Just Something To Keep In Mind

Dick Cheney, regarding the administration's counter-terror policies on January 12th: "Before you start to implement your campaign rhetoric, you need to sit down and find out precisely what it is we did and how we did it. It is going to be vital to keeping the nation safe and secure in the years ahead and it would be a tragedy if they threw over those policies simply because they've campaigned against them."

President Obama, in response on ABC’s This Week: "I think that was pretty good advice, which is I should know what’s going on before we make judgments and that we shouldn’t be making judgments on the basis of incomplete information or campaign rhetoric."

And yet, less than 48 hours after taking office: "President Obama yesterday eliminated the most controversial tools employed by his predecessor against terrorism suspects. With the stroke of his pen, he effectively declared an end to the 'war on terror,' as President George W. Bush had defined it, signaling to the world that the reach of the U.S. government in battling its enemies will not be limitless.
While Obama says he has no plans to diminish counterterrorism operations abroad, the notion that a president can circumvent long-standing U.S. laws simply by declaring war was halted by executive order in the Oval Office.
Key components of the secret structure developed under Bush are being swept away: The military's Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, facility, where the rights of habeas corpus and due process had been denied detainees, will close, and the CIA is now prohibited from maintaining its own overseas prisons. And in a broad swipe at the Bush administration's lawyers, Obama nullified every legal order and opinion on interrogations issued by any lawyer in the executive branch after Sept. 11, 2001."

So ask yourself. Did Obama take the time to make an informed decision about policies that directly affect the safety of millions of Americans? I hope and pray as much as everyone else that this decision never comes back to bite him, because if it bites him, it bites us all. But if the day comes when it happens, hopefully people will look back at this decision, and ask the tough questions.

The Wall Street Journal has more thoughts on the topic here.