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Opinion: Obama vs. Cheney on Gitmo: Who won the terror debate today?

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Former Vice president Dick Cheney

It was like watching a prize fight on television. Only the stakes were a little bigger than your average purse.

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First the young gladiator, a gifted orator, a new leader, defended his position.

Then the old warhorse, not known for wowing the crowd, attacked.

When President Obama spoke, he used the majesty of power to convey authority. Speaking in front of the marble and limestone shrine that announces the precious documents of America’s birth at the National Archives, he declared that Guantanamo Bay prison “likely created more terrorists around the world than it ever detained.”

We’ve added the complete text of former Vice President Dick Cheney’s speech over here.

With the Declaration of Independence on his right and the Bill of Rights to his left, the president of the United States talked about how those documents were abandoned under the Bush administration, whose harsh interrogation techniques and detention-without-trial of terrorist suspects at Guantanamo Bay became a reviled international symbol of torture.

He talked about torture as “an albatross around our efforts to combat terrorism in the future” and called the effort to keep Americans safe “the roughest single issue we will face.”

Alluding to a Republican outcry about the danger of housing the Gitmo detainees in federal prisons, he promised not to release “anyone who endangers our national security” and said his administration would try to try those detainees who violated U.S. laws in federal court.

“Our courts and juries are tough enough to convict terrorists,” he said.

Then former Vice President Dick Cheney spoke, replacing Obama’s sobered outline of the complexities with fire and brimstone. Speaking at the conservative think tank, the American Enterprise Institute,Cheney said: “To call this a program of torture is to libel the dedicated professionals who saved American lives, and to cast terrorists and murderers as innocent victims.”

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Even worse, said the man known in some circles as Darth Vader, to attack the Bush administration’s policies amounts to “recklessness cloaked in righteousness, and it would make the American people less safe.”

He chided the young Obama for searching “for some kind of middle ground in policies addressing terrorism,” adding, “In the fight against terrorism, there is no middle ground, and half measures keep you half exposed.”

Michigan Republican Rep. Peter Hoekstra was one of 200 people gathered at the Archives for Obama’s remarks. Asked afterward for his reaction, the top Republican on the Intelligence Committee said, “He gives a good speech.”

What do you think?

-- Johanna Neuman

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