[Jason Vines]

I read this article on the Huffington Post today: "Cheney's Deflection of the Truth" by Malou Innocent. I think it destroys whatever pretense the former vice president thought he had for lecturing Obama on national security:

• The very interrogation practices Cheney espouses have driven recruitment to terrorist groups and inspired suicide bombers. "... the loss of 'at least hundreds but more likely thousands of American lives... are linked directly to the policy decision to introduce the torture and abuse of prisoners as accepted tactics.'" (I found the Harpers article containing that quote to which Innocent refers; a lot of people would probably still be alive if the methods described therein were more prevalent in the American establishment.)
  
• Because Cheney and the rest of his ilk were so obsessed with Saddam Hussein, a man who had nothing to do with 9/11, the Taliban and their Islamist compatriots -- who really did have at least a peripheral connection with the attacks -- have run amok. They're gaining ground in Afghanistan and imperiling stability in Pakistan, a nuclear-armed country the world doesn't need teetering. After the Bush administration has squandered America's moral capital and strategic resources in Iraq, we're in less of a position than we've ever been to stop the Islamist tide in Afghanistan and Pakistan.