Olbermann: 'It may be time for Mr. Cheney to leave this country'

David Edwards and Stephen C. Webster

To MSNBC's Keith Olbermann, the former vice president just needs to go away.

In an interview with Politico published on Wednesday, former vice president Dick Cheney defended the Bush administration's use of torture and warrantless surveillance and suggested that unless the Obama administration maintains these policies, it risks a new "9/11-type event" that could "involve the deaths of perhaps hundreds of thousands of people."

On Thursday night, the Countdown newsman took Cheney to task for his words.

"Flatly, it may be time for Mr. Cheney to leave this country," he said. "The partisanship and divisiveness he ascribed his and President Bush's delusional policies of the last eight years that have roared forth from Mr. Cheney can only serve to undermine the nation's new president."

The anchor's sentiment was echoed at the confirmation hearing of Leon Panetta, former White House Chief of Staff and President Obama's nominee to lead the CIA.

"I was disappointed by those comments, because the implication is that somehow this country is more vulnerable to attack because the president of the United States wants to abide by the law and the Constitution," said Panetta. "I think we’re a stronger nation when we abide by the law and the Constitution."

"It is time for you to desist or to be made to desist," said Olbermann. "With damnable words you protect no American, you serve no American and you aid and abet those who would destroy this nation from within or without.

"... Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!"

This video is from MSNBC's Countdown, broadcast Feb. 5, 2009.

Original here