Free Republic

THIS month has brought a sudden surge in partisan ship, accusations and calls for investigations on intelligence matters by House Democrats. Democrats are claiming they were lied to by the CIA about a program and gleefully charge that then-Vice President Dick Cheney ordered the agency to not brief this program to Congress. CIA Director Panetta refused to back the allegation that Cheney gave such an order. Former CIA Director Michael Hayden flatly denied that he'd ever been instructed not to brief Congress. Now Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair has also distanced himself from these over-the-top allegations by House Democrats....

Congressional liberals must think Americans have very short memories. For years the Left trashed the Bush administration for not capturing and killing Osama bin Laden. Democrats claimed they could get the job done. Campaigning for president, Barack Obama made “We will kill bin Laden” a regular part of his foreign policy stump speech. But as the political winds have shifted, so has the nature of the Left’s indictments. Congressional Democrats continue to attack the Bush administration. Only now they are blaming it for trying to kill Osama bin Laden and other terrorist leaders. Theirs is a dangerous game. The Democrats’...

Here is audio of Sen. Jon Kyl yesterday on the Bill Bennett Radio Show saying he believes President Obama on his trip to Russia was more concerned with making a deal than he was concerned about protecting the United States. Kyl believes Obama is willing to lower our stockpile of nuclear weapons to levels that will put the nation in danger. . . . . (Hear Audio)

July 7, 2009 Obama to Russia: stop Iranian nuclear weapon and US will scrap missile defence President Obama today offered to scrap plans for a missile defence shield in Eastern Europe if Russia helped to stop Iran developing a nuclear bomb. He appealed in Moscow for a new era of partnership between Russia and the United States to fight the spread of nuclear weapons to rogue states and terrorist groups. "That is why we should be united in opposing North Korea's efforts to become a nuclear power and preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon," he said. Russia strongly opposes...

The Obama administration seized headlines June 18 when the Defense Department stated that the United States would deploy ground- and sea-based missile-defense assets to protect Hawaii. This was a response to North Korea's threat to launch a long-range missile on July 4 toward the islands. However, new information suggests that the administration is bluffing and our defenses are inadequate to get the job done.

CIA Director Leon Panetta says former Vice President Dick Cheney's criticism of the Obama administration's approach to terrorism almost suggests "he's wishing that this country would be attacked again, in order to make his point." Panetta told The New Yorker for an article in its June 22 issue that Cheney "smells some blood in the water" on the issue of national security.

Gov. Sarah Palin (R-Alaska) says defense cuts are a "show of weakness" and not a "sign of strength."

The Beltway antics that greeted the great Cheney-Obama torture debate were an unsettling return to the post-9/11 dynamic that landed America in Iraq. Once again Cheney and his cohort were using lies and fear to try to gain political advantage — this time to rewrite history and escape accountability for the failed Bush presidency rather than to drum up a new war. The harrowing truth remains unchanged from what it was before Cheney emerged from his bunker to set Washington atwitter. The Bush administration did not make us safer either before or after 9/11. Obama is not making us less...

Just 38% of U.S. voters agree with former Vice President Dick Cheney that America is less safe now because of changes President Obama has made in national security. Fifty-one percent (51%) disagree with Cheney, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. The partisan divided is predictable: 72% of Republicans agree with Cheney, while 80% of Democrats disagree. Among voters not affiliated with either party, 35% think Cheney is right, but 50% say he’s wrong. Thirty-nine percent (39%) of all voters attach some importance to Cheney’s comments since he left office, but only 17% say his opinions are Very...

To the chagrin, perhaps, of Republicans looking to rebuild the tattered party, Dick Cheney has grabbed the spotlight. The recurring theme of the once-reclusive and largely unpopular former vice president: President Barack Obama has put Americans in danger of a new terrorist attack by promising to close the Guantanamo Bay prison and banning torture. When Obama took office, former President George W. Bush went quietly to his new house in Texas, slipped intentionally into anonymity and honored protocol by staying silent about his successor. But Cheney, widely remembered for heading to undisclosed secure locations at times of national crisis and...

Obama's new budget plan includes a little-noted sea change in U.S. nuclear policy, and a step towards his vision of a denuclearized world. It provides no funding for the Reliable Replacement Warhead program, created to design a new generation of long-lasting nuclear weapons that don't need to be tested. (The military is worried that a nuclear test moratorium in effect since 1992 might endanger the reliability of an aging US arsenal.) But this spring Obama issued a bold call for a world free of nuclear weapons, and part of that vision entails leading by example. That means halting programs that...

WASHINGTON (AFP) — Former vice president Dick Cheney stepped up his assault on President Barack Obama on Tuesday, warning he was making "huge" mistakes on the economy and stripping America's anti-terror arsenal. Cheney, who has emerged as a fierce defender of the last US administration -- while former president George W. Bush's has remained silent -- also said Obama's plan to close the Guantanamo Bay terror camp was a "terrible" idea. "Bottom line is, we successfully defended the nation for seven-and-a-half years against a follow-on attack to 9/11," Cheney said in an interview with Fox Business Network. "That was a...

See link for article.

Two years ago, Barack Obama and his party conceded victory in Iraq to practitioners of electrocution, decapitation and worse. Those not trolling for votes from the uninformed and uneducated knew better and proved it. With now President Obama in office, one must ask if yet a second Democrat administration is setting the table for a terrorist attack. The selections of Leon Panetta as CIA director and Eric Holder as attorney general should give pause to all Americans. In the aftermath of the '93 Trade Center attack, at a time when Iraq was covertly reconstituting it's war-damaged nuclear weapons program, then...

The actions of Barack Obama in recent weeks raise a profound question. What if the FBI arrested some terrorists and determined they had information about a nuclear bomb smuggled into the United States and agents had reason to believe they had only hours to prevent a detonation in a major city? What would Obama do? Would he be content merely asking the terrorists where the bomb was? That's the impression I get from the administration's phobia about coercive interrogations. Not only is Obama declaring to the world that the U.S. will definitely disallow coercive interrogations in such a scenario, he...

In September 1995, John Deutch, the director of Central Intelligence, bowed to congressional pressure and fired two CIA officials because they had recruited Guatemalan military assets who had been involved in political assassinations. Inside the agency’s amphitheater, known as the “Bubble,” Deutch then told CIA employees that despite the firings, they should continue to take risks in the service of their country. That brought snickers from many of the clandestine officers in the audience.

Newsflash: It is not torture to put someone in a box with a caterpiller.

Obama Weighs Airing CIA Tactics Top Officials at Odds Over Whether to Withhold Some Details in Interrogation Memos By EVAN PEREZ and SIOBHAN GORMAN WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration is leaning toward keeping secret some graphic details of tactics allowed in Central Intelligence Agency interrogations, despite a push by some top officials to make the information public, according to people familiar with the discussions. These people cautioned that President Barack Obama is still reviewing internal arguments over the release of Justice Department memorandums related to CIA interrogations, and how much information will be made public is in flux. Among the...

If we’ve lost the national security vote, what’s left? Seventy-two percent of those questioned in the poll released Monday disagree with Cheney’s view that some of Obama’s actions have put the country at greater risk, with 26 percent agreeing with the former vice president… CNN Polling Director Keating Holland pointed out the partisan divide evident in the results. “By a 53 percent to 46 percent margin, Republicans agree with Dick Cheney,” he said. “But more than nine in 10 Democrats believe that Obama has not made the country less safe from terrorism. They are joined by more than seven in...

Here is video of Vice-President Joe Biden today saying in a CNN Interview that former Vice-President Dick Cheney is "dead wrong" when he says America is less safe because of steps being taken by President Barack Obama. Biden claims, to the contrary, that America is more safe today than at any time under the Bush Administration. He claims Obama is "rebuilding America's ability to lead" in the world. However, Biden did not address the specific actions taken by Obama that Cheney was referring to in terms of his decision about closing the Gitmo Prison Facility, cutting weapons programs, and announcing...