US News

O, CHENEY IN WAR OF WORDS

WASHINGTON — President Obama and former Vice President Dick Cheney went head-to-head yesterday in a stark cross-town debate over closing Guantanamo Bay prison and the best way to stop terrorists from attacking the homeland.

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Obama said the Bush administration’s harsh interrogation tactics have angered and emboldened our enemies, while Cheney pointed to eight years without an attack in the United States and warned that the current administration is playing into the hands of terrorists.

Standing amid copies of the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights and the US Constitution at the National Archives, Obama delivered a lofty defense of his handling of the war on terror so far and defended his increasingly controversial plan to close Gitmo.

“Instead of serving as a tool to counter terrorism, Guantanamo became a symbol that helped al Qaeda recruit terrorists to its cause,” Obama said.

“Indeed, the existence of Guantanamo likely created more terrorists around the world than it ever detained.”

And he vowed, “We are closing the prison at Guantanamo” — a big promise considering that his Democratic Senate voted, 90-6, this week to strip funding for the closure.

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Democrats in Congress say they won’t approve closing the detention facility until a plan is set for where the roughly 240 detainees would be held.

Obama’s speech offered little new in the way of plans for dealing with detainees.

Aides to Obama have suggested continuing military tribunals as well as preventive detention of those who can’t be tried in the United States — two Bush-like procedures that have drawn criticism from the left.

The closest Obama came to offering a specific location for holding the most dangerous terror suspects was a mention of Supermax prisons.

“Bear in mind the following fact,” he said. “Nobody has ever escaped from one of our federal Supermax prisons, which hold hundreds of convicted terrorists . . . The idea that we cannot find a place to securely house 250-plus detainees within the United States is not rational.”

Although there are many Supermax prisons nationwide, there is only one, in Florence, Colo., in the federal system.

Obama sought the middle ground between a Democratic base that’s growing impatient with his unkept promises pertaining to the War on Terror and conservatives who accuse him of gutting the effort.

“On one side of the spectrum, there are those who make little allowance for the unique challenges posed by terrorism, and who would almost never put national security over transparency,” Obama said.

“On the other end of the spectrum, there are those who embrace a view that can be summarized in two words: ‘Anything goes,’ ” he said, an apparent reference to the Bush administration.

Waiting for Obama to finish speaking, Cheney fired back, telling an audience at a conservative think tank that the tough interrogations “prevented the violent death of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of innocent people.”

As he has before, Cheney called on Obama to release secret documents that the former vice president said would prove that such techniques yielded valuable information.

He noted that for nearly eight years, Bush administration policies prevented another attack on US soil.

“To the very end of our administration, we kept al Qaeda terrorists busy with other problems,” he said. “We focused on getting their secrets, instead of sharing ours with them. And on our watch, they never hit this country again.”

With Obama in the White House and Democrats in Congress, terrorists face a considerably different enemy, Cheney said.

“They see weakness and opportunity,” he said. “The terrorists see just what they were hoping for — our unity gone, our resolve shaken, our leaders distracted.” With Post Wire Services

churt@nypost.com