VIDEO: Dick Cheney Says Obama Making America Less Safe; Using Recession For "Massive Expansion Of Government"

Dick Cheney, Liberal America's favorite punching bag, resurfaced from an "undisclosed" location this morning to defend his former boss on CNN's "State of The Union".

Don't blame the Bush administration for all the country's economic problems. That's the message from former Vice President Dick Cheney.

President Barack Obama constantly talks about the enormous economic troubles that he inherited when he took office in January. Cheney agrees that Obama did indeed came into power amid very difficult economic circumstances.

But Cheney says he doesn't think the Bush administration can be blamed for creating the economic woes. Cheney says it's a global financial problem. He says the idea that fault can assigned to the previous administration is "interesting rhetoric" but he doesn't think people care about that.

Mr. Cheney also backed my claim that Obama is using the recession to "justify a massive expansion of the government" i.e. socialism.

His most serious allegation, however, is that Obama has made America less safe.




John King: Since taking office, President Obama has done these things to change the policies you helped put in place. He has announced he will close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. He has announced he will close CIA black sites around the world, where they interrogate terror suspects. Says he will make CIA interrogators abide by the Army Field Manual, defined waterboarding as torture and ban it, suspend trials for terrorists by military commission, and now eliminate the label of enemy combatants. I'd like to just simply ask you, yes or no, by taking those steps, do you believe the president of the United States has made Americans less safe?

Cheney: I do. I think those programs were absolutely essential to the success we enjoyed of being able to collect the intelligence that let us defeat all further attempts to launch attacks against the United States since 9/11. I think that's a great success story. It was done legally. It was done in accordance with our constitutional practices and principles. President Obama campaigned against it all across the country. And now he is making some choices that, in my mind, will, in fact, raise the risk to the American people of another attack.