Cheney Slams Obama for 'Pretending We're Not at War'

Former Vice President Dick Cheney, who has become one of the sharpest critics of President Obama's foreign policy since leaving office, cited the failed airliner bombing on Christmas Day in charging that the president is "pretending we're not at war."

"He seems to think if he gives terrorists the rights of Americans, lets them lawyer up and reads them their Miranda rights, we won't be at war," Cheney said, according to CNN. "He seems to think if we bring the mastermind of 9/11 to New York, give him a lawyer and trial in civilian court, we won't be at war. He seems to think if he closes Guantanamo and releases the hard-core al-Qaeda-trained terrorists still there, we won't be at war."

Congressional Republicans also moved to score political points on Obama's response to the attempted bombing incident of the Detroit-bound flight. "They just don't get it," Rep. Peter Hoekstra, the ranking Republican on the House intelligence committee, wrote in a fundraising letter. "These are the same weak-kneed liberals who have recently tried to bring Guantanamo Bay terrorists right here to Michigan!"

Republicans are not the only critics of Obama's response to the incident. New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd wrote a scathing piece Wednesday describing the president's reaction as "chilly." Scores of bloggers and pundits reacted negatively to Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano's early suggestion that the system worked -- an assessment she almost immediately reconsidered.

White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer responded to Cheney's remarks on the White House blog, calling it "telling" that the former vice president was more interested in condemning Obama than he was in denouncing the attacker.

"This President is not interested in bellicose rhetoric, he is focused on action," Pfeiffer wrote. "Seven years of bellicose rhetoric failed to reduce the threat from al Qaeda and succeeded in dividing this country. And it seems strangely off-key now, at a time when our country is under attack, for the architect of those policies to be attacking the President."

Adding a note of irony to Cheney's offensive, Politico reported Wednesday that the Bush administration took six days to mention the incident involving shoe bomber Richard Reid, convicted of trying bring down a commercial flight in 2001. Bush was on vacation when the attempted attack took place and waited to comment until the following week. "There were virtually no complaints from the press or any opposition Democrats that his response was sluggish or inadequate," Politico added.