Biden, Cheney talk terror and war, agree on little

February 15, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

Chicago Tribune

WASHINGTON — Vice President Joe Biden and former Vice President Dick Cheney sparred Sunday from the safe distance of separate talk shows, disagreeing on the greatest threat to the U.S., the use of torture and going to war in Iraq.

The Democratic vice president — and the Republican he replaced — found little common ground in a spectacle that played out over three morning-TV programs.

A rare zone of agreement was the administration’s prosecution of the war in Afghanistan. But, even then, Cheney suggested President Barack Obama should have acted faster in deciding to send in more troops.

Biden, speaking from the Olympic Games in Vancouver, Canada, was shown live on CBS’ “Face the Nation” and on a taped segment on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

On today’s biggest threat, Biden told CBS al-Qaida was metastasizing into smaller-bore operations arising from the Arabian Peninsula.

But Cheney said he believed another Sept. 11-caliber terrorist attack was in the cards and said it was “dead wrong” to think otherwise.

Cheney has been a loud and frequent critic of the current administration, saying it has been soft on national-security matters. Biden sought to rebut that view.

On the Iraq war, Biden described successes in winding it down but said he didn’t think the war was worth it. He cited the “horrible price” in loss of life and said the country took its “eyes off the ball” in Afghanistan.

Cheney, though, said he believed “very deeply” that Iraq “was the right thing to do,” adding, “We got rid of one of the worst dictators of the 20th century.”

On the attempted bombing of a Northwest airliner on Christmas Day, Cheney said the suspect, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, should have been treated as an enemy combatant, instead of civilian criminal. He maintained the case showed the administration wasn’t equipped to deal with the aftermath of an attempted attack.