Michael Scheuer at The Washington Post explains how Barack Obama has put his personal beliefs before America’s security.
Obama believes that if we are nice to the enemy then we will not be attacked. We will all likely pay for the president’s ignorance.
Americans should be clear on what Obama has done. 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. The interrogation techniques in question, the president asserted, are a sign that Americans have lost their “moral compass,” a compliment similar to Attorney General Eric Holder’s identifying them as “moral cowards.” 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?
Before enthroning Obama’s personal morality as U.S. defense policy, of course, some dirty work had to be done. Last Sunday, Obama’s hit man and White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel led the charge by telling the American people that the interrogation techniques are a major recruiting tool for al-Qaeda and its Islamist partners. Well, no, Mr. Emanuel, that is not at all the case. The techniques surely are not popular with our foes and their supporters — should that be a concern in any event? — but they do not even make the Islamists’ hit parade of anti-U.S. recruiting tools. That list is headed by Washington’s support for Arab tyrannies in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, its presence on the Arabian Peninsula and its unqualified support for Israel. Still, Emanuel’s statement surely sounded plausible to Americans who have received no education about our Islamist enemy’s true motivation from Obama, George W. Bush, Clinton or George H.W. Bush.
Next, the president used his personal popularity and the stature of his office to implicitly identify as liars those former senior U.S. officials who know — not “argue” or “contend” or “assert” but know — that the interrogation techniques have yielded intelligence essential to the nation’s defense. The integrity, intellect and reputations of Judge Michael Mukasey, Gen. Michael V. Hayden and others have now been besmirched by Obama because their realistic worldview and firsthand experience do not mesh with the president’s desire to install his personal “moral compass” as the core of U.S. foreign and defense policy. And after visiting CIA headquarters last week, the president made it clear that he rejected statements surely made by CIA officers who risked their careers to tell him how many successful covert operations against al-Qaeda have flowed from interrogation information.
Marc Thiessen at The Corner has more on the “Inconvenient Truth” that American lives were saved because of the interrogation techniques used during the Bush years.
Of course, the Left still does not want to believe this fact.
More… KSM was told he would not die when waterboarded.
Flopping Aces notes that the left’s anti-torture hero and terrorist apologist Ali Soufan has his timelines messed up. Oops.
