Having Our Cake and Eating it Too

June 25, 2009 - byCarter Wrenn
No one seems to drive a true-blue liberal up the wall like Dick Cheney;—just about all Cheney has to do is walk into a room and say, Hello. How are you? and folks like columnist Rick Horowitz go wild-eyed and lose control.
 
The other day Horowitz lit into Cheney, first giving former President Bush the brush back saying Bush had ‘slunk’ back to Texas, then going  into a full fledged tirade saying Cheney just ‘won’t go… he just won’t shut up.’

In the blink of an eye Horowitz filled half a page with invective calling Cheney every name in the book, saying Cheney’s greedy…jealous…angry…vain… scared…and lusting after a six figure book deal but nobody wants to publish the memoirs of a ‘leper’ – so Cheney’s ‘dishing the dirt’ hoping to make himself saleable.

Now what Horowitz calls ‘dirt’ is Cheney opposing President Obama closing Guantanamo Bay. President Obama and Nancy Pelosi say we’ll be just as safe after granting terrorist Civil Rights – as we are now, locking them in Gitmo as prisoners of war.
 
Cheney argues that is a pipedream – and he does seem to have common sense on his side: After all a terrorist can’t get in much mischief in Guantanamo Bay – but Lord knows what one could do in a federal court.

But in columnist Horowitz’s intellectual world anyone who raises a practical point like that, in Horowitz’s words, Ought to just shut up and go away.  

But Cheney does have a point – not a pleasant point but a point. And President Obama and Ms. Pelosi saying we can have our cake and eat too avoids the real question. It’s pretty easy to see reading terrorists their ‘Miranda Rights’ does come with a risk – so the question is: Are we willing to take it?  
 
And what Mr. Horowitz should do – rather than pillorying Dick Cheney – is make his case why taking that risk is worth it.
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Having Our Cake and Eating it Too

June 25, 2009/Carter Wrenn
No one seems to drive a true-blue liberal up the wall like Dick Cheney;—just about all Cheney has to do is walk into a room and say, Hello. How are you? and folks like columnist Rick Horowitz go wild-eyed and lose control.
 
The other day Horowitz lit into Cheney, first giving former President Bush the brush back saying Bush had ‘slunk’ back to Texas, then going  into a full fledged tirade saying Cheney just ‘won’t go… he just won’t shut up.’

In the blink of an eye Horowitz filled half a page with invective calling Cheney every name in the book, saying Cheney’s greedy…jealous…angry…vain… scared…and lusting after a six figure book deal but nobody wants to publish the memoirs of a ‘leper’ – so Cheney’s ‘dishing the dirt’ hoping to make himself saleable.

Now what Horowitz calls ‘dirt’ is Cheney opposing President Obama closing Guantanamo Bay. President Obama and Nancy Pelosi say we’ll be just as safe after granting terrorist Civil Rights – as we are now, locking them in Gitmo as prisoners of war.
 
Cheney argues that is a pipedream – and he does seem to have common sense on his side: After all a terrorist can’t get in much mischief in Guantanamo Bay – but Lord knows what one could do in a federal court.

But in columnist Horowitz’s intellectual world anyone who raises a practical point like that, in Horowitz’s words, Ought to just shut up and go away.  

But Cheney does have a point – not a pleasant point but a point. And President Obama and Ms. Pelosi saying we can have our cake and eat too avoids the real question. It’s pretty easy to see reading terrorists their ‘Miranda Rights’ does come with a risk – so the question is: Are we willing to take it?  
 
And what Mr. Horowitz should do – rather than pillorying Dick Cheney – is make his case why taking that risk is worth it.
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