Former Vice President Dick Cheney, along with his daughter Liz, praised President Barack Obama Sunday for the drone strike that killed Anwar al-Awlaki, but also said that the president owes the Bush administration an apology.
Dick Cheney called the killing of the U.S.-born al Qaida cleric in Yemen on Friday "a very good strike" and "justified" in an appearance on CNN's “State of the Union” Sunday.
But he also said Obama should take back his criticism of the Bush administration's tactics in the war on terrorism.
"The thing I am waiting for is for the administration to go back and correct something they said two years ago, when they criticized us for quote overreacting to the events of 9/11," Cheney said. "They in effect said we had walked away from our ideals, taking policy contrary to our ideals when we had enhanced interrogation techniques. They have clearly moved in the direction of taking robust action when they feel it is justified. In this case, it was. They need to go back and reconsider what the president said in Cairo."
The former vice president was referencing the speech Obama delivered in Cairo in 2009, in which he said the the trauma of 9/11 caused American to "act contrary to our ideals" and announced that "I have unequivocally prohibited the use of torture by the United States" and ordered Guantanamo Bay to be closed.
Cheney took issue with Obama's speech on Sunday. "We were never torturing anyone in the first place," he told CNN's Candy Crowley. "He said we walked away from our basic fundamental ideals. That simply wasn't the case. What he said then was inaccurate especially now in light of what they are doing with policy."
"He slandered the nation," Liz Cheney added, "and I think he owes an apology to the American people. Those are the policies that kept us safe."