10.22.2009

O'Donnell and Scarborough battle over Cheney

Lawrence O'Donnell joined the panel on MSNBC's Morning Joe on Thursday and got into a heated debate with host Joe Scarborough over Dick Cheney's recent remarks accusing the Obama administration of "dithering while America's armed forces are in danger" and "putting politics over security and turning the guns on our own guys."

Scarborough tried to defend Cheney, stating that while he personally disagrees with the former vice president's comments, Cheney "speaks for a large chunk of America who is far more aggressive in foreign policy than those of us that live inside this bubble."

O'Donnell jumped into the conversation, leveling heavy criticism at Cheney:
The dithering thing is great because Cheney, of course, did not dither, did not dither for a minute, when the time came to make a wild guess, an outright crazy wild guess, about are there weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. And Cheney sat there in the White House and said, you know what, I've got everything I need to make my wild guess. On the basis of my wild guess I'm going to tell the country it's an actual fact, and then I'm gonna help send American soldiers there to die over a lie. No dithering when it came time to do that.

Retired General Paul Eaton, senior adviser to the National Security Network, has hit back at Cheney, calling him an incompetent war fighter:
The record is clear: Dick Cheney and the Bush administration were incompetent war fighters. They ignored Afghanistan for 7 years with a crude approach to counter-insurgency warfare best illustrated by: 1. Deny it. 2. Ignore it. 3. Bomb it. While our intelligence agencies called the region the greatest threat to America, the Bush White House under-resourced our military efforts, shifted attention to Iraq, and failed to bring to justice the masterminds of September 11.

The only time Cheney and his cabal of foreign policy 'experts' have anything to say is when they feel compelled to protect this failed legacy. While President Obama is tasked with cleaning up the considerable mess they left behind, they continue to defend torture or rewrite a legacy of indifference on Afghanistan. Simply put, Mr. Cheney sees history throughout extremely myopic and partisan eyes.

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