| Investor's Business Daily says it plain and clear |
War On Terror: If al-Qaida were writing Congress' script, it's hard to imagine things would play out much differently than what leading Democrats are doing now. Considering the threat we're under, that's a chilling statement.
The CIA's tough interrogation of terrorist prisoners like 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has helped foil at least 10 serious al-Qaida plots, three of them on U.S. soil, according to President Bush.
| But far from being grateful to those in government who have saved perhaps thousands of innocent American lives, Democrats in Congress are acting like al-Qaida stooges |
- The second-ranking Senate Democrat, Richard Durbin of Illinois, demands that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales tell him whether "it be legal for a foreign government to subject a United States citizen to these so-called enhanced interrogation techniques?"
- Senate Intelligence Committee member Ron Wyden, D-Ore., is blocking the confirmation of John Rizzo, nominated as CIA general counsel by the president, because the 30-year-plus veteran of the agency helped establish the interrogation program.
- In anticipation of a possible congressional investigation, "a number of CIA officers have taken out professional liability insurance, to help with potential legal fees," reporter Jane Mayer recounts being told by a former CIA officer in the latest issue of the New Yorker. Will our soldiers on the front lines in Afghanistan and Iraq be sued too?
- Mayer's "Black Sites" article has caused quite a buzz, but while it reveals details showing the CIA program to be appropriately tough, it also indicates it not to be torture — and its indispensability in wartime.
- Two CIA sources say Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's cell was adorned with a sign that read, "The Proud Murderer of 3,000 Americans."
- One former CIA officer told Mayer, "There was absolutely nothing done to K.S.M. that wasn't done to the interrogators themselves," referring to their own interrogation resistance training.
- According to a confidential Red Cross report, "Mohammed claimed that he was shackled and kept naked, except for a pair of goggles and earmuffs. (Some prisoners were kept naked for as long as forty days.)" Degrading? Certainly, as befits such a mass murder. But mild compared with, say, Mohammed's admitted decapitation of journalist Daniel Pearl.
- The same Red Cross report noted that "meals were delivered sporadically, to ensure that the prisoners remained temporally disoriented. The food was largely tasteless, and barely enough to live on. Mohammed, who upon his capture in Rawalpindi was photographed looking flabby and unkempt, was now described as being slim." An intensified version of Weight Watchers may be unpleasant, but it does not constitute torture.
- After "waterboarding" treatment — also, apparently, something CIA special forces are subjected to in their training — Mohammed, the former CIA officer told Mayer, "didn't resist. He sang right away. He cracked real quick." Clearly, the CIA's tough interrogation was an effective tool.
- Robert Grenier, a former CIA counterterrorism center chief, told Mayer, "I can respect people who oppose aggressive interrogations, but they should admit that their principles may be putting American lives at risk."
Congress is putting American lives at risk not only by trying to prevent the tough interrogation of terrorists, but in its insistence that the Protect America Act passed last week, authorizing terrorist surveillance, should expire six months from now. We can all be sure that Iran and al-Qaida's jihad against America won't be expiring when that legislation sunsets early next year.
- James Woolsey, who served as CIA director under President Clinton and has been bitingly critical of Clinton's policies against terrorism, told NewsMax that terrorists might be able to get a hold of cesium or strontium and detonate a radioactive dirty bomb, or obtain anthrax for a biological attack. "I think the threat of a serious attack in the next few months is very real," Woolsey said.
- Interviewed by ABC News, Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff recounted the split-second directives that were required to foil last year's London airline plot, in which as many as eight airliners could have been downed with hidden liquid explosives, slaughtering thousands. "You had to change literally thousands of people's behavior in the course of about 12 hours," Chertoff said. "So that everybody would understand what needed to happen at 6 a.m. the following day." Imagine if having to get warrants from judges were added to that process.
Trying to dismantle some of our most effective and innovative defenses against terrorists for political advantage comes close to violating that oath.