These Aren't Leaders & They Will Get Americans Killed

The attempted Christmas bombing by al Qaeda linked Omar Abdulmutallab successfully bypassed all of the security precautions put in place since 9-11. This is a failure on Obama's watch. But as much as I think that Obama has unforgivably decimated our intelligence capabilities - something that will inevitably lead to future terrorist attacks for which he will be fully responsible - it is not apparent to me that this particular failure to stop this bombing before it came to the point of fruition is Obama's failure. The intelligence was there. It is beyond question that the individuals that should have connected the dots didn't. And it appears that airport security failed catastrophically in Amsterdam.

The appropriate response for Obama to this turn of events should have been simple - take responsibility, instruct his staff to identify the how and why of this failure and make recommendations to plug the holes. Once satisfied, he should then report to the American people. Instead, the Obama administration initially sent Janet Napolitano sent out to run defense, insanely claiming the "system worked." And now the White House is showing more of an inclination to treat this failure as a partisan political issue than to take responsibility and patch the security holes. This from the American Spectator is utterly unreal:

. . . senior Obama White House aides, including chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, David Axelrod and new White House counsel Robert Bauer, ordered staff to begin researching similar breakdowns -- if any -- from the Bush Administration.

"The idea was that we'd show that the Bush Administration had had far worse missteps than we ever could," says a staffer in the counsel's office. "We were told that classified material involving anything related to al Qaeda operating in Yemen or Nigeria was fair game and that we'd declassify it if necessary."

The White House, according to the source, is in full defensive spin mode. Other administration sources also say a flurry of memos were generated on December 26th, 27th, and 28th, which developed talking points about how Obama's decision to effectively shut down the Homeland Security Council (it was merged earlier this year into the National Security Council, run by National Security Adviser James Jones) had nothing to do with what Obama called a "catastrophic" failure on Christmas Day.

"This White House doesn't view the Northwest [Airlines] failure as one of national security, it's a political issue," says the White House source. "That's why Axelrod and Emanuel are driving the issue." . . .

The article goes on to note that Obama has Axelrod even sit in on national security briefings. Everything is politicized with these stooges - though that said, our far left crossed a bright red line in our political landscape when they politicized national security beginning in 2006, all in an effort to attain political power. These people aren't fit to lead a girl scout troupe.

The unforgivable aspect of the instant case is that Obama has treated Abdulmutallab as a criminal, giving him constitutional protection and allowing him to lawyer up rather than treating him as an enemy combatant subject to permanent detention and interrogation. Indeed, this is blatantly obvious to a vast majority of Americans. As Rassmusen reports:

Fifty-eight percent (58%) of U.S. voters say waterboarding and other aggressive interrogation techniques should be used to gain information from the terrorist who attempted to bomb an airliner on Christmas Day. . . .

Seventy-one percent (71%) of all voters think the attempt by the Nigerian Muslim to blow up the airliner as it landed in Detroit should be investigated by military authorities as a terrorist act. Only 22% say it should be handled by civilian authorities as a criminal act, . . .

No kidding. Yet Obama, with his vacuous moral preening and unbounded intellectual arrogance, has elevated his personal beliefs over his Constitutional and moral duty to the protect our nation. All of the intelligence that our would be jihadist could give us on the al Qaeda cell that threatens America is no longer available because the three stooges pictured above want to, as Cheney so accurately said yesterday, pretend that we are no longer in a war on terror. So how has the Obama approach worked? This from Powerline, quoting varoious itterations of a WaPo article on the issue:

The Washington Post reports that the would-be Christmas bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, remains in a Detroit prison where, after initial debriefings by the FBI, he has "restricted his cooperation." The "restriction" occurred after he obtained a defense attorney. . . .

An earlier version of the Post's story included this statement: "Authorities are holding out hope that [Abdulmutallab] will change his mind and cooperate with the probe, the officials said." The Post removed the passage. Whether it did so out of embarrassment for the "officials" or for the newspaper itself is unclear. . . .

This is a travesty and American blood will be spilled because of it. Damn these people.

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Cheney Unleashed On The 9-10 Mindset; The Left Tries To Rewrite History

In the wake of the attempted Christmas Day bombing by would be jihadist Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, Dick Cheney goes feral on the Obama administration over their 9-10 mindset. This from the Politico:

. . . Here is Cheney’s full statement:

"As I’ve watched the events of the last few days it is clear once again that President Obama is trying to pretend we are not at war. He seems to think if he has a low-key response to an attempt to blow up an airliner and kill hundreds of people, we won’t be at war. He seems to think if he gives terrorists the rights of Americans, lets them lawyer up and reads them their Miranda rights, we won’t be at war. He seems to think if we bring the mastermind of Sept. 11 to New York, give him a lawyer and trial in civilian court, we won’t be at war.

“He seems to think if he closes Guantanamo and releases the hard-core Al Qaeda-trained terrorists still there, we won’t be at war. He seems to think if he gets rid of the words, ‘war on terror,’ we won’t be at war. But we are at war and when President Obama pretends we aren’t, it makes us less safe. Why doesn’t he want to admit we’re at war? It doesn’t fit with the view of the world he brought with him to the Oval Office. It doesn’t fit with what seems to be the goal of his presidency — social transformation — the restructuring of American society. President Obama’s first object and his highest responsibility must be to defend us against an enemy that knows we are at war."

Cheney as ususal, is dead on point. As I posted the other day, the worst part of this is that now, the Obama administration, having bestowed constitutional rights on this would be jihadist and, concomitantly, having allowed him to lawyer up, our chances of getting actionable intelligence have dropped substantially. As I have written before, Obama's moral compass - the one he so ostentatiously points to at every opportunity - is faulty indeed. His first moral, ethical and Constitutional duty is to protect the U.S. Period.

But it was inevitable that some idiots on the left would crawl from under their slime encrusted rocks to blame Bush. And indeed, they appear today at Hotline On Call:

. . . While many Dems stay silent and let the WH lead the way, DCCC chair Chris Van Hollen and Rep. Eric Massa (D-NY) say the previous admin let down their guard.

"In general, we are facing the consequences of the Bush administration's failures to deal with al Qaeda," Van Hollen told Hotline OnCall. "The Republicans have no business in pointing fingers at the Obama administration on terrorism and national security."

"The Obama administration has been much more aggressive about going after al Qaeda than the Bush administration, which turned its focus from al Qaeda to Iraq," he added. The Obama admin has "been on the offense in places where the Bush administration had taken its eye off the ball."

Meanwhile, Massa has taken on ex-VP Dick Cheney, who he says is directly responsible for releasing the top al Qaeda figures in Yemen who aided and trained the Nigerian-born suspect.

"I would remind the American public that the apparent leaders of the al Qaeda cell in Yemen were 2 terrorists who were released by Vice President Cheney in secret. I think there's a level of accountability that has to be levied personally on the vice president," Massa said in an interview. "He is personally responsible for that."

Not since Stalin rewrote the history of the communist movement in Russia has there been such a blatant attempt at a historical rewrite. Or maybe not since the left tried to rewrite themselves out of the vote for the Iraq war. Hmmm, or maybe not since Pelosi tried to rewrite the history of her CIA briefings on waterboarding . . .? Well, whatever, let's deal with the historical rewrite being attempted at hand. As to the claim that the left has been far more "aggressively" going after al Qaeda," than the right ever has, that turns history on its head, pulls it inside out, runs it through a meat grinder and tosses it into an industrial strength trash compactor.

The U.S. Congress near unanimously voted for war authorization for Afghanistan and Iraq. Afghanistan fell and al Qaeda was all but driven out from there within months of 9-11. Iraq fell in weeks once the war started. It was a year and some months later when al Qaeda, at the top of their Muslim-wide popularity, explicitly made Iraq the centerpiece of their efforts. They wanted to drive America out of Iraq. In this, they were aided and abetted by the Democrats who did their absolute best to surrender to al Qaeda at whatever would have been the cosmic cost to our national security. Who can forget the Senate Majority Leader officially surrendering to al Qaeda after two bloody suicide bombings in April, 2007:



Obama himself was quite willing to see a genocide in Iraq if we would only surrender to al Qaeda there. We didn't - only because of George Bush. In the end, our military defeated al Qaeda in their theater of choice, Iraq. The al Qaeda brand was humiliated throughout the Middle East.

The Predator Drone strikes that Obama is now using to kill al Qaeda leaders didn't start in January 2009. That program began under Bush. Indeed, as near as I can tell, there is not a single new program undertaken by Obama to target al Qaeda. At any rate, in sum, for the utter scum on the left - those who placed a raw grab for political power over our national security - to now claim that they have always been the better guardians of our national security is to tell an obscene fairy tale.

As an aside, the reason al Qaeda is still extant - though very much near the ebb of its power - has everything to do with Bush AND Obama AND Congress down both aisles. Al Qaeda is as much an idea based on Salafism as it is a loose organization, and until that idea is altered, we are going to be playing whack-a-mole with al Qaeda whereever they can find a failed state to hide in. Nothing our government has done yet has addressed the toxin of Salafism spreading throughout the world on the backs of Saudi petrodollars. As I have said ad infinitum on this blog, our war against al Qaeda will continue ever on until we engage in the war of ideas.

Ok, back to Rep. Massa and his one semi-valid point in what is otherwise a massive steaming pile of bull excreata:

I would remind the American public that the apparent leaders of the al Qaeda cell in Yemen were 2 terrorists who were released by Vice President Cheney in secret.

It is true the Bush administration released these two "leaders" of the al Qaeda cell at issue - though the "in secret" bit is utterly ridiculous. It was well known at the time that the Bush administration were releasing Gitmo detainees who they thought no longer posed a threat and/or could be dealt with in their home countries. I hadn't, before today, heard a single Democrat object to that. This was an experiment that has worked in some cases, not in others. Apparently, the recidivism rate has been about 15%.

The two men Massa refers to, Said Ali Shari and Muhamad Attik al-Harbi, were released from Gitmo to Saudi Arabia in 2007. The Saudis promised to detain them until they were rehabilitated. Shari was "rehabilitated," then went to Yemen to become a leader of the al Qaeda cell there. Al-Marbi, though named by Massa and initially thought to have done the same, in fact was no longer involved with the Yemeni al Qaeda cell.

Why were these men - and indeed - anyone in Guantamo ever released? We always had the option to keep every Guantamo detainee under permanent detention until the end of hostilities. That, by 2006, is what had every leftwing nut near a microphone going into full moonbat mode, accusing the Bush administration of everything from violating the Constitution to committing war crimes. Indeed, it is this same group of moonbats that had, until about yesterday, planned to send close to 100 Gitmo grads to Yemen in the coming weeks so that they can close Gitmo at all costs. Where is Massa on that one? Need anyone ask?

But no matter. The real problem is the 9-10 mindset, as Cheney points out. And whether Gitmo-grad Shari took part in the planning of the Christmas bombing or not is merely a collateral attack on Cheney. It has nothing to do with whether Cheney's criticims of Obama are valid. They are.

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Milton and Obama

I have long thought that if you were able to memorize highlights from the works of Shakespeare, Milton, Churchill and Lincoln, then one would have at their disposal much of the collective wisdom of Westen Civilization. And if you can trot these quotes out at the appropriate moment, one's arguments would be greatly illuminated and exponentially strengthened. Thus it is with James Delingpole, blogging at the Telegraph on his perception of the Obama-Cheney speeches of Thursday last. I think he hits the nail on the head in his quote of Milton - a quote that sums up in two lines the inherent danger of the modern left and their militant pacifism clothed in moralism. This from Mr. Delingpole:

Watching Obama lose his screen on screen duel with Dick Cheney yesterday I was reminded of some lines from Paradise Lost.

Thus Belial with words clothed in reason's garb
Counselled ignoble ease and peaceful sloth, not peace.

But while the silver-tongued minor devil Belial would no doubt have approved the President's new surrender-monkey "realist" approach to the war on terror, I doubt he would have been so impressed with his oratorical skills. . . .

Yeah, I know, I know. I too was taken in when I first heard him speak. I remember thinking when I heard that measured, steady voice with its pleasant but authoritative timbre that here was a guy fit to govern the world. He sounded cool. Clint Eastwood "Make my day" cool.

Now, though, that novelty has worn off. Now, it's becoming clear that this carefully worked, glacial poise is all there is to Obama. He's just a hollow man spouting empty rhetoric.

. . . Obama's speech on the other hand, was the usual grandiloquent exercise in high-sounding nothingness. Apart from the familiar gangsta-rap-style boasting about how big and important he now is ("I took an oath as your Commander In Chief.."), all he had to offer were platitudes designed - a la Belial - to make inaction and pusillanimity in the war on terror look the only sensible course.

One of his favourite techniques is the false opposition, as here:

"On one side of the spectrum are those who make little allowance for the the unique challenges posed by terrorism and would almost never put national security over transparency. And on the other end of the spectrum are those who can embrace a view that can be summarised in two words: anything goes. Both sides may be sincere in their views. But neither is right."

Except nobody in the world cleaves to either of these positions. They have been conjured from thin air by Obama - and his trusty teleprompter - in order to make out that anyone who disagrees with his woolly centrist position must perforce be some kind of whacko extremist nut job. . . .

Read the entire post.

(H/T Bookworm Room)

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Obama, Cheney & National Security Policy (Updated)

Both President Obama and VP Cheney spoke on national security policy yesterday. You can find the full transcripts here and here. Obama's goals in his speech were threefold. One, in response to Dick Cheney's criticism, Obama sought to take the moral high ground and reframe the national security issue into a moral argument. Two, Obama sought to reach out to his increasingly unhappy base. And lastly, Obama wanted to end the debate on Guantanamo and on enhanced interrogation.

Across town, Dick Cheney waited his turn. When it came, he lambasted Obama on the issue of enhanced interrogation, the faux moralism, and the effect of his policies on the CIA and others who have served us in the War on Terror.

Obama on the stump always claims the moral high ground with liquid grace. He is a master rhetorician. He frames his arguments with vague references to unspecified values, moral precepts and the Constitution. He invariably characterizes these generalized concepts as being responsible for all that is good in America and then places himself in the center of their inchoate frame. From there, he is the arbiter, labeling all who disagree with him as immoral, unethical or anti-American. It is both transparent and effective in equal measure. To those inclined to uncritically accept Obama's disingenuous rhetoric as intellectually honest, I am sure it had an effect.

As to Obama's second goal, to play to an increasingly restive base, they are restive largely because Obama has, but for Guantanamo and enhanced interrogation, adopted the Bush War on Terror wholesale (as I have documented in detail here.) Charles Krauthammer points out the cynical formula Obama used repetitively to justify this:

. . . the Obama three-step: (a) excoriate the Bush policy, (b) ostentatiously unveil cosmetic changes, (c) adopt the Bush policy.

Obama also relied on two other arguments in playing to his base. One was to claim that the Bush policies had been unwillingly foisted on him. Obama disclaimed responsibility for having to adopt these policies - its all the evil Bushies' fault - and tweak them. As the editor's at NRO sum up the theme: "George W. Bush left me a mess, and I’m doing the best I can to clean it up."

Lastly, to Obama's credit, he did make a third argument to those upset at his refusal to release the additional photos sought by the ACLU - get over it. He basically told them that he now had to govern and thus, had to give some weight to national security concerns.

So how did this play with the base? Using Andrew Sullivan and Glen Greenwald as the yardsticks, Sullivan waxes rapturously at the One's "perfect pitch" in balancing the issues while Greenwald remains unconvinced. So, Obama evidently made some headway with his base, at least with those among the base who relate to him more on an emotional than a cerebral level.

Obama's last two goals were to say the final words on whether Guantanamo should be closed and whether enhanced interrogation - i.e., waterboarding - should be a topic of debate. He likely failed on both counts.

Obama reiterated that he intends to see Guantanamo closed - indeed, he did so in a fit of pique. But he still did not offer anything approaching a plan to make it happen.

In truth, Guanatamo is now far more a symbolic issue than a substantive one. The reason for Guantanamo in the first place was, in large measure, to keep anyone from making the argument that detainees there were entitled to Constitutional rights. That argument has largely dissipated with the SCT in Boumediene extending habeas corpus rights to all detainees. Other than pragmatic concerns with security, the only reason to keep Guantanamo open at this point seems to be economic. Why spend over a hundred million dollars to transfer these detainees to new locales when they could be retained at Guantanamo at exponentially less cost. The reason is political. Guantanamo is now of central importance to Obama as a symbol of his break with the evil Bushies. So, I am not surprised that he vehemently attacked Congress on this issue in his speech. Leaving Guantanamo open would be a great loss of face.

Then we come to enhanced interrogation, the crux of Obama's difference with Dick Cheney as well as several current and former CIA and DNI chiefs. Obama has moralized this one to death - as well as made bald pronouncements about the law. Obama stated:

First, I banned the use of so-called enhanced interrogation techniques by the United States of America.

I know some have argued that brutal methods like water-boarding were necessary to keep us safe. I could not disagree more. As Commander-in-Chief, I see the intelligence, I bear responsibility for keeping this country safe, and I reject the assertion that these are the most effective means of interrogation. What's more, they undermine the rule of law. They alienate us in the world. They serve as a recruitment tool for terrorists, and increase the will of our enemies to fight us, while decreasing the will of others to work with America. They risk the lives of our troops by making it less likely that others will surrender to them in battle, and more likely that Americans will be mistreated if they are captured. In short, they did not advance our war and counter-terrorism efforts - they undermined them, and that is why I ended them once and for all.

. . . those who argued for these tactics were on the wrong side of the debate, and the wrong side of history. We must leave these methods where they belong - in the past. They are not who we are. They are not America.

You can see all of Obama's rhetorical tools at work in that passage. One thing to highlight out of this is the baseless memes Obama uses to justify a ban on enhanced interrogation, with the most disingenuous being the claim that our use of these methods led to more recruits for al Qaeda. That is ridiculous. The three recruiting tools for al Qaeda have been the spread of Wahhabism, the success al Qaeda had in terrorist attacks against the Soviet Union in the 80's and then against the U.S. in the 90's and through 9-11, and the perception that al Qaeda was winning in Iraq in 2006 and 2007. Indeed, I would imagine the various pronouncements of Obama in 2006 and 2007, fanning the perception of U.S. weakness in Iraq and a willingness to surrender rather than take any further casualties, to actually have recruited terrorists to the cause of al Qaeda. As to our use of waterboarding as a recruiting point, that is laughable.

At one other point in his speech, Obama compared all who believe waterboarding was legal with being the far right fringe, equally as unrealistic as the ACLU types. Said Obama:

On one side of the spectrum, there are those who make little allowance for the unique challenges posed by terrorism, and who would almost never put national security over transparency. On the other end of the spectrum, there are those who embrace a view that can be summarized in two words: "anything goes." Their arguments suggest that the ends of fighting terrorism can be used to justify any means, and that the President should have blanket authority to do whatever he wants - provided that it is a President with whom they agree.

This grossly distorts the argument on waterboarding and trivializes the very serious work of the OLC attorneys that Obama made public with release of the four memos. I defy anyone to actually read the OLC memos and then say that work is patently wrong, let alone unserious, or that it evinces an "anything goes" mentality. As to the latter, the opposite is true. The OLC authors laid down very specific parameters for what was acceptable and what was not in accordance with the applicable law. As to the former, I opined on the legal reasoning in the memos in the post, Words Have Meaning, Rick. But no need to take my word for it. I would suggest that you also read an article by former federal prosecutor Victoria Toensig in the WSJ:

What did the Justice Department attorneys at George W. Bush's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) -- John Yoo and Jay Bybee -- do to garner such scorn? They analyzed a 1994 criminal statute prohibiting torture when the CIA asked for legal guidance on interrogation techniques for a high-level al Qaeda detainee (Abu Zubaydah).

In the mid-1980s, when I supervised the legality of apprehending terrorists to stand trial, I relied on a decades-old Supreme Court standard: Our capture and treatment could not "shock the conscience" of the court. The OLC lawyers, however, were not asked what treatment was legal to preserve a prosecution. They were asked what treatment was legal for a detainee who they were told had knowledge of future attacks on Americans

Both memos noted that the legislative history of the 1994 torture statute was "scant." Neither house of Congress had hearings, debates or amendments, or provided clarification about terms such as "severe" or "prolonged mental harm." There is no record of Rep. Jerrold Nadler -- who now calls for impeachment and a criminal investigation of the lawyers -- trying to make any act (e.g., waterboarding) illegal, or attempting to lessen the specific intent standard.

The Gonzales memo analyzed "torture" under American and international law. It noted that our courts, under a civil statute, have interpreted "severe" physical or mental pain or suffering to require extreme acts: The person had to be shot, beaten or raped, threatened with death or removal of extremities, or denied medical care. One federal court distinguished between torture and acts that were "cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment." So have international courts. . . .

Do read the entire article. And see this from Univ. of Minn. Constitutional law professor Michael Stokes Paulsen, quoted at Powerline:

Constitutional law, in addition to legal ethics, is one of my areas of teaching and scholarship. In my opinion, the most basic problem with any suggestion of incompetence is that the memos' essential legal conclusions are correct. There is a fundamental distinction in the law between what constitutes actual, legal "torture" under applicable standards and what may be harsh, aggressive, unpleasant interrogation tactics but not, legally, "torture." Reasonable people will come to different conclusions as to where that line is, but the Bush administration's lawyers' conclusions are certainly defensible and, I think, ultimately correct.

The only thing distinctly unserious about the debate on waterboarding is Obama's treatment of the issue and his ad hominem attacks on those who hold well grounded disagreement - both legally and morally.

Compared to Obama's speech, Cheney's was a model of clarity, brevity and intellectual honesty. Rather than comment, here are some of the highlights.

Cheney's Speech:

. . . So we’re left to draw one of two conclusions – and here is the great dividing line in our current debate over national security. You can look at the facts and conclude that the comprehensive strategy has worked, and therefore needs to be continued as vigilantly as ever. Or you can look at the same set of facts and conclude that 9/11 was a one-off event – coordinated, devastating, but also unique and not sufficient to justify a sustained wartime effort. Whichever conclusion you arrive at, it will shape your entire view of the last seven years, and of the policies necessary to protect America for years to come.

. . . Our government prevented attacks and saved lives through the Terrorist Surveillance Program, which let us intercept calls and track contacts between al-Qaeda operatives and persons inside the United States. The program was top secret, and for good reason, until the editors of the New York Times got it and put it on the front page. After 9/11, the Times had spent months publishing the pictures and the stories of everyone killed by al-Qaeda on 9/11. Now here was that same newspaper publishing secrets in a way that could only help al-Qaeda. It impressed the Pulitzer committee, but it damn sure didn’t serve the interests of our country, or the safety of our people.

. . . In top secret meetings about enhanced interrogations, I made my own beliefs clear. I was and remain a strong proponent of our enhanced interrogation program. The interrogations were used on hardened terrorists after other efforts failed. They were legal, essential, justified, successful, and the right thing to do. The intelligence officers who questioned the terrorists can be proud of their work and proud of the results, because they prevented the violent death of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of innocent people.

Our successors in office have their own views on all of these matters.
By presidential decision, last month we saw the selective release of documents relating to enhanced interrogations. This is held up as a bold exercise in open government, honoring the public’s right to know. We’re informed, as well, that there was much agonizing over this decision.

Yet somehow, when the soul-searching was done and the veil was lifted on the policies of the Bush administration, the public was given less than half the truth. The released memos were carefully redacted to leave out references to what our government learned through the methods in question. Other memos, laying out specific terrorist plots that were averted, apparently were not even considered for release. For reasons the administration has yet to explain, they believe the public has a right to know the method of the questions, but not the content of the answers.

Over on the left wing of the president’s party, there appears to be little curiosity in finding out what was learned from the terrorists. The kind of answers they’re after would be heard before a so-called “Truth Commission.” Some are even demanding that those who recommended and approved the interrogations be prosecuted, in effect treating political disagreements as a punishable offense, and political opponents as criminals. It’s hard to imagine a worse precedent, filled with more possibilities for trouble and abuse, than to have an incoming administration criminalize the policy decisions of its predecessors.

Apart from doing a serious injustice to intelligence operators and lawyers who deserve far better for their devoted service, the danger here is a loss of focus on national security, and what it requires. I would advise the administration to think very carefully about the course ahead.

. . . Maybe you’ve heard that when we captured KSM, he said he would talk as soon as he got to New York City and saw his lawyer. But like many critics of interrogations, he clearly misunderstood the business at hand. American personnel were not there to commence an elaborate legal proceeding, but to extract information from him before al-Qaeda could strike again and kill more of our people.

. . . Even before the interrogation program began, and throughout its operation, it was closely reviewed to ensure that every method used was in full compliance with the Constitution, statutes, and treaty obligations. On numerous occasions, leading members of Congress, including the current speaker of the House, were briefed on the program and on the methods.

Yet for all these exacting efforts to do a hard and necessary job and to do it right, we hear from some quarters nothing but feigned outrage based on a false narrative. In my long experience in Washington, few matters have inspired so much contrived indignation and phony moralizing as the interrogation methods applied to a few captured terrorists.

I might add that people who consistently distort the truth in this way are in no position to lecture anyone about “values.” . . .

Those are the basic facts on enhanced interrogations. And to call this a program of torture is to libel the dedicated professionals who have saved American lives, and to cast terrorists and murderers as innocent victims. What’s more, to completely rule out enhanced interrogation methods in the future is unwise in the extreme. It is recklessness cloaked in righteousness, and would make the American people less safe.

. . . [I]n the fight against terrorism, there is no middle ground, and half-measures keep you half exposed. You cannot keep just some nuclear-armed terrorists out of the United States, you must keep every nuclear-armed terrorist out of the United States. . . .

. . . The administration has found that it’s easy to receive applause in Europe for closing Guantanamo. But it’s tricky to come up with an alternative that will serve the interests of justice and America’s national security.

. . . In the category of euphemism, the prizewinning entry would be a recent editorial in a familiar newspaper that referred to terrorists we’ve captured as, quote, “abducted.” Here we have ruthless enemies of this country, stopped in their tracks by brave operatives in the service of America, and a major editorial page makes them sound like they were kidnap victims, picked up at random on their way to the movies.


. . . Another term out there that slipped into the discussion is the notion that American interrogation practices were a “recruitment tool” for the enemy. On this theory, by the tough questioning of killers, we have supposedly fallen short of our own values. This recruitment-tool theory has become something of a mantra lately, including from the President himself. And after a familiar fashion, it excuses the violent and blames America for the evil that others do. It’s another version of that same old refrain from the Left, “We brought it on ourselves.”

. . . Critics of our policies are given to lecturing on the theme of being consistent with American values. But no moral value held dear by the American people obliges public servants ever to sacrifice innocent lives to spare a captured terrorist from unpleasant things. And when an entire population is targeted by a terror network, nothing is more consistent with American values than to stop them.

. . . Releasing the interrogation memos was flatly contrary to the national security interest of the United States. The harm done only begins with top secret information now in the hands of the terrorists, who have just received a lengthy insert for their training manual. Across the world, governments that have helped us capture terrorists will fear that sensitive joint operations will be compromised. And at the CIA, operatives are left to wonder if they can depend on the White House or Congress to back them up when the going gets tough. Why should any agency employee take on a difficult assignment when, even though they act lawfully and in good faith, years down the road the press and Congress will treat everything they do with suspicion, outright hostility, and second-guessing? . . .

As far as the interrogations are concerned, all that remains an official secret is the information we gained as a result. Some of his defenders say the unseen memos are inconclusive, which only raises the question why they won’t let the American people decide that for themselves. I saw that information as vice president, and I reviewed some of it again at the National Archives last month. I’ve formally asked that it be declassified so the American people can see the intelligence we obtained, the things we learned, and the consequences for national security. And as you may have heard, last week that request was formally rejected. It’s worth recalling that ultimate power of declassification belongs to the President himself. President Obama has used his declassification power to reveal what happened in the interrogation of terrorists. Now let him use that same power to show Americans what did not happen, thanks to the good work of our intelligence officials.

I believe this information will confirm the value of interrogations – and I am not alone. President Obama’s own Director of National Intelligence, Admiral Blair, has put it this way: “High value information came from interrogations in which those methods were used and provided a deeper understanding of the al-Qaeda organization that was attacking this country.” End quote. Admiral Blair put that conclusion in writing, only to see it mysteriously deleted in a later version released by the administration – the missing 26 words that tell an inconvenient truth. But they couldn’t change the words of George Tenet, the CIA Director under Presidents Clinton and Bush, who bluntly said: “I know that this program has saved lives. I know we’ve disrupted plots. I know this program alone is worth more than the FBI, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Agency put together have been able to tell us.” End of quote. . . .

So where to from here? If Republican's are smart, they will start acting as Cheney's echo chamber and keep up the pressure on the Obama administration to release the two memos requested by Cheney. If Cheney is correct in what those memos say, then it will allow for an informed debate long overdue on this issue. Indeed, this is not an academic debate, for if Cheney, Tenet et al. are correct, then this is a debate on which thousands of innocent American lives once hung and may yet again hang in the future. Further, it will go a long way to exposing just how incredibly disingenuous is this Alinsky disciple now occupying the White House.

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Obama v. Cheney - National Security

I will blog on this later tonight as I have no time now. Some quick thoughts -

Candidate Obama showed up. This was a long campaign stump speech in which he reitterated all of his many charges against the Bush regime - that every decision Bush made in the War on Terror, from Guantanamo to enhanced interrogation, made us less safe, caused increases in terrorist recruitment, and somehow undermined the rule of law. According to Obama, people who argue against him are fearmongering. And Obama was angry - as angry as I have heard him. Clearly he does not like being effectively challenged.

Cheney's speech was a model of clarity. He took Obama to task for, among other things, the feigned moralizing outrage against the prior regime and the decisions to dispense with Guantanamo and enhanced interrogation. Further, Cheney took Obama to task for refusing to release the memos that Cheney claims will show to the US the value of the enhanced interrogation.

Much more to follow.

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Candidate Obama versus President Obama In The War On Terror

The difference between the words of Candidate Obama and the deeds of President Obama reads like something from the pages of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Candidate Obama was a doctrinaire liberal finding outrages in every facet of the Bush War on Terror. President Obama has embraced most of the Bush strategy. What does all of this say about the man we have elected President?

First we had Candidate Obama, . . .

There was no one more caustic or demagogic in their criticism of President Bush's prosecution of the War on Terror than Candidate Obama.


Obama daily demonized President Bush . . .


. . . for an outrageous litany of supposed moral and constitutional failings in the War on Terror . . .


But then Obama ascended was elected President on a promise of change . . .


. . . And change there has been . . .


. . . just not the change those misguided souls who voted for him expected.


From Day 1, newly ascended elected President Obama . . .


. . . began adopting the Bush programs in the War on Terror virtually wholesale.


Obama did so with only superficial modifications to the programs so that Obama could retain his facade of moral superiority with the help . . .


. . . of a complicit MSM.


It is not that the MSM has failed to note this change . . .


. . . but they are far too smitten with the One to challenge him on it. And indeed, some of his sycophants in the media are putting the most positive spin on this possible. For instance, the LA Times praises the One for his changing of positions at light speed: "Obama is emerging as a leader so committed to pragmatism that he will move to a new position with barely a shrug." Well, the last part of the sentence is true, but given that all of the positions Obama took in the election contest were deeply ideological and cast in morality, this new pragmatism, if that is what it is, adds a tremendous cognitive dissonance.

Update: Victor Davis Hanson weighed in on this today in a column at NRO titled Ministers of Truth:

. . . [I]t is quite astounding that the mainstream liberal media — NY Times, Washington Post, NPR, PBS, Time, Newsweek, etc. — has simply offered no substantive criticism of Obama's flips on renditions, military tribunals, wiretaps, intercepts, Iraq, or — given their past fury over the Bush deficits — the Obama plan to run up more red ink in a year than Bush did in eight.

. . . [T]o pick up any of these magazines and newspapers now is to see tortured apologies to explain why a flip-flopping Obama is playing "long-term" or "not going to get suckered by his base" or "first has to clean up the Bush mess" instead of disinterested commentary about (a) the disconnect between what Obama now does and what he once said; (b) the staggering amount of debt added, and how to pay the sums off. . . .

At any rate, just how wide, one might ask, is the gap between Candidate Obama's promises and President Obama's practices?


. . . it's fair to say "substantial."


Let's look at some examples:


Extraordinary Rendition -


Candidate Obama . . .


. . . said in March, 2008:

"Our greatest tool in advancing democracy is our own example. That's why I will end torture, end extraordinary rendition and indefinite detentions; restore habeas corpus; and close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay."

But then, two days after his ascension election, President Obama, . . .


. . . signalled by omission his decision to allow extraordinary rendition to continue. In a surprise - and very quiet - move, Obama simply left rendition out of his Executive Order dealing with the CIA's detention and interrogation of prisoners. CIA Chief Leon Paneta later stated during his nomination hearings that the CIA is continuing the extraordinary rendition program.


FISA and Warrantless Wiretaps


Candidate Obama . . .


. . . said in June 2008:

This Administration has put forward a false choice between the liberties we cherish and the security we demand. When I am president, there will be no more illegal wire-tapping of American citizens; no more national security letters to spy on citizens who are not suspected of a crime; no more tracking citizens who do nothing more than protest a misguided war. Our Constitution works, and so does the FISA court.

But then, After the ascension election, President Obama . . .:

. . . "fell in line with the Bush administration . . . when it urged a federal judge to set aside a ruling in a closely watched spy case weighing whether a U.S. president may bypass Congress and establish a program of eavesdropping on Americans without warrants. . . ."

State Secrets Privilege


Candidate Obama . . .


. . . harshly criticized the Bush administration for its broad interpretation of the State Secrets privilege, saying that it "ignored public disclosure rules" and that the administration too often invoked "the state-secrets privilege" to have entire law suits dismissed.

But after the ascension election of President Obama:


President Obama's DOJ raised the same State Secrets defense in three seperate cases where individuals had brought suit against the government over rendition, eavesdropping and torture. In each case, the DOJ took the same expansive view of this privilege/defense as had the Bush administration.

But Obama's DOJ goes one better - essentially refusing to acknowledge the power of a federal court. In a suit brought by al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, the presiding Judge allowed the case to continue despite the Obama DOJ's invocation of the State Secrets Privilege. Obama's DOJ "warned that if the judge does not change his mind, authorities could spirit away the top-secret documents." In other words, the Obama DOJ is going to act extrajudicialy and in contravention of a court order if it does not like the ruling of the Court.

And here we were led to believe that . . .


. . . it was BushHitler who acted in total disregard of the law and Constitution.

Military Tribunals

Candidate Obama said said. . .

We cannot afford to lose any more valuable time in the fight against terrorism to a dangerously flawed legal approach. I voted against the Military Commissions Act because its sloppiness would inevitably lead to the Court, once again, rejecting the Administration's extreme legal position. The fact is, this Administration's position is not tough on terrorism, and it undermines the very values that we are fighting to defend. Bringing these detainees to justice is too important for us to rely on a flawed system that has failed to convict anyone of a terrorist act since the 9-11 attacks, and compromised our core values.

After the ascension election, and within the past few days, President Obama said . . .

Military commissions have a long tradition in the United States. They are appropriate for trying enemies who violate the laws of war, provided that they are properly structured and administered. In the past, I have supported the use of military commissions as one avenue to try detainees, in addition to prosecution in Article III courts. . . .

As former U.S. attorney Andrew McCarthy points out, Obama's revisions to the Military Commissions procedures - such that he now finds Military Commissions acceptable - are . . .


. . . purely cosmetic.


Indefinite Detention

Candidate Obama said . . . ,


. . . on the Senate floor in 2006:

"In Sunday's New York Times, it was reported that previous drafts of the recently released National Intelligence Estimate . . . describe "actions by the United States Government that were determined to have stoked the jihad movement, like the indefinite detention of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay." This is not just unhelpful in our fight against terror, it is unnecessary."

After the ascension election, President Obama . . .


(This from Human Rights Watch in April, 2009:)

On March 13, in response to a federal court order seeking a definition of the term "enemy combatant," the Obama administration claimed the authority to pick people up anywhere in the world on the grounds of support for or association with al Qaeda or the Taliban, and to hold them indefinitely in military detention. Rather than rejecting the Bush administration's ill-conceived notion of a "war on terror," the Obama administration merely discarded the phrase and tinkered with its form.

Habeas Corpus


Candidate Obama . . .


. . . spoke strongly in favor of extending criminal law rights of habeas corpus to all prisoners in the War on Terror. Then, after the Supreme Court's Boumediene decision granting these habeus corpus rights, Obama celebrated it:

Today's Supreme Court decision ensures that we can protect our nation and bring terrorists to justice, while also protecting our core values. The Court's decision is a rejection of the Bush Administration's attempt to create a legal black hole at Guantanamo.

But after the ascension election, President Obama . . .


. . . tried to turn the detention facility at Bagram AFB in Afghanistan into the new "legal black hole" - a Guantanamo in Afghanistan. This from the NYT: -

The importance of Bagram as a holding site for terrorism suspects captured outside Afghanistan and Iraq has increased under the Obama administration, . . . The administration had sought to preserve Bagram as a haven where it could detain terrorism suspects beyond the reach of American courts, telling Judge Bates in February that it agreed with the Bush administration’s view that courts had no jurisdiction over detainees there.

All of the above has Obama's far left base . . .


. . . squealing like stuck pigs.


As to those of us not of the far left, even while we sit and stare in amazement at what apprears to be Obama's epic displays of hypocrisy and disingenuousness . . . .


. . . we won't complain over the outcome.


All that said, has anything actually . . .


. . . changed?


Well, yes . . .

Guantanamo

The president in fact signed the executive order requiring Guantanamo to be closed within a year . . . There is just . . .


. . . one large question - what to do with the detainees? It seems many of the same people who pointed to Guantanamo as an abomination are now antsy at best, if not outright refusing to allow these terrorists to be held in their state. Indeed, it was only a week ago that Congress stripped a preliminary funding measure for the closure of Gitmo out of a spending bill. It is probably even odds that Guantanamo is retained.


Waterboarding and Coercive Interrogation.


President Obama stated at his 100 days news conference that waterboarding meets the legal defenition of "torture." Thus, Obama tells us, waterboarding is both immoral and illegal. Moreover, in a seperate speech, Obama lectured America that, by even considering waterboarding to be lawful, it was proof positive that we had, under lesser leadership, lost our "moral compass." Obama, in January, called an end to all coercive interrogation . . .


. . . only non-coercive means of interrogation in the Army Field Manual are now allowed. I would strongly recommend this 2004 article in City Journal that discusses the near complete lack of success of military interrogators questioning religious zealots of al Qaeda and the Taliban when limited to only non-coercive techniques of interrogation. At any rate . . .

President Obama's articulation of moral imperatives as our new National Defense policy motivated ex-CIA agent Michael Scheuer to come to his own considered conclusion . . .


. . . about Obama's moral compass:

In a breathtaking display of self-righteousness and intellectual arrogance, the president told Americans that his personal beliefs are more important than protecting their country, their homes and their families. . . . Mulling Obama's claim, one can wonder what could be more moral for a president than doing all that is needed to defend America and its citizens? Or, asked another way, is it moral for the president of the United States to abandon intelligence tools that have saved the lives and property of Americans and their allies in favor of his own ideological beliefs

With that in mind, I suspect the when we next see a . . .


. . . second major terrorist attack, it will be followed shortly thereafter by . . .


. . . a line of people with torches and pitch forks heading towards Pennsylvania Ave . . . only to find . . .


. . . President Obama already having had one of his seemingly daily epiphanies, this one leading to a recalibration of his moral compass.


Transparency and Declassification

Candidate Obama promised

. . . [to] restore the balance between the necessarily secret and the necessity of openness in a democratic society . . . to put more information into the hands of the American people.

After the ascension election, President Obama . .


. . . did indeed keep his promise - a little, in a highly partisan manner. Obama made four classified Office of Legal Counsel memos on waterboarding public in order to show that he was morally pure while, in comparison, . . .


. . . the Bushies were not.


It was really a toss of . . .


. . . red meat to his base.

But Obama was foiled by . . .


. . . Darth Cheney

Cheney said that . . .

. . . waterboarding worked to save thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of American lives.


A few other important people . . .








. . . agreed with Cheney. And they seem to have been in the best position to know . . .


Cheney asked for two documents to be . . .


. . . declassified and made public like the OLC memos. He claimed these documents would prove his point by telling the public what we learned from waterboarding and how it saved the lives of countless innocents.


Obama could declassify those memos at any time with . . .


. . . but a wave of his hand.


Obama has since claimed that he has read the memos and . . .


. . . the memos do not prove Cheney's point.


Yet if that is so, why does Obama refuse to release them? Obama refusal is founded on the narrow - and ludicrous - ground that the memos are subject to ongoing litigation under the Freedom of Information Act. But so were the four OLC memos Obama ordered declassified. This all has sent my . . .


. . . BS detection meter into red line.


And indeed this would seem . . .


. . . a particularly premium grade of the stuff.


With Obama's offer of red meat to his base, there have come unintended consequences. For one, President Obama has . . .


. . . set off a feeding frenzy amongst the far left. Obama wants this to go no further. His base is of a different mind. They will not be satisfied until they have consumed the last morsels of Bush au jus and Cheney au gratin.

And, in another unintended consequence, we are being treated to the meltdown of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Factcheck.org memorializes it best here. She has tried a comic litany of excuses to disclaim any responsibility for approving of waterboarding in 2002 and thereafter. To make matters worse, in a moment of fluster, Pelosi declared war on the CIA, saying that they deliberated lied to her. This can't be good for the left or Obama, let alone for Pelosi. The best analogy I can think of is to a mouse that just walked in front of a feeding cat and . . .


. . . urinated in it's bowl of Little Friskies. Indeed, this was a bad decision of epic proportions for the Speaker.


And indeed, I would imagine the mouse's expression, in the split second after realizing the ramifications of what it had just done, would bear an uncany resembelance . . .

. . . to face of the Nancy Pelosi as she answered questions on what she knew and when she knew it.


It turns out that Obama's desire to score a partisan victory on waterboarding and satiate his base has gone . . .


. . . spinning a bit out of control.


No problem with that, though, at least so long . . .


. . . as the popcorn supply lasts.


Department of Homeland Security (DHS)

And there is one other major change. The Department of Homeland Security has changed their focus. Apparently, they are now less concerned with Islamic terrorists . . .


. . . Instead, Obama's Dept. of Homeland Security has now shifted focus to some new, and evidently


. . . more dangerous terrorist threats to society.


That includes returning . . .


. . . veterans


But, as a practical matter, not all of veterans are suspect . . .


. . . since not all of our soldiers who come home are capable of making the leap from fighting terrorists to becoming terrorists.


How utterly devoid of both patriotism and even the smallest modicum of common sense - indeed, how partisan to the point of irrationality - must someone be, to smear our returning soldiers with a generalized charge of being ripe for terrorist recruitment?


I guess we have an answer.


At any rate, if your having trouble coming to grips with how Obama could be so two-faced on seemingly every issue associated with National Security, do remember -

- "You do what you can with what you have and clothe it with moral garments."

- "A People's Organization is dedicated to an eternal war. A war is not an intellectual debate, and in the war against social evils there are no rules of fair play."

- "Truth is mutable and will change from time to time as necessary."

- Saul Alinsky, quotations from Rules For Radicals and Reveille for Radicals.

Hmmmm, now it makes a bit more sense.



Analysis:

I think a few things can be gleaned from the exercise above. Obama's statements of the highest standards of morality and ethics one day, only to be tossed so carelessly aside the next, speaks of a person for whom, in the words of William Jacobson, morality is a "sword, not a principle." In other words, he played the most cynical politics imaginable with our national security. And it is equally clear that Obama follows in the Alinsky model. Power is sought for its own sake. To the extent Obama is acting in accordance with any deeply held principles, they are kept well hidden, likely too extreme for public consumption. Traditional concepts of morality and ethics are but rhetorical devices for Obama.

Obama is a deeply disingenuous man. He is the epitome of the far left. Yes despite the total lack of intellectual honesty among Obama and his ilk, they have succeeded over the past eight years in convincing the majority of our citizens that they are best prepared to run our country. They have successfully managed to, falsely, pin this economic crisis on Republicans. They tried dearly to surrender in Iraq by pretending that this would be best for America rather than soley best for them. They applaud when our judicial activists rewrite the Constitution and interpret it according to their whim. They define "equal rights" as dividing our nation into dependant victims groups entitled to unequal treatment. They sell the snake oil that the profit motive is sinful, even as they and their cronies get rich from their association with our government. They denigrate business, even though, without a robust private economy, our paper money would have the value of paper. Their policies, taken to their logical conclusions, would result in an America with far less freedom, a far weaker economy, and a nation where achievment is no longer rewarded. It would be a weak nation whose decaying military would serve as a vehicle for politcal patronage in procurement rather than as a tool of national defense.

Republicans are now engaged in a rethink of the ideals of their party and a reorganization. But an equally important question is how we have allowed this turn of events where such a deeply corrupt group as the far left, epitomized by Obama, has taken such a hold in our society? We need a comprehensive strategy that is able to expose and attack it. In short, we desperately need our own brand of "Rules for Radicals."

Update: Jim Geraghty, writing at NRO on Monday, has reached virtually the same conclusions as I articluate above. This from Mr. Geraghty:

Obama’s defenders would no doubt insist this is a reflection of his pragmatism, his willingness to eschew ideology to focus on what solutions work best. This view assumes that nominating Bill Richardson as commerce secretary, running up a $1.8 trillion deficit, approving the AIG bonuses, signing 9,000 earmarks into law, adopting Senator McCain’s idea of taxing health benefits, and giving U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown 25 DVDs that don’t work in Britain constitute “what works best.” Obama is a pragmatist, but a pragmatist as understood by Alinsky: One who applies pragmatism to achieving and keeping power. . . .

Alinsky sneered at those who would accept defeat rather than break their principles: “It’s true I might have trouble getting to sleep because it takes time to tuck those big, angelic, moral wings under the covers.” He assured his students that no one would remember their flip-flops, scoffing, “The judgment of history leans heavily on the outcome of success or failure; it spells the difference between the traitor and the patriotic hero. There can be no such thing as a successful traitor, for if one succeeds he becomes a founding father.” If you win, no one really cares how you did it. . . .

Read the entire article.

Update 2: I published this post on Sunday, but its now obvious that others are noticing precisely the same things about Obama. A day later, Jack Goldsmith at TNR published a long article on Obama's adoption of the majority of the Bush War On Terror, though his article is actually aimed at refuting Cheney's claims that Obama has been weak on this issue. What Goldsmith neglects to mention is that what Obama has done to hurt morale and induce risk aversity at the CIA, his public change to available interrogation techniques, and his greenlighting of punishment of the OLC attorneys who advised the CIA have in fact wrought deep hurt to our intelligence capability, irrespective of all else.

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