CNN hosted a GOP presidential debate focused on national security on Tuesday night. So who got to ask the questions? Well, lots of former members and supporters of the Reagan and Bush administrations.
There was former Reagan-era Attorney General Ed Meese, now of the Heritage Foundation, who asked about the PATRIOT Act.
There was Paul Wolfowitz (of Wolfowitz Doctrine fame), now of the American Enterprise Institute, who asked the Republican candidates if America could still afford programs to combat AIDS and malaria in Africa. Yes, the same Paul Wolfowitz who was one of the first to suggest attacking Iraq after the Sept. 11 attacks and was one of the main architects of Bush’s Iraq policy. He’s also the guy who infamously claimed it would be “hard to conceive that it would take more forces to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq than it would take to conduct the war itself and to secure the surrender of Saddam’s security forces and his army.”
There was also David Addington, former chief-of-staff to Vice President Dick Cheney and current vice president at the Heritage Foundation, who asked about the interests of the United States in Syria and what a GOP president would do to protect them. Addington was reportedly involved in authoring the so-called torture memos, an allegation torture memo author John Yoo has denied. He’s the guy Colin Powell allegedly told friends “doesn’t care about the Constitution.”
There was Danielle Pletka, a strong supporter of Iraqi opposition leader Ahmed Chalabi who’s now also at AEI, who asked candidates if there were any sanctions that could keep Iran from getting a nuke.
Video below.
