White House spokesman Josh Earnest accused former Vice President Dick Cheney on Thursday of politicizing the Sept. 11 attacks, and blaming the Obama administration for the release of terrorist detainees that happened under the George W. Bush administration.
Cheney wrote an op-ed printed Sunday that took aim at President Obama’s efforts to close the terrorist prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and his administration’s rapid pace of releasing or transferring detainees overseas.
He blamed Obama for the battlefield return of two particular former inmates. One is the head of recruitment for the Islamic State in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the other was a senior al Qaeda leader in the Arabian Peninsula.
Earnest slammed Cheney as someone who is “not one to miss an opportunity to make a political argument out of Sept. 11.” He also said Cheney left out two facts.
“First, he didn’t note that they were released while he was sitting in the vice president’s office,” Earnest said. Cheney also didn’t mention “that those individuals were taken off the battlefield while President Obama was in Oval Office.”
