Dick Cheney emerges as top Obama critic

Former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney speaks about national security at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington May 21, 2009.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Bent over his speech text, reading in a monotone, former Vice President Dick Cheney could not have presented a more stark contrast to the glitzy style of President Barack Obama.

And yet, as evidenced by his blistering critique on Thursday of Obama's handling of terrorism, Cheney has emerged as one of Obama's toughest critics and the staunchest defender of President George W. Bush's post-September 11 policies when Bush has chosen to remain silent.

The invited guests and journalists in a nondescript conference room at the American Enterprise Institute, several blocks from the White House, waited for Cheney but first got Obama instead -- on a big TV screen.

Cheney had scheduled his speech weeks ago and some in the room said they believed Obama timed his remarks to take the steam out of the former vice president's appearance.

Cheney, backstage, waited patiently for the former Democratic senator to finish his 50-minute speech, but could not resist the first of many barbs when he stepped to the podium almost an hour behind schedule.

"It's pretty clear that the president served in the Senate and not the House of Representatives, because in the House we have the five-minute rule," said the former congressman from Wyoming and veteran Washington political infighter.

He then spoke for 35 minutes.

An unsmiling Cheney delivered his shots without any significant inflection -- even as he described the most dramatic hours of the Bush presidency, the chaos of September 11, 2001 when hijacked airliners were on the loose and Cheney was moved to an underground bunker.

Such an event, he said, "can affect how you view your responsibilities."

Cheney, who often took a low-profile role as vice president, was off on a high-profile, wide-ranging attack.

* On Obama's decision to close the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay without a plan for dealing with the prisoners:

"The administration has found that it's easy to receive applause in Europe for closing Guantanamo. But it's tricky to come up with an alternative that will serve the interests of justice and America's national security," Cheney said.

* On Obama's decision to stop the use of harsh interrogation methods on terrorism suspects:

"It is recklessness cloaked in righteousness and would make the American people less safe," he said.

* On Obama's release of classified memos describing interrogation techniques while withholding documents that detail any information gleaned from them:

"For reasons the administration has yet to explain, they believe the public has a right to know the method of the questions, but not the content of the answers," Cheney said.

'DISDAINFUL'

The Obama team's editing of one document to take out a conclusion that the tactics had yielded intelligence dividends was an "inconvenient truth," said Cheney, a play on the title of Democrat Al Gore's book on global warming.

Charging that Obama has reserved the right to order tough tactics himself, Cheney said: "You would think that President Obama would be less disdainful of what his predecessor authorized after 9/11."

Turning his attention to House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has been caught in a storm of controversy over whether she knew about interrogation methods in 2002 that she now condemns, Cheney was dismissive.

He said some lawmakers were notorious for demanding classified briefings and supported them in private "and then head for the hills at the first sign of controversy."

"In my long experience in Washington, few matters have inspired so much contrived indignation and phony moralizing as the interrogation methods applied to a few captured terrorists," he said.

Cheney's personal popularity is low and many fellow Republicans would like to see him fade from the scene, thinking that it might help them rebuild a party battered by election losses in 2006 and 2008.

Democrats eagerly pounce on his comments, confident that it helps their case whenever he speaks out.

But the former vice president has shown no sign of concern, choosing instead to go after what he considers an Obama terrorism policy that borders on weakness.

Former Bush press secretary Dana Perino said Cheney has a "absolutely every right" to ignore the critics and speak out.

"I think that a lot of this is noise. I think it's good that in America we're able to have vigorous free speech with frank and open discussions and the former vice president is doing what anyone in his position would've done," she said.

(Editing by David Storey)