cirincione noted that Bush administration claim that information from interrogations helped prevent attacks has never been conclusively proven. “Cheney’s torturing of prisoners was terrible at producing any actionable intelligence but excellent at fanning anti-Americanism in the Muslim world,” he said.

Richard Clarke, a former counterterrorism official at the National Security Council, has taken issue with the claim — repeated by Cheney — that holding hardened terrorists on U.S. soil is too dangerous.

“Convicted terrorists have for some time resided at Supermax,” the nickname for the maximum security federal prison in Florence, Colo., Mr. Clarke argued. He added that the U.S. Justice Department has a long record of arresting terrorists overseas and successfully prosecuting them in American courts.

But that argument does not address what to do with the remaining 245 inmates at Guantanamo, some of whom are considered the most dangerous prisoners the U.S. holds. Cheney called them “the hard core.”

Obama issued an executive order shortly after taking office that calls for closing Guantanamo within a year. But that will require sending as many as possible to other countries and figuring out another place to hold those who cannot be transferred. Even Obama administration officials admit this is a problem they have not yet solved.

The Pentagon said earlier this month that 61 former Guantanamo inmates, out of the more than 700 who had been held at the facility, have been found to have returned to terrorism, up from 37 in March. If more of the remaining detainees are released, Cheney contended that the recidivism rate would be “much higher.”

But several experts noted that Obama is not talking about releasing any of the most dangerous Al Qaeda members at the prison, including several involved in the planning of the Sept. 11 attacks. With a Democratic Congress and a Democratic president, new legislation and other steps can be taken in the next year to ensure the worse prisoners are tried and held, they said.

“Yes, closing Guantanamo is going to be hard, but I think the year framework is realistic,” said Harman. She added that most of the cases could be resolved in either U.S civilian or military courts and the remaining cases might require legislation establishing special procedures for trying and holding the prisoners.

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