Sen. Joe Lieberman says the U.S. is not less safe under President Barack Obama than when former President George W. Bush held office during the eight years after the terrorist attack on American soil in 9/11.
“We’re not less safe,” Lieberman tells MSNBC in disagreement with former Vice President Dick Cheney’s repeated claim that Obama is making the country less secure.
“Our guard is up,” he explains. “In fact, I'd say that when it came to Afghanistan, obviously, this Obama administration has put more resources into the fight against terrorism than had previously been the case.”
Lieberman –– who was elected to a fourth term in 2006 as an Independent but caucuses with the Democratic Party –– was asked by MSNBC to respond to Cheney’s comments Sunday on CBS’s Face the Nation that “in the future, we're not going to have the same safeguards we've had for the last eight years.”
Lieberman, who largely sided with Cheney on national security issues during the Bush administration, doesn’t agree.
“On balance, we remain as safe as we can possibly be in a world in which there is Islamist extremists who want to attack us,” he explains.
Lieberman does, however, disagree with some of the president’s national security policies. Yet, despite being one of Obama’s leading critics on national security during the presidential campaign, he made clear that he believes the new administration is determined to protect the country.
“This administration has done everything it could, even in those areas that I disagree with them,” he tells MSNBC. “Even in the closing of Guantanamo, they’re being very methodical at this point.”
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