It starts today at 10:45.   The participants square off, take ten paces, turn, and shoot.  Obama pulls the trigger first, then Cheney returns fire.  We haven’t seen anything like this in a long time – an honest to God duel.

It used to be that a previous administration criticizing a sitting president was considered crass.  It looked petty, and the squabbling was percieved as something that damaged the nation’s credibility in the eyes of the world. 

Internet inventor and science fiction filmmaker Al Gore changed all that.   He began attacking Bush a little over a year into his first term.   That was followed by a steady stream of harrangues from Bill and Hillary Clinton.  That, however, was small potatoes.  This is the big leagues. 

Today, Obama wil give a speech claiming that the Guantanamo Bay facility trampled all over the law,  weakened our national security, and in the end just didn’t work.  Twenty minutes later Cheney will fire back, claiming that prison’s closure is just another of Obama’s poorly thought out schemes, designed to make the rest of the world like him at the expense of US security.

Obama’s problem is that aside from the global bad press Gitmo has generated, all the facts support Cheney’s argument.  Obama ordered Gitmo closed with no idea how to do it.  In the last two weeks, a couple of his own security advisors have commented positively on how the prison functions, and how it has served it’s purpose well.   Democrats in congress have withdrawn funding for it’s closure, while at the same time, it’s been rumored that the Obama administration was scouting locations in Montana for the constrcuction of a nearly identical facility.  Add to that Obama’s recent reversal regarding the elimination of military tribunals, and you have one impressive quagmire of indecision and doubletalk.

Cheney, on the other hand has two facts at his disposal that render almost any Obama claim moot. 

1:   The recitivism rate of Guantanamo inmates who have been released is very high.  Two in seven return to terrorist organizations once they’re out.
2:   Despite several well known attempts, there has not been a second 9/11 style attack.

Cheney is a man who can hold his own.  The facts are there to back him up.  Obama’s own people are fighting him on his goals, and polls say the American people are start to drift away from the issue as well.

Barack’s press conferences are basically parades of sycophants lobbing softballs, where he refususes to call on any news organiztion that  might challenge him.  People are growing extremely tired of it.  Today, Dick Cheney is going to call him out, asking difficult questions, making tough accusations, and backing them up with fact.  It’s something Obama rarely has to face.

I can’t wait.

-Robert Laurie