Does Cheney want America to be attacked again for political advantage?

Monday, June 15, 2009
WASHINGTON NEWS
Panetta Wonders If Cheney Wants Al Qaeda To Attack US To Prove Point

CIA Director Leon Panetta's remarks on former Vice President Dick Cheney made in a nearly 7,600-word interview with The New Yorker generated some media attention last night and this morning.

Calling them "tough words," ABC World News reported briefly that Panetta said of Cheney, who "has repeatedly, of course, criticized the Obama Administration's approach to terrorism," that "it's almost as if he is wishing that this country would be attacked again, in order to make his point.'"

Panetta, the New Yorker (6/22, Mayer) reports, was responding to a speech the former vice president made at the American Enterprise Institute, where he accused the Administration of making "the American people less safe" by banning brutal CIA interrogations of terrorism suspects that had been sanctioned by the Bush Administration.

With "surprising candor," the magazine reports Panetta said, "I think he smells some blood in the water on the national-security issue. It's almost, a little bit, gallows politics. When you read behind it, it's almost as if he's wishing that this country would be attacked again, in order to make his point. I think that's dangerous politics."...