Well, even though David Gregory conducted the interview the night before, this morning's first guest Vice President Joe Biden was fired up taking on many if not all the claims by former VP Dick Cheney that the current administration is soft on terrorism. In reality, quite the contrary. The number, scale, and verocity of drone attacks that United States has launched in the nowhere region of Af-Pakistan would lead any a country, any country that's not named Pakistan or Afghanistan, to declare what we doing as an act of war. Mr. Biden used the words 'real, deep,' and 'successful' to describe the current Administration's efforts. Two out of three isn't bad, but that last one is key and it's yet to be determined.
So is Obama fighting the war on terrorism as if it is, in fact, a war? Most definitely. Mr. Biden said repeatedly during the interview that Mr. Cheney can not rewrite history unchallenged, and the former VP should be challenged hard. Something the Mr. Biden accomplished today.
However, what's interesting that David Gregory asked the Vice President about a statement he made recently would be a great success [we're paraphrasing] for the Obama Administration. Mr. Biden explained that the Administration have worked very hard with the various ethnically/religiously divided political parties of the country to arrive at consensus on a number of issues, a peaceful election is upcoming where everyone will participate, and lastly 90,000 combat soldiers will be out of the country by the end of the summer. And let's face it, if it were still the Bush Administration in office at this moment, all of that valuable diplomacy wouldn't have been happening and the troops movements - no way. Having Secretary Clinton heading up State, the United States' diplomacy IQ has been upgraded from the last administration.
But consider this... In 20 or so years, if Iraq is a stable democracy and thriving from all the oil we're buying from them direct, then - let's face it - the Bush Administration will be forgiven for a lot. If more democratic practices start popping up in the region because of the Iraqi inertia, then history will be rewritten that the Bush Administration was a brave one and perhaps that George Bush himself was correct that he'll let history judge what he did.... It's a possibility. And Mr. Cheney, in the short term, is going to do everything he can to discredit his detractors.
Before we say another word, we have to qualify the theoretical was just posed above. If that does happen, the reality is that the Bush Administration's motives to accomplish it were completely sinister and criminal at the least. So will they deserve the credit? No, because the whole thing was based on untruths that they knew where lies.
With regard to the trial of Khalid Sheik Mohammad, the Administration absolutely has to get on the same page. Having the trial in New York City has been withdrawn and now the location is yet to be determined. We have stated in this column before that military tribunals are not the way to go here. The whole line of questioning with regard to the possibility of acquittal shows a complete lack of confidence in our judicial system, which boils down to one thing - fear. We simply will never go forward as a country when leaders purposely or inadvertently stoke fear into the people. It's not what we are as Americans to live in fear. It seems that so many of us have forgotten that.
Moving to the topic of the economy, Mr. Gregory asserted to the Vice President the immeasurable claim of jobs saved due to the T.A.R.P. funds. We would agree that the number of jobs saved can be disputed, but not the fact that indeed jobs were saved - a lot them. So Mr. Gregory did have a point but without the actions taken by the Administration, the country would still be in a deeper hole than it is.
The other point that the Administration makes, whether consciously or unconsciously we don't know, is that in their answers, the basic family is always mentioned. Probably at this least it's conscious, but it can also be said that the two top dogs (The President and Vice President) actually sat at those tables themselves. It's a consistent showing of an understanding; it's important because it speaks to motive. With that, it does take some time to turn an aircraft carrier so turning this country even in a slightly different economic direction, either left or right, takes a significant amount of time - two years.
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