On Thursday, Vets for Freedom Chairman Pete Hegseth went onto the Corner to criticize President Obama for his speech on national security. Not surprisingly, he praised Vice President Cheney’s address, calling it a “gutsy, straightforward, and yet sophisticated approach.” To underscore his point, he wrote, “Laying aside the debate over what is and what isn’t ‘torture,’ it’s hard to argue with 8+ years of safety since 9/11.” The problem, as the site Best of Both Worlds points out, is that it hasn’t been eight years since 9/11:
9/11 happened on 9/11/2001. We’re in 5/22/2009. That’s less than 8 years. In his mind, George Bush kept the country safe for 2 presidential terms. Some other dude was President right up till 9/11.
Atrios Thers adds, “NRO contributor attempts to count to 8, fails.” As Matt Yglesias has written in the past, “The overwhelming majority of Americans to ever be killed by foreign terrorists were killed during Bush’s presidency. And even if you give him a pass on 9/11 itself it’s still the case that his conduct of the ‘war on terror’ led to the deaths of thousands more Americans.”