Vice President Cheney Wants Credit
Vice President Dick Cheney wants a little credit for keeping America safe since the Sept. 11 attacks. On Monday he said that aggressive US action is responsible for preventing new terror attacks on American soil. Stating the obvious by saying that "Nobody can promise that we won't be hit," Cheney credited a determined offense against terrorists abroad, improved intelligence-gathering and preventive steps at home for thwarting or discouraging terror attacks. Never mind that the number of terrorist attacks worldwide increased nearly fourfold in 2005 to 11,111, the largest single-year increase in decades, with strikes in Iraq accounting for 30 percent of the total, according to statistics released by US counterterrorism officials last April.Although only half of the incidents resulted in loss of life, more than 14,600 noncombatants were killed, a majority of them in Iraq alone and 80 percent in the Near East and South Asia. American nonmilitary deaths totaled 56. The figures were compiled by the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) and released with the annual State Department Country Reports on Terrorism.
Answering questions at a National Press Club luncheon, Cheney also said that when
President Bush and he took office in January 2001, the balance of power in government was tilted in favor of Congress, contradicting the growing perception that this White House has overstepped its legal bounds, most recently with the warrantless wiretapping program.
The unpopular Vietnam War and the Watergate scandals allowed Congress to take more authority at the expense of the executive branch, Cheney said. He and the president believed it was important to "have the balance righted, if you will. And I think we've done that successfully," he said.
Democratic critics of the president and even some Republicans have questioned the administration's assertion of expanded executive power in the name of combatting terrorism. These include warrantless wiretapping by the National Security Agency, detention of suspected terrorists without charges, expanded powers under the Patriot Act and alleged secret CIA prisons overseas.
Cheney defended the NSA's domestic eavesdropping program, which the administration prefers to call its "terrorist surveillance program," as important in the war on terror, while conceding it was controversial.
"We have been engaged in a debate about the wisdom of the program and whether or not it's legal, but it clearly is legal, we believe. It is consistent with the Constitution." Developing...
- June 20, 2006
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