Cheney on Terrorism

Appearing on Fox News, former Vice President Dick Cheney complained that his counter-terrorism wisdom was being slighted by the Obama administration:

"I guess the other thing that offends the hell out of me, frankly, Chris, is we had a track record now of eight years of defending the nation against any further mass casualty attacks from Al Qaeda. The approach of the Obama administration should be to come to those people who were involved in that policy and say, 'How did you do it? What were the keys to keeping this country safe over that period of time?'"

This is a recurring theme in the former Vice President's defense of the Bush administration's counter-terrorism policy and it's one I don't understand at all. By this logic, Bill Clinton did a similarly sterling job protecting the country against terrorist attacks. After all, in 1993 terrorists bombed the World Trade Center - one month after President Clinton was inaugurated. For the remaining eight years he was in office, there were no mass-casualty Islamic terror attack in the United States.

And we know from the 9/11 Commission Report that not only did the Bush administration not seek out the advice of the Clinton administration - they actively spurned it. Then, nine months into the Bush administration, the largest terrorist attack in American history occurred.

(AP Photos)