These columns are more about Obama’s speech than about Cheney’s, but both are absolutely on target, with great insights. My hat is off to my friend Jed Babbin of Human Events for this one,
Key lines:
President Obama wants to de-legitimize criticism of his ideas. He insists that those who disagree with the closure of Gitmo — or say that thousands of lives were saved because three terrorists out of the hundreds we captured were waterboarded — are betrayers of our Constitution.
Several times, he referenced the “fear-mongering” and climate of fear he says propels the debate on closing the terrorist detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He says we are ill-served by words that are “calculated to scare people rather than educate them.”
Perhaps he was thinking of the words spoken by FBI Director Robert Mueller on Wednesday. Pushed to agree that Gitmo detainees could be kept safely in U.S. prisons, Mueller demurred.
Mueller said that the FBI had grave concerns about Gitmo detainees being brought into the US: “The concerns we have about individuals who may support terrorism being in the United States run from concerns about providing financing, radicalizing others,” as well as “the potential for individuals undertaking attacks in the United States.”
And my hat is off to Jay Cost of RealClearPolitics for this one.
Key lines are that Obama’s habit of “ad hominem” attacks on those who disagree with him “obliterates any notion that the President is treating his interlocutors with the presumption of good faith. He says he is, but the rest of his speech doesn’t follow through – which makes the initial assertion sound like haughty, hypocritical moralizing.”
Read both columns in full. Good stuff.
