White House to Keep Agencies Focus on Terrorism

The Obama administration is moving to solidify one of the most significant shifts of resources put into place under President George W. Bush: the transformation of the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation into agencies where the top priority is counterterrorism rather than conventional law enforcement.

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. and other Justice Department officials have emphasized that they will not cut resources allocated to national security in the foreseeable future, and the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Robert S. Mueller III, told lawmakers on Wednesday that “we have no intention of retreating from preventing a terrorist attack on American soil as our No. 1 priority.”

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Cheney: Changes to Anti-Terrorism Policy Will Raise the Risk of Attack

Former Vice President Dick Cheney said Sunday that the Obama administration will “raise the risk” of a terrorist attack by overhauling his predecessor’s approach to the War on Terror.

Cheney sharply criticized Obama’s decisions to close the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, limit the methods CIA officers use to interrogate terror suspects and suspend military tribunals for alleged terrorists, saying those decisions taken together will make Americans less safe.

And he warned that the administration was transitioning to a pre-9/11 mindset that views terrorism as a “law enforcement problem” and not a military threat.

“When you go back to the law enforcement mode, which I sense is what they’re doing … they are very much giving up that center of attention and focus that’s required, and that concept of military threat that is essential if you’re going to successfully defend the nation against further attacks,” Cheney said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

He said the Bush administration’s tough anti-terrorism policies were “absolutely essential” to the military’s ability to gather the intelligence that helped foil “all further attempts to launch attacks against the United States since 9/11.”

Cheney added: “President Obama campaigned against it all across the country. And now he is making some choices that, in my mind, will, in fact, raise the risk to the American people of another attack.”

via Cheney: Obama’s Changes to Anti-Terrorism Policy Will Raise the Risk of Attack – Presidential Politics | Political News – FOXNews.com.

President Bush Warns Of Continued Terror Threat

Eight days before ending his two terms in office as President George W. Bush said “There is still an enemy out there who wants to attack America and Americans.” The homeland is still threatened. That is the most urgent threat facing Barack Obama. He was answering media questions for the last time.

President Bush issued a stern warning about what he called the continuing terrorist threat confronting the nation, using the haunting words of Islamic extremists to support his assertion that they remain determined to attack the United States.

Abandoning his practice of only rarely mentioning al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, Bush repeatedly quoted him and purported terrorist letters, recordings and documents to make his case that terrorists have broad totalitarian ambitions and believe the war in Iraq is a key theater in a wider struggle.

“Iraq is not a distraction in their war against America” but the “central battlefield where this war will be decided,” Bush said in an address before the Military Officers Association of America.

Citing the internal communications of terrorists was a dramatic new tactic to advance familiar arguments from Bush in defense of his strategy. The remarks came less than a week before the nation observes the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and two months before midterm elections in which the administration’s national strategy and competence promise to be pivotal questions. That debate was underscored by sharp criticism of Bush yesterday by Democratic congressional leaders.

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