Former Vice President Dick Cheney on Sunday called last week’s CIA drone strike against al-Qaeda operative Anwar al-Awlaki a validation of the George W. Bush administration’s terrorist- fighting strategy and said President Barack Obama should apologize for his past criticism of those policies.
Cheney endorsed the killing of al-Awlaki as “justified” despite Awlaki’s U.S. citizenship and suggested that the Obama White House was being hypocritical when it approved a deadly strike against the New Mexico-born al-Awlaki while condemning Bush’s use of so-called enhanced interrogation methods of al- Qaeda prisoners.
“They’ve agreed they need to be tough and aggressive in defending the nation and using some of the same techniques that the Bush administration did,” Cheney said on CNN’s “State of the Nation with Candy Crowley.” “And they need, as I say, to go back and reconsider some of the criticisms they offered about our policies.”
The Obama administration defended its decision to kill al-Awlaki, the first U.S. citizen to be added to the CIA’s target list, saying the al-Qaeda propagandist was part of a terrorist organization actively planning attacks on the United States.
The Washington Post
