Cheney: I'm Speaking Out to Keep US Safe

Dick Cheney says he’s been outspoken because the Obama administration has “moved to take down a lot of those policies we put in place to keep the nation safe for 8 years.” On CBS’ Face the Nation, Cheney denied the Bush administration was in the “torture business” and said he’d choose Rush Limbaugh’s version of the GOP over Colin Powell’s.

National security issues bloomed elsewhere on the Sunday talk shows this Mother’s Day:

• Gen. David Petraeus told CNN’s State of the Union that al-Qaeda has suffered “very significant losses” in the past 6 to 10 months, and on Fox News Sunday, the CentCom chief downplayed concerns the Taliban could seize Pakistan’s nuclear weapons.
• On ABC's This Week, National Security Adviser Jim Jones said Washington isn’t sure if Osama bin Laden is dead or alive, but Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari told NBC's Meet the Press he believes the al-Qaeda leader is dead and blamed the US for losing him.
• John McCain chided former rival Barack Obama for failing to devise a plan to prosecute suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay once the military prison is shuttered.
• Also on Fox, Newt Gingrich said the rancor over the Bush administration’s approval of tough interrogation tactics is “as bitter a partisan attack as we’ve seen since the McCarthy era.”

(More David Petraeus stories.)