Former Vice President Dick Cheney took a shot at President Barack Obama late Monday night after it was reported that the president has attended fewer than half of his daily intelligence briefings.
“If President Obama were participating in his intelligence briefings on a regular basis then perhaps he would understand why people are so offended at his efforts to take sole credit for the killing of Osama bin Laden,” Cheney told The Daily Caller in an email through a spokeswoman.
“Those who deserve the credit are the men and women in our military and intelligence communities who worked for many years to track him down. They are the ones who deserve the thanks of a grateful nation.”
Some former special forces officers have released a political ad criticizing Obama for taking what they believe to be too much credit for the raid that killed al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden in 2011.
In the Washington Post Monday, opinion writer Marc Thiessen pointed to a new report by the conservative Government Accountability Institute that charged that Obama had attended fewer than half of the presidential daily briefs since taking office.
“The Government Accountability Institute, a new conservative investigative research organization, examined President Obama’s schedule from the day he took office until mid-June 2012, to see how often he attended his presidential daily brief (PDB) — the meeting at which he is briefed on the most critical intelligence threats to the country,” Thiessen, who was a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, wrote.
“During his first 1,225 days in office, Obama attended his PDB just 536 times — or 43.8 percent of the time. During 2011 and the first half of 2012, his attendance became even less frequent — falling to just over 38 percent. By contrast, Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush, almost never missed his daily intelligence meeting.”
The top U.S. intelligence official says he'll now release figures every year on how many new top secret court orders and national security letters are issued and how many people are targeted because of them.
