WASHINGTON — Two weeks after leaving office, former Vice President Dick Cheney predicted a “high probability” of a nuclear or biological attack in the next few years and said the Obama administration was approaching a “tough, mean, dirty, nasty business” of keeping the country safe from terrorists too timidly.
Cheney singled out President Barack Obama’s decision to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and to ban coercive interrogation methods as changes in course that could make the country more vulnerable.
He also sought to justify the Bush terrorist-surveillance program and the anti-terrorism legislation called the USA Patriot Act. “Those policies we put in place, in my opinion, were absolutely crucial to getting us through the last seven-plus years without a major- casualty attack on the U.S.,” he told Politico.
