UPDATED: Who’s Politicizing Intelligence Now? Obama’s intelligence chief admits the value of tough interrogations. UPDATE: Hillary: I don’t consider Cheney a reliable source on “torture”
Who’s Politicizing Intelligence Now?.
Admiral Dennis Blair, the top intelligence official in the United States, thanks to his nomination by Barack Obama, believes that the coercive interrogation methods outlawed by his boss produced “high-value information” and gave the U.S. government a “deeper understanding of the al Qaeda organization that was attacking this country.” He included those assessments in a letter distributed inside the intelligence community last Thursday, the same day Obama declassified and released portions of Justice Department memos setting out guidelines for those interrogations.
That letter from Blair served as the basis for a public statement that his office put out that same day. But the DNI’s conclusions about the results of coercive interrogations–in effect, that they worked–were taken out of Blair’s public statement. A spokesman for the DNI told the New York Times that the missing material was cut for reasons of space, though the statement would be posted on DNI’s website, where space doesn’t seem to be an issue.
Curious.
UPDATE: Hillary: I don’t consider Cheney a reliable source on “torture”
Why would she? Cheney claims that enhanced interrogation works when all right-thinking people know that it doesn’t, except of course for Obama’s own intelligence chief. Ed has been all over the Dennis Blair story today but let me add my two cents in calling it a nuclear bombshell in how it incinerates the left’s bad-faith “torture” calculus — or rather, non-calculus. They’re unwilling to concede that there’s any moral choice to be made here because, when push comes to shove, they’re unwilling to say flatly that they’d risk American lives so that Abu Zubaydah doesn’t have to spend time in a box with a caterpillar or whatever. That’s why the Times buried the Blair story today and that’s why Hillary’s lip service about getting everything out in the open, in reply to a question about Cheney claiming that abuses were corrected, is so stunningly disingenuous. The very last thing The One wants is getting everything out in the open about how waterboarding or belly slaps prevented attacks because that means an honest debate on the subject, which in turn leaves him caught between the nutroots and a whole lot of swing voters. The beauty of the Blair story is that, for the very first time, they’ve got someone saying torture works whom they can’t dismiss as “unreliable.” Like I say, nuclear bombshell.
April 22, 2009 - 03:05 PM on April 22nd, 2009
I don’t consider HilLiary a reliable source on anything. To believe anything she says requires “the willing suspension of disbelief”.
April 23, 2009 - 05:21 AM on April 23rd, 2009
This is a very telling soundbite. Unbelievable.
What has this country come to? It’s topsy turvy. It makes no sense and we are being left vulnerable to another attack. What is it going to take to make the american public wake up?
I have some advice for anyone who cares about this issue like I do. Call your local, state and federal officials. Email them, phone them, leave messages and if possible visit their offices and express your concern. Call the Democrat and Republican headquarters and let your voice be heard.
If NObama is successful we will never again be safe in this country – that’s an undisputed fact. Think about it.