Video and Transcript: Dick Cheney Speech on “National Security” at American Enterprise Institute (21 May)
Video: Dissecting the Cheney Speech on National Security (22 May)

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Apparently a former Vice President spoke last night and said he kept the world safe and the current President doesn’t. Sort of like my Dad saying each time we meet, “You know in my day 1) there was no crime 2) kids knew their place 3) music was much better.”

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Tags: al-Qaeda, Barack Obama, Center for Security Policy, Czech Republic, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Frank Gaffney, George W Bush, Iran, Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, missile defense, Nouri al-Maliki, Poland, Russia, Taliban, Torture, Veterans of Foreign Wars, Vladimir Putin

Transcript and Analysis: Mullen, Eikenberry Sell the Afghanistan War on CNN (23 August)

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We commented earlier on the Obama Administration’s double act selling the war in Afghanistan, Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen and US Ambassador Karl Eikenberry, on CNN. As disturbing as this appearance was, this one might be worse.

Like the CNN interview, this exchange started not with consideration of Afghanistan’s political situation but with the question of how many troops the US should put into the country. And to set that up, host David Gregory asked a fatuous, leading question about weak-willed US public opinion to which Mullen invoked both Al Qa’eda and 9-11.

To give Gregory some credit, he did get to the serious issues of Afghanistan’s political and economic development and whether the US was “nation-building”. When he did, Mullen and Eikenberry floundered helplessly. Granted I am not a fan of the Obama policy, but even a supporter of the US effort should have concerns after this performance.

DAVID GREGORY: first, in addition to waging political battles at home, the President is faced with two ongoing wars abroad.
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Tags: 9-11, al-Qaeda, David Gregory, Karl Eikenberry, Meet the Press, Mike Mullen, NBC, New York Times, Pakistan, Richard Haass, Richard Holbrooke, Stanley McChrystal, Taliban, Veterans of Foreign Wars

Yesterday President Obama spoke to the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Phoenix, Arizona. The headline was “Obama Defends War in Afghanistan“, as the President explained that the US intervention was a “war of necessity” (as opposed to the Bush Administration’s “war of choice” in Iraq), two days before the Afghan Presidential vote. Obama, however, also spoke more widely about other theatres of US operations and about the relationship between military and non-military power.

PART 1 OF 3

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Tags: President Obama, Veterans of Foreign Wars