Barack Obama has a point here. He’s not Dick Cheney when it comes to drones. Dick Cheney never killed an American citizen without due process. Dick Cheney also never accused returning veterans or pro-life advocates of being potential terror threats. Obama’s government has done both.
President Barack Obama’s defense to Democratic senators complaining about how little his administration has told Congress about the legal justifications for his drone policy: Dick Cheneywas worse.
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That’s part of what two senators in the room recounted of Obama’s response when, near the outset of his closed-door session with the Senate Democratic conference on Tuesday, Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) confronted the president over the administration’s refusal for two years to show congressional intelligence committees Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel memos justifying the use of lethal force against American terror suspects abroad.
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In response to Rockefeller’s critique, Obama said he’s not involved in drafting such memos, the senators told POLITICO. He also tried to assure his former colleagues that his administration is more open to oversight than that of President George W. Bush, whom many Democratic senators attacked for secrecy and for expanding executive power in the national security realm.
“This is not Dick Cheney we’re talking about here,” he said, according to Democratic senators who asked not to be named discussing the private meeting.
Obama’s entire worldview seems to boil down to: I’m not that guy, who’s worse than me, because I say so.
Even though Dick Cheney never killed an American citizen without due process.
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