The Crack in Cheney's Crystal Ball

In a Tuesday interview with the Politico, former vice president (and hunting extaordinaire) Dick Cheney warned of a "high probability" that terrorists will attempt a catastrophic nuclear or biological attack in coming years. He went on to say that he fears the Obama administration's policies will make it more likely the attempt will succeed.

The first thing that comes to mind for me is the Bush administration's own inability to capture Osama Bin Laden. Now mind you, catching Osama Bin Laden is much more symbolic than anything else as that single act alone wouldn't neccesitate the end of Al Qaeda or terrorism as we've come to know it. It would have however proven equally symbolic as a measure of the former administration's committment to fighting and thwarting terrorism with an American populace who had largely reverted back into a complacent sense of well being with respect to terrorism and the threat it poses.

What's more, while it would be easy for Cheney, or the American people for that matter, to speculate on Obama's executive order to close Quantanamo or his verbal assertions to meet with leaders of various state sponsored terrorist countries, it would be just as easy to resort to finding culpability with he and Bush and the rest of the former administration's big wigs.

Certainly, arms sales to Saudi Arabia and an unwillingness or inability to do anything meaningful about border security et al. lends itself to some level of scrutiny no?

Be it known, I'm not one for playing the blame game. However, in the world of politics (and especially Washington politics), blame is the name of the game. And, all things being equal here, it's not even so much an issue of blame as it is one of applying facts.

Did the Clinton administration bear some level of culpability with respect to 9/11 given that administration's lapses in dealing with previous threats? I think without question. And so it goes...

It is a very tightrope that is being navigated by both Cheney and the Bush administration as much as the Obama administration. Unfortunately, for Cheney and Co. they haven't the safety net of the media to brace their fall (granted he and Bush are no longer in office but still, I don't think it'd bode well for that whole "legacy" thing...).