Wow, They're Not All Crazy

Republican Lugar Says Cheney’s Criticism of Obama Is ‘Unfair’ - Bloomberg.com

Jan. 8 (Bloomberg) -- Richard Lugar, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, defended President Barack Obama’s handling of recent terrorism threats, taking issue with former Vice President Dick Cheney’s criticism.

“It’s unfair,” Lugar said in an interview for Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital with Al Hunt,” airing this weekend. “I think the president is focused.”

Cheney, who frequently has led Republican attacks on the Democratic president since leaving office a year ago, told Politico on Dec. 29 that Obama “is trying to pretend we are not at war” with a “low-key response” to the Dec. 25 attempt to ignite a bomb aboard a flight to Detroit.

To the contrary, Obama has demonstrated “firmness” and “decisiveness,” Lugar, who represents Indiana, said. “That’s been the antidote to the criticism.”

Still, the U.S. may be focusing too much on Afghanistan at a time when al-Qaeda is finding havens in other hot spots such as Yemen and Somalia, Lugar said. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the 23-year-old Nigerian indicted in the Detroit plane plot, allegedly received his training in Yemen.

“I suspect that we will have to try to think through why we went to Afghanistan,” Lugar, 77, said.
Now see, this is how you do it. Reasoned criticism, credit where credit is due, some idea that we can have a rational debate. As opposed to hysterical demands that a suspect be tortured even though he's already cooperating, and lies about how the President Obama doesn't use the word "terrorism," or that he doesn't think we're at war?

How long you think it will be before some teabagger starts demanding the RNC cut off Lugar's campaigning funding for insufficient purity?