Dick is on the rise

Dick Cheney continues his somewhat remarkable process of agressively attacking Obama with his dueling banjo response to Obama's national security speech on Thursday. This leaves me a little perplexed because I've been largely disappointed in the extent to which Obama's national security policies, despite his lofty rhetoric, has mostly matched that of the Bush administration and at least some people on the right and on the left seem to share this view.

So, beyond symboic gestures, like closing Gitmo, Cheney's substantive policy criticisms of Obama seem to boil down to issues over torture, whether to do it or whether to release memos discussing it. (I won't bother to expressing my concerns about torture any further but it's worth noting that the war on terror advocates who've had the balls to try it out, Mancow and Hitchens, have both unequivocally ceded that it is torture and, essentially called 'bullshit' on Cheney's "advanced interrogation techniques" euphemism. Secondly, there is evidence that torture was used for establishing ties between al qaida and Iraq more than it was used to keep America safe are increasing.)

Cynically, I continue to wonder whether this is less about Cheney trying to keep America safe and more about the GOP having a strategy so that they'll be able to say "we told you so" should any future attacks occur.