Former Vice President Dick Cheney told CNN yesterday that Obama should apologize apology for saying Bush administration overreacted to 9/11.
The Hill reported:
Former Vice President Dick Cheney applauded the U.S. drone strike that killed American-born al Qaeda leader Anwar al-Awlaki but added that President Obama now owed the Bush administration an apology for claiming they “overreacted to 9/11.”
Speaking on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday, Cheney said Obama was inconsistent for criticizing the former administration’s approach to terrorism while also using “some of the same techniques the Bush administration did.”
“We developed the technique and the technology for it,” said Cheney of the drone strike that killed Awlaki.
Cheney took particular issue with the administration’s reluctance to describe the fight against al Qaeda as a “war” and Obama’s 2009 speech in Cairo where he walked back from many Bush administration policies.
“The thing I’m waiting for is for the administration to go back and correct something they said two years ago when they criticized us for ‘overreacting’ to the events of 9/11,” said Cheney. “They, in effect, said that we had walked away from our ideals, or taken policies contrary to our ideals when we had enhanced interrogation techniques.”
“Now they clearly had moved in the direction of taking robust action when they feel it is justified. I say in this case I think it was, but I think they need to go back and reconsider what the president said when he was in Cairo,” he added.
“If you’ve got the president of the United States out there saying we overreacted to 9/11 on our watch, that’s not good,” said Cheney.
