Obama Says "Belief in Transparency" More Important Than American Lives

In releasing CIA interrogation techniques, is President Obama is telling us that his keeping of the campaign promise of unprecedented levels of openness in Government is more important than the lives of American citizens?

“He thought very long and hard about it, consulted widely, because there were two principles at stake,” White House senior adviser David Axelrod said . “One is … the sanctity of covert operations … and the impact on national security, on the one hand. And the other was the law and his belief in transparency.”

Homeland Security queen Janet Napolitano won't answer questions about a pamphlet DHS issued, but the administration will tell terrorists around the world about our interrogation techniques. Seems a bit inconsistent to me.

According to one "former top official" in the Bush administration said of the release:

“It's damaging because these are techniques that work, and by Obama's action today, we are telling the terrorists what they are,” the official said. “… Publicizing the techniques does grave damage to our national security by ensuring they can never be used again — even in a ticking-time- bomb scenario where thousands or even millions of American lives are at stake."

Well, we need not worry that exposing these techniques will prevent the U.S. from using them again, Obama wasn't going to use these "extreme interrogation" techniques anyway

Here again, Obama puts the interests of the terrorists and the opinion of the world over the lives of American citizens, stopping methods that appear to have worked.

It says the interrogations later extracted details of a plot called the "second wave" to use East Asian operatives to crash a hijacked airliner into a building in Los Angeles.

Terror plots that were disrupted, the memos say, include the alleged effort by Jose Padilla to detonate a "dirty bomb" spreading nuclear radiation.

What are these extreme measures that have saved American lives? If you are squeamish, be prepared:

• Slapping prisoners on the face or abdomen was allowed. Ooooh! Say it ain't so. My wife has tortured me so many times.
• Standing naked or wearing a diaper. Oh no! I torture my kids!
• Sleep deprivation. Well, my kids got me back.
• Clothes and food could be used as rewards for cooperation. Not food! Say it ain't so!
• Prisoners were put into one of three in "stress positions," such as sitting on the floor with legs out straight and arms raised in the air to cause discomfort. Sounds like the aerobics classes I used to take.
• Placing terrorists in a cramped confinement box and fill it box with caterpillars (that tactic ultimately was not used). Egad. Not an icky caterpillar! The horror! I placed a worm in my 3-year-old's hand, will Obama come after me too?
• Dousing the terrorist with water from a pitcher. Oh, but it was soooo cold!
  

All practices, ABC's Charlie Gibson tell us, "stay just within what the Administration says the law might allow." Which is journalism-speak for LEGAL! After September 11, the CIA asked for legal authority to use these methods, which the Justice Department authorized. Again in 2005, the Justice Department ruled them legal. LEGAL.

But, it is illegal, puffs the ACLU. I think I would take the word of the Justice Department in this matter, over that of this criminal-loving enterprise.

Obama took this opportunity to once again insult our country before the world, calling the use of these legal interrogations to stop killings, "a dark and painful chapter." Barack, September 11, 2001 was dark and painful, not spraying Khalid Sheihk Mohammed with a hose.

Obama would rather see dead Americans than make the terrorists wet.

Do you feel safer now?

Obama: Only Two Days to Make the US Less Safe

It took President Barack Obama a mere two days to make the United States less safe than we were on Tuesday.

With two executive orders, Obama approved the closing of the prison at Guantanamo Bay, and all such facilities throughout the world, despite the fact that he has no idea of what to do with the terrorists detained there. He then announced that the U.S. will no longer torture terrorist subjects.

The speculation is that some terrorists will be released to "countries that want them." If no other country wants them, do we get them by default?

Others will be tried in "modified military commissions." Whatever that is (we can say that quite often regarding Obama's plans).

The rest of the detainees, those who can't be released or tried, will face a "national security court," again yet to be defined.

A correspondent for McClatchy Newspapers unwittingly gave the most essential reason why these terrorists cannot be tried in a non-military court:

The detainees had access only to the unclassified evidence against them, and they had no way to challenge it. Military officials told them nothing of other evidence that might be responsible for their detention.

If these detainees are tried in a civilian court, they will have to be provided classified intelligence and military information, or they will walk. And, of course, the classified information will be revealed in court or otherwise leaked to the press. That will do untold damage to the war on terror.

Reports indicate that many Guantanamo detainees who have been released have indeed returned to the war against us.

AP reported today on an alleged statement from a Yemeni group known as "al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula," who claim "that group's No. 2 is a Saudi national who is a former Guantanamo detainee."

This, apparently, is nothing new.

The Washington Post reported in 2004 that one of the repatriated Guantanamo prisoners is still at large after taking leadership of a militant faction in Pakistan and aligning himself with al Qaeda, Pakistani officials said.

Meanwhile, Obama announced to the press -- and our enemies throughout the world -- that the U.S. can only use interrogation methods outlined in the Army Field Manual. This inexplicable pronouncement tells our enemies that U.S. soldiers and intelligence officials cannot use any extreme methods of interrogation, even to elicit information that could save American lives. How many terrorist captured in the future will talk, knowing that their interviewers are limited in what they can do to them.

In two quick strokes of a pen, Obama has made it easier for terrorists to do their job: killing us; and he made it harder for the military to do their job: protecting us from the people who want to kill us.

Obama: Change that Could Kill Us.