Friday, May 22, 2009

Former Homeland Security Secretary, Tom Ridge disagrees with Dick Cheney (Video)

Call it what you want. Dick Cheney does not, in the end, help the Republican Party's argument. The GOP has always been the party of National Security, but under the Bush Administration and their disastrous handling of both wars it became apparent that many were just incompetent and we had a leader that listened to NO ONE. This killed the GOP in the end at the ballot boxes.

As people have listened to both speeches, read transcripts, it is clearly obvious that Dick Cheney wishes this administration to fail. Hopes that another terrorist attack will prevail. Even though all of his arguments have massive holes in them, or just down right lies. I am with Lawrence O'Donnell on this one, if you are using former CIA Director George Tenet as evidence and backup to your claims, the one who manufactured the Iraq evidence, your whole argument has major problems. A must read is from McClatchy Newspapers which dissects and destroys Cheney's argument, definitely worth a read.

From Tom Ridge:

Former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge told CNN Thursday that former Vice President Dick Cheney's repeated charge the Obama administration has made the country less safe is wrong.

"Yeah, I disagree with Dick Cheney," the Pennsylvania Republican and former Bush administration official told CNN's John King, adding he "does not" think the country is more vulnerable to an attack under President Obama.

Ridge appears to agree with a majority of Americans, according to a recent CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll. In that survey, taken last month, 72 percent of registered voters said they did not think the country was less safe under President Obama.

Ridge's comments came the same day both Obama and Cheney gave dueling speeches on national security, during which the president sharply condemned Bush administration interrogation practices while Cheney vigorously defended them.

In the interview with CNN, set to air in full on State of The Union with John King Sunday, Ridge said he disagrees with "the approach both men are taking."

"It's just the whole notion of a Republican vice president giving a speech after the incumbent Democratic president," he said. "It's gotta go beyond the politics of either party."

And from Keith Olbermann's guest, former Colin Powell aide, Ret. Lt. Col. Lawrence Wilkerson:



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