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Politics : The Obama - Clinton Disaster
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To: PROLIFE who wrote (11819)4/24/2009 8:02:51 AM
From: pompsander1 Recommendation  Read Replies (1) of 103300
 
Flashback: Bush’s FBI Director Said Torture Didn’t Foil Any Terror Plots
Now that Bush administration officials have launched a major campaign to persuade us that torture “worked,” perhaps it’s worth recalling that George W. Bush’s own FBI director said in an interview last year that he wasn’t aware of a single planned terror attack on America that had been foiled by information obtained through torture.

Robert Mueller, who was appointed by Bush in 2001 and remains FBI director under Obama, delivered that assessment at the end of this December 2008 article in Vanity Fair on torture:

I ask Mueller: So far as he is aware, have any attacks on America been disrupted thanks to intelligence obtained through what the administration still calls “enhanced techniques”?

“I’m really reluctant to answer that,” Mueller says. He pauses, looks at an aide, and then says quietly, declining to elaborate: “I don’t believe that has been the case.”

That stands in direct contrast to Dick Cheney’s recent claim that torture has been “enormously valuable” in terms of “preventing another mass-casualty attack against the United States.”

You’d think that this sort of thing would throw a bit of a wrench into the Bushies’ campaign. But as Charles Kaiser notes, these types of statements haven’t really broken through the media din.

On that score, it’s worth asking why the White House and its allies aren’t pushing back a bit harder on the Bushies’ claims. Yes, this is a debate that the White House would like to avoid. But Cheney and other Bush administration officials have launched a major campaign here that shows no signs whatsoever of abating.

Whatever downsides Cheney’s constant public appearances hold for the GOP, the Bushies seem to be having some success shifting the debate onto the narrow question of whether torture “worked.” Shouldn’t we be seeing more push-back from the White House or its outside allies?

Update: Mueller is not backing off his views.

theplumline.whorunsgov.com
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