Liz Cheney: Thank you. Thank you so much. It is such an honor to be here. It’s an honor to be introduced by Dave Keene, who has done so much for this country and for our movement. So thank you, David, very much for everything you do. And thank you to all of you.

What a fabulous time to be a conservative. Now it has always in my family been a good time to be a conservative, but there has been some critics you might have noticed. And I had a good lesson back during the 2004 campaign in how to deal with criticism and critics from my daughter, Kate. Kate was then 10 years old and she had a friend spend the night. The next morning we were in the kitchen. I was making breakfast, and Kate and her friend were on the floor of the kitchen working on an art project. Now the TV was turned on, and pretty soon Howard Dean, who was then running for president, showed up on the TV screen. Now it didn’t take long before Howard Dean said some pretty nasty things about my dad. And I thought to myself, “Should I turn it off? What should I do here?” And I decided no, I’m just gonna act cool and hope the girls aren’t listening. Well Kate’s friend immediately paid attention and she said, “Kate, that guy is really saying nasty things about your grandpa.” And my sweet darling little girl looked up from her art project, looked at the TV, saw that it was Howard Dean and said, “You know what, don’t worry about. That guy’s psycho.”

Now you all know that criticism of conservatism and predictions of our demise reached a new crescendo after the last election. All across the mainstream media you could see so-called experts giving their analysis, saying conservatism was dead and Barack Obama’s plans to radically rechange this nation were a done deal. Well I think a few weeks ago the people of Massachusetts told those experts what they could do with their analysis. And you know, the White House was spooked by that election. You could tell because the day after the results came in, you saw the President’s men all over the airwaves, David Axelrod and Robert Gibbs and Rahm Emanuel, saying hey we’re, we’re populists. You know? We’re returning to our populist roots. Barack Obama’s a populist. Now you have to admire that ambition, because everybody in this room remembers that President Obama is the president who said small-town Americans are bitter, and that’s why they cling to guns and to God. But now suddenly the White House tells us he’s a man of the people. Good luck with that one.

In the year that President Obama’s been in office we’ve learned a lot, haven’t we? We’ve learned he’s not gonna govern from the center. We’ve learned he doesn’t believe in American exceptionalism and he’s gonna travel the world apologizing for this great nation. We’ve learned he’s gonna raise everybody’s taxes. He’s gonna try to expand the size of the federal government until it permeates every aspect of our lives and every corner of our land. He’s gonna try to turn our healthcare system over to the federal government, and we’ve learned that he wants to give terrorists constitutional rights, including the right to remain silent. We’ve learned he wants to move dangerous terrorists from Guantanamo onto the American homeland while he investigates and possibly prosecutes the CIA officers who interrogated them. That is not change we can believe in. It’s not change the American people voted for, and it is time for all of us to stand up and take this country back.

Now nowhere have this president’s policies caused greater concern than in the area of national security. A little over a year ago, as you all know, he said he was gonna close the facility at Guantanamo Bay where we detain hardcore al Qaeda terrorists. He had no plan for what to do with the terrorists and he had no national security reason for closing the facility. So it’s not a surprise that he’s failed to meet his objective. But what he has done over the course of the last year, week by week, continuously is release and transfer hardened terrorists out of Guantanamo Bay. Now if you pay attention, you’ll see that the White House likes to make these announcements late at night on news days where there are other things going on, hoping we won’t notice. But the problem is that the terrorists currently at Guantanamo are such bad guys that most of their own home countries don’t want them back. Now President Obama, therefore, in order to keep his campaign promise, has to transfer these terrorists, the worst of the worst, into America. As we meet here today, the Obama administration is trying to appropriate over $200 million to buy the facility at Thompson, Illinois, the correctional facility, to hold the terrorists there. Now this is on top of the money the U.S. taxpayer has already spent on Guantanamo Bay. This isn’t rocket science. My 9 year-old daughter, Grace, who is a genius if I may say so myself, asked me about this recently. She said, “Mom, is President Obama really trying to bring terrorists into the United States?” And I told her, “Yes, Grace. Sadly, that’s exactly what he’s doing.” Without missing a beat, she cut right to the core of the issue and she said, and I quote, “Man! Use your brain, dude. That’s totally stupid.” But it’s not only stupid, it’s dangerous also. And if President Obama and Attorney General Holder don’t get it, then it is time for Congress to act. And we need all of you here today to help us in this effort. Please go to my new web site, KeepAmericaSafe.com. Join us. We’ve got a new petition up that tells President Obama terrorists belong in Guantanamo, not in the American heartland.

And while we’re sending messages to President Obama today, here’s one more. Stop apologizing for this great nation and start defending her. Keeping these terrorist detained is important. It’s necessary. But it’s not enough for us to win this war. We also have to be able to get good intelligence, and there’s no question but that in the time President Obama has been in office he’s diminished our capacity to do so. Last April you all know, he released the details of our enhanced interrogation program. A program we know saved lives and prevented attacks. But he stopped the program, and he said don’t worry, I’m gonna replace it with something else. I’m gonna have my National Security Council set up the High-Value Interrogation Program, the HIG. At about that same time last August, Attorney General Holder said he’s gonna start investigating and maybe prosecuting the CIA officers who kept us safe after 9/11. Well since then, guess how many al Qaeda terrorists have been interrogated by the HIG? That’s right, none. But during that same period of time, this administration has been working day in and day out investigating, questioning and possibly prosecuting many CIA officials. Now one can’t help but think that they don’t understand who the enemy is. So let’s help them out. Attorney General Holder and President Obama, the CIA officials who kept us safe after 9/11 are patriots. They deserve our thanks and our praise and they don’t deserve to be the targets of a politically motivated investigation by your Justice Department. Now the next time you hear President Obama say he’s using every tool at his disposal to fight terrorists, remember this. He revealed our enhanced interrogation program to the terrorists and then he stopped paying attention. He failed to follow up for nearly a year. He couldn’t be bothered to make sure that his National Security Council had actually established a new interrogation program, and it turns out they hadn’t. Now if President Obama wants to keep this nation safe, he’s got to make it a priority. Our counterterrorism systems will erode without constant daily presidential oversight and vigilance. Fighting terrorism cannot be President Obama’s part-time job.

There is an equally troubling story of incompetence, misjudgment and presidential neglect leading up to the Christmas Day attack itself. Now remember, the Christmas Day bomber was trained and armed in Yemen. And it’s worth reviewing a bit of the history here, for Vice President Biden’s benefit. During the presidential transition, the Bush counterterrorism team briefed the Obama team about the threat from Yemen and what we were doing to address the threat. In June 2009, America was attacked by a terrorist who had just returned from Yemen, who was under investigation by the FBI, who walked into a recruiting station in Little Rock and killed an American soldier. In September, the President’s own counterterrorism advisor, John Brennan, traveled to Saudi Arabia where he was briefed personally by Mohammed bin Nayef, the head of Saudi intelligence. Bin Nayef had himself just been the target of an assassination attempt where the bomber used precisely the same kind of bomb the Christmas Day bomber used. And there have been press reports that intelligence sources believe the bombs may have been made by the same bomb maker in Yemen. In 2009 in November, we had the attack at Fort Hood where 13 Americans were killed by a terrorist with ties to the same cleric in Yemen who trained the Christmas Day bomber. Despite all that, on December 20, 2009 President Obama released six Yemeni detainees from Guantanamo back to Yemen, and of course we had the Christmas Day attack on December 25. That’s just what’s publicly known. There is no doubt that the daily intelligence briefings this administration has received contain far more information about the threat from Yemen. But after all this history, on January 7 Counterterrorism Advisor Brennan and Secretary of Homeland Security Napolitano gave a brief at the White House and they said, “They were surprised that al Qaeda in Yemen’s operational. And then Secretary Napolitano went on to say she was “surprised that al Qaeda would launch individuals against us.” Somebody needs to get her a newspaper subscription. Now there’s no polite way to put this, but that kind of incompetence gets people killed. And yet no one has been held accountable.

Now during the 2008 campaign, President Obama admitted he did not have a lot of experience, but he told us what he did have was wisdom and judgment. The kind of wisdom he said we would need in a nation facing touch crises. Well the record is now clear. A wise man would not give the mastermind of 9/11 a platform in civilian court on American soil from which to preach jihad. A wise man would not usher al Qaeda-trained terrorist onto American soil. A wise man wouldn’t fret about whether a terrorist had been read his Miranda rights. And a wise man would hire better people.

Now this president’s policies, the very radical nature of the changes he wants to impose, impose a duty on each and every one of us in this room. It is critically important that we stand up and speak out, that we make our voices heard. And they’ll try to prevent it. We’ve seen how much the White House dislikes being criticized and attacked. We’ve seen what they’ve tried to do to Fox News, to the Chamber of Commerce, to doctors, really to anyone who disagrees with them. So they’re gonna fight back against us. They’ll try to attack us and they’ll play dirty. They’ll try to silence us. But this is America. And far too many brave young men and women have paid too high a price for our right to speak. So join with me right here, right now. Let’s send an unmistakable message to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. President Obama, you will never silence us.

There is one man in particular we all know who certainly has taught me what it means to have the courage of your convictions. You know who I’m talking about. For my whole life, he has taught me to stand up for what I believe in and to fight for what’s right. And often before big speeches like this one, I ask his opinion, I seek his advice. Well today instead, I brought him with me.

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