Powell Debunks Cheney’s National Security Claims

Most of us are thoroughly fed up with the ChickenHawk and the Lizard.

Today on Face the Nation, former Secretary of Sate Colin Powell dismissed former Vice President Cheney’s claim that President Obama has made the nation less safe. Saying, “I don’t know where the claim comes [from],” Powell ticked off Obama’s national security accomplishments, gave a full-throated defense of using civilian courts to process terrorists, and said Cheney’s attacks “are not borne out by the facts”:

SCHIEFFER: Let’s talk a little bit about national security. The former vice president, you just saw him there, he has almost on a weekly basis, it says something about the president is putting the nation’s security at risk. … Has Barack Obama made this country less safe?

POWELL: Well, let me lay out a few positions and facts. … I don’t know where the claim comes that we are less safe. … In eight years the military commissions have put three people on trial. Two of them served relatively short sentences and are free. One guy is in jail. Meanwhile the federal courts, our Article 3 regular legal court system has put dozens of terrorists in jail. They’re fully capable of doing it. So the suggestion that somehow a military commission is the way to go isn’t borne out by the history of the military commission. [...]

SCHIEFFER: Your bottom line answer is no?

POWELL: The bottom line answer is the nation is still at risk. Terrorists are out there. They’re trying to get through. But to suggest that somehow we have become much less safer because of the actions of the administration, I don’t think that’s borne out by the facts.

Watch it:

 

For weeks, Republicans have been hammering Obama over his handling of the Christmas Day terror attempt, especially the decision to try Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab in civilian court rather than a military commission. Many whined that Abdulmutallab had not been properly interrogated because he was read his Miranda rights. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell even tried to score political points by insulting counterterrorism field agents. Of course, they ignored that President Bush treated shoe bomber Richard Reid in almost exactly the same way in 2001. And Obama’s rejection of torture has actually aided Abdulmutallab’s cooperation, not hurt it.

Later in the interview, Powell said that he has “no problem” with 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed being tried in federal court, though he would prefer the trial to be held some place other than New York City. Powell also reaffirmed his commitment to closing the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, saying it “has cost us a lot over the years in terms of our standing in the world and the way in which despots have hidden behind what we have done at Guantanamo to justify their own positions.”... [emphasis original]

Inserted from <Think Progress>

Here’s the bottom line.  Ever since the US withdrawal from Vietnam, National Security has been the GOP’s exclusive domain.  They have used it ever since to portray Democrats as week, attack our patriotism, and strike fear into the hearts of uninformed voters.  It boggles me that they have kept up this deception for so long, especially considering that the most significant contribution the GOP has made to national security in recent years is allowing 9/11 to happen on their watch through their incompetence.  Suddenly that is changing.  Under the Democrats, more terrorists are being killed.  High lever terrorist leaders are being captured.  Interrogations without torture are discovering better actionable intelligence than anything ChickenHawk and his sidekick, Texas Torquemada, ever got through their war crimes.  The GOP is so desperate that they are telling even more absurd lies in a pathetic attempt ho hang onto national security preeminence.  It isn’t working.

I still cannot think of Colin Powell without visualizing him standing before the United Nations, parroting Bush/GOP lies to justify their war for oil and conquest that led to the waste of US lives and treasure and the murder of hundreds of thousands of innocents.  Nevertheless, it pleases me to see him trying to rehabilitate himself and thank him for his honesty.