Dueling vice-presidents trade barbs
US vice-president Joseph R Biden Jr. and former vice-president Dick Cheney engaged in the last round of their war of words on Sunday in dueling television appearances, in which each offered sharply different positions on national security and forceful defenses of their administrations’ policies. Biden accused Cheney of trying to rewrite history in his critique of how the Obama administration had handled terrorism suspects and other threats to national security. Biden said some of the Obama administration efforts that have been criticized by Cheney were similar to decisions made during the Bush administration. He said Cheney’s fight seemed to be with his own administration.
“That’s Dick Cheney,” Biden said on ‘Face the Nation” on CBS. “Thank God the last administration did not listen to him at the end.” Cheney, on “This Week” on ABC, criticized the Obama administration’s handling of the attempted bombing of a jetliner in December, saying, “It is clear once again that the president Obama is trying to pretend that we are not at war.” He said “enhanced interrogation techniques,” including waterboarding, should have been an option when questioning the suspect, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.
Cheney also said the Obama administration was wrongly trying to take the credit for any progress in Iraq. “If they had their way, if we had followed the policies they had pursued from the outset or advocated from the outset,” he said, “Saddam Hussein would still be in power in Baghdad today.” The back-and-forth between Biden and Cheney highlighted the clashing visions of their administrations, particularly on national security, as well as efforts by conservatives to portray Obama as weak on that issue.
