Obama Fires Back at Cheney Over Gitmo Comments

President Obama, in a CBS News interview for "60 Minutes," fired back at Dick Cheney over the former vice president's claim that plans to close Guantanamo will make America less safe.

"How many terrorists have actually been brought to justice under the philosophy that is being promoted by Vice President Cheney?" Obama said in the interview, according to experts released Saturday. "It hasn't made us safer. What it has been is a great advertisement for anti-American sentiment."

Obama said the U.S. hasn't done a good job sorting out who should be released from the Guantanamo detention facility in Cuba because some freed detainees have rejoined terrorist groups.

www.foxnews.com...

The last two paragraphs I posted tells me that we should keep GITMO open and restructure how it is ran.

He asks how many have been brought to justice while there and then says some of those he lets loose have gone back to their terroist groups.

If we close this place and let looses the prisoners in the US how many potential terroists are we letting loose inside our borders?

How many have we let loose and how many have gone back to being a terroist?

Anyone know what the ratio is?

Edit to add- looks like Geithner isn't going anywhere either.

[edit on 21-3-2009 by jd140]

If they want to be terrorists - let them.

Their choice, it's not like we can control the choices of the millions of American hating fundamentalists out there.

We can start to diffuse that problem by thinking clearly, not by retaliating and kidnapping out of fear.

reply to post by YourForever


That is why they need to keep GITMO open, restructure it. Give them their trials or release them into their own Country.

He acknowledge that it has been a faliure.

He also acknowledged that we have released real terroists back into the world.

If he does release them in the US it could be a disaster for us. Why not just retool GITMO and put them through the process of either being released or being tried?

Originally posted by jd140
President Obama, in a CBS News interview for "60 Minutes," fired back at Dick Cheney over the former vice president's claim that plans to close Guantanamo will make America less safe.

"How many terrorists have actually been brought to justice under the philosophy that is being promoted by Vice President Cheney?" Obama said in the interview, according to experts released Saturday. "It hasn't made us safer. What it has been is a great advertisement for anti-American sentiment."

Obama said the U.S. hasn't done a good job sorting out who should be released from the Guantanamo detention facility in Cuba because some freed detainees have rejoined terrorist groups.

www.foxnews.com...

Is it just me or is Obama agreeing with cheney by saying that last bit. also i love how he says American has't done a good job like its our fault when this hole mess was his idea?

This man is two sympothetic to the enemy, Proof is in the closing of Gitmo, 900 million to rebuild Hamas's playground, reaching out to Iran and the taliban. I think we just elected a closet Muslem!



flame:



[edit on 3/22/2009 by Verd_Vhett]

reply to post by Verd_Vhett


Well how can you dissagree with it when it is proven that some who have been released went back to their terroist camps?

Just because evil Cheney said it doesn't make it untrue.

obama releasing the uss cole dude did make the world less safe obama needs to shut his mouth about bush and cheney and start making his own decisions.

closing gitmo will make the us less safe cause NOONE wants the gitmo detainees in their own states.

ok so fine close gitmo and open a prision in antarctica. then they wont be able to yell about gitmo anymore.

Originally posted by jd140
"How many terrorists have actually been brought to justice under the philosophy that is being promoted by Vice President Cheney?" Obama said in the interview, according to experts released Saturday. "It hasn't made us safer. What it has been is a great advertisement for anti-American sentiment."

Obama said the U.S. hasn't done a good job sorting out who should be released from the Guantanamo detention facility in Cuba

It has also come to light that many of the detainees in Gitmo ARE innocent!

Ex-Bush Admin Official: Many at Gitmo Are Innocent

Wilkerson, who first made the assertions in an Internet posting on Tuesday, told the AP he learned from briefings and by communicating with military commanders that the U.S. soon realized many Guantanamo detainees were innocent but nevertheless held them in hopes they could provide information for a "mosaic" of intelligence.

"It did not matter if a detainee were innocent. Indeed, because he lived in Afghanistan and was captured on or near the battle area, he must know something of importance," Wilkerson wrote in the blog. He said intelligence analysts hoped to gather "sufficient information about a village, a region, or a group of individuals, that dots could be connected and terrorists or their plots could be identified."

Wilkerson, a retired Army colonel, said vetting on the battlefield during the early stages of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan was incompetent with no meaningful attempt to discriminate "who we were transporting to Cuba for detention and interrogation."
******SKIP******
In his posting for The Washington Note blog, Wilkerson wrote that "U.S. leadership became aware of this lack of proper vetting very early on and, thus, of the reality that many of the detainees were innocent of any substantial wrongdoing, had little intelligence value, and should be immediately released."

Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney fought efforts to address the situation, Wilkerson said, because "to have admitted this reality would have been a black mark on their leadership."

Wilkerson told the AP in a telephone interview that many detainees "clearly had no connection to al-Qaida and the Taliban and were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Pakistanis turned many over for $5,000 a head."
******SKIP******
Wilkerson, who flew combat missions as a helicopter pilot in Vietnam and left the government in January 2005, said he did not speak out while in government because some of the information was classified.

One of their BIGGEST mistakes was rounding up innocent people and throwing them into Gitmo with no chance to even prove that they were innocent!

Of course these people will want a little "pay back" and may even NOW turn to terrorism as a means to do it!

Just like Obama said, ...

Obama Fires Back at Cheney Over Gitmo Comments

Obama said in the interview, according to experts released Saturday. "It hasn't made us safer. What it has been is a great advertisement for anti-American sentiment."

[edit on 3/23/2009 by Keyhole]

I think it was a good response to an idiotic statement made by an idiotioc person.

Even if, and that's a big "IF" git-mo and the other police state policies enacted by Cheney and company has made it more difficult for terrorists to attack the US, and remember I said "IF".

It's still not worth it.

The policies of the past administration have increased the sheer numbers of people wishing to do us harm by a thousand fold, at least.

We have become the very thing that we once condemned soviet russia, china and N. korea for. We kidnap people, sweep them into secret "gulags" without access to counsel, family notice or due process, oh and of course there's torture.

I find it hard to believe, and I am saddened by Americans who support the stripping of basic human and civil rights for the sake of "security" which is an illusion anyway, because nothing, absolutely nothing will or can ever make us completely "safe".

I am saddened beyong belief that Americans support this. We either have a constitution that we live by, or we don't, and if we don't, then we are not truly Americans.

Yet there are people in this country, not normally stupid people, who have purchased this ethos and demand that it continue.

Either we put these people on trial and subsequently act appropriately, or we have become the "evil empire", an "axis of evil", a "terrorist state", but certainly not America, certainly not Americans.

Either we stand by what we represent, or we are nothing. No better than any other nation that supports terror, forced occupation and the killing of innocent civilians, we have sold our soul for the illusion of freedom and security.

We need to put up, or once and for all, shut up.

reply to post by uaocteaou


America after 911 has fundamentally changed; Perhaps by design, into
a more primitive, paranoid, aggressive nation. We no longer even attempt to take the high ground but still point fingers at those we deem inferior. We have become masters of labeling those that the PTB want to turn into enemy's. Notice how nebulous the phrase is...."Those that want to kill us and take away our freedoms"

That could be anyone the PTB points their fingers at; perhaps even you neo67. Cheney and the neocons aren't stupid and are setting the stage for another take over to continue the PNAC. en.wikipedia.org...

It's a brave new world, welcome to the monkey house.



[edit on 23-3-2009 by whaaa]

[edit on 23-3-2009 by whaaa]