From Slate:
- Cheney lambasted the Obama administration’s efforts to try these sorts of terrorists as criminals in civilian court when they should be treated as “enemy combatants” and hauled before a military tribunal, preferably at Guantanamo. ”It’s very important,” Cheney said, “to go back and keep in mind the distinction between handling these events as criminal acts, which was the way we did before 9/11, and then looking at 9/11 and saying, ‘This is not a criminal act. … That was an act of war.’ “But, in fact, this distinction has never been so clear-cut or mutually exclusive, not even during Cheney’s time as vice president after the Sept. 11 attacks. Richard Reid, who tried to blow up a plane with a shoe-bomb three months after 9/11, was found guilty in a civilian court and is now serving a life sentence in a maximum-security federal prison. His prosecution occurred during George W. Bush’s presidency. Karl asked Cheney how the Reid case was different from Abdulmutallab’s. Cheney replied that Reid “pled guilty,” so there was no need for a trial of one sort of another. This response skirted the issue of whether Reid should have been brought before a federal judge in the first place.
More: Dick Cheney isn’t fighting Barack Obama; he’s refighting his own long-lost battles..