by Jules Witcover

The Cheney-Biden Debate (c) Scott Stantis
Cheney-Biden Debate (© Scott Stantis)

Former Vice President Dick Cheney is determined to salvage his own political legacy by continuing the argument over torture, or what he prefers to call enhanced interrogation techniques. It has now evolved into a verbal, televised mano-a-mano with his successor, Vice President Joe Biden.

The two squared off on this and other national-security issues at the safe distance of different network studios last Sunday. Cheney appeared on ABC's "This Week" and Biden first on NBC's "Meet the Press" and then CBS's "Face the Nation."

Cheney was the same scowling warrior against al-Qaida he was throughout his vice-presidency. He used the fact that there was no repetition of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the remaining seven years of the Bush-Cheney watch to contend that the harshest defensive measures were justified.

Cheney acknowledged his general support of Obama's intensified military effort in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but sharply criticized the handling of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, taken in custody in the failed Christmas Day bombing attempt.

The Obama-Biden administration erred in the interrogation of the so-called Detroit underwear bomber, Cheney said, by reading him his Miranda rights before thoroughly pumping him for what he knew about al-Qaida in Yemen, from whence he had come. Terrorist suspects should not be arrested and treated as mere criminals, Cheney said, but as war combatants not deserving of or qualified for constitutional protections or trials in the federal judicial system.

Biden responded essentially that Cheney didn't know what he was talking about regarding what the Obama administration had done, and was doing, to go after al-Qaida operatives. He claimed more killed and more intensive drone attacks against them in Pakistan than ever undertaken in the Bush-Cheney years, charging Cheney either was "misinformed or misinforming" the public on how terrorists suspects were being handled.

Biden noted the Obama administration was conducting most such prosecutions just as they were dealt with in the Bush administration, in civilian courts, including that of so-called shoe bomber Robert Reid, who pleaded guilty.

The former and present vice presidents squaring off electronically was an acknowledgment of each man's significant role in the national-security deliberations of his administration, as the office of the vice presidency has finally gained long-delayed stature and utility.

Cheney was widely regarded during the Bush years as the principal champion of the prisoner interrogation techniques used. He again defended waterboarding in violation of the Geneva Conventions, which he has insisted were not applicable.

Biden, while not advocating the Obama troop surge in Afghanistan, was a major voice in the debate that led to the intensified focus on al-Qaida targets there and in Pakistan, and he took advantage of his two television appearances to spell out that focus.

On another Sunday talk show on Fox News, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina also took issue with the reading of Miranda rights to remain silent, saying it had taken place "within 50 minutes" of Abdulmutallab's capture.

The Obama administration responded with a timeline saying the reading did not occur until nine hours after his arrest, and that much valuable information had indeed been gleaned from him by then.

Cheney's re-emergence in the debate over national-security methods, and the administration's decision to throw Biden into the fray, is an intriguing sideshow to Obama's principal struggle to cope with economic woes and joblessness at home.

Biden continues to function against unrelenting disparagement of his penchant for speaking out. His recent observation that it is highly unlikely this country will be hit again with another terrorist attack on the scale of 9/11 was a politically risky conjecture better left unspoken.

Biden's point was that al-Qaida has now been reduced to smaller-scale though still perilous individual suicide bomber attacks. But Cheney chided him about his comment, remarking, "I guess I shouldn't be surprised by my friend Joe Biden."

Neither, however, should anybody be surprised at Cheney continuing to defend the dismal policies of torture and an unnecessary war in Iraq that brought discredit to the administration in which he served, and to America around the world, in the Bush-Cheney years.

 

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The Cheney-Biden Debate | Jules Witcover

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