WASHINGTON — Former Vice President Dick Cheney said Sunday that President Obama has intensified the nation's risk of terrorist attacks by jettisoning key elements of the Bush administration's aggressive approach.
The criticism came in a broad-based attack on Obama during a Sunday news program in which Cheney also disagreed with expanded White House involvement in the economy and denied that President Bush was responsible for the nation's financial ills. The White House did not comment.
Cheney has sharply questioned Obama before, but the latest attempt comes amid a chorus of Republican criticism that nonetheless has had little effect on Obama's popularity or his success in Congress.
Cheney contended that the key elements of the Bush administration's approach to terrorism were "absolutely essential" to what he described as its success in foiling subsequent plots after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. In particular, he said, it was crucial that the nation treat the fight against terrorism as a war rather than a law enforcement issue.
Since taking office, Obama has announced plans to eventually close the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detention facility; banned waterboarding, a simulated drowning technique used in interrogations; said he would require CIA interrogators to abide by rules in the Army Field Manual; and ordered the closure of secret intelligence interrogation sites.
"Now he is making some choices that, in my mind, will, in fact, raise the risk to the American people of another attack," Cheney said on CNN's "State of the Union."
Cheney said Obama was returning to the Clinton administration's approach of treating terrorism as a law enforcement matter rather than a "war." He warned that this would reduce the effectiveness of the U.S. response.
"They are very much giving up that center of attention and focus that's required," he said.
In addition, Cheney criticized the new administration's approach to business regulation and said Obama's plans to reform healthcare, energy and the environment constituted "one of the greatest expansions of federal control over the private economy, probably in the history of the republic."
He said he worried that the administration was using the economic crisis to justify an expansion of federal intervention.
Obama has said that he generally favors limited government but that he would take whatever steps are needed to ease the economic crisis.
