Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sully- who wrote (77558)	2/15/2010 6:41:47 PM
From: Sully-	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 90947

Washington Post Confirms We Are No Longer Capturing & Interrogating High-Value Terrorists By: Marc Thiessen The Corner The Washington Post reported yesterday morning front-page, above the fold that the Obama administration has stopped capturing and interrogating senior al-Qaeda leaders, killing them instead with Predator drones. This confirms my story last week in Foreign Policy, "Dead Men Tell No Tales," explaining the danger of this approach. The Post tells the story of a senior leader of al-Qaeda in East Africa named Saleh Ali Nabhan who was located last September. The White House was given the choice of either killing him or capturing him alive for interrogation. The military wanted to take him alive. But the White House chose instead to take him out. A senior military officer is quoted as saying: "We wanted to take a prisoner. . . . It was not a decision that we made." The Post adds: "The opportunity to interrogate one of the most wanted U.S. terrorism targets was gone forever." And the paper quotes a senior miltiary officer explaining why the opportunity to interrogate this senior al-Qaeda leader for intelligence was sacrificed: We "don't have a detention policy or a set of facilities" to hold high-value terrorists. A former intelligence official briefed on current operations tells the Post that killing, instead of capturing terrorists is far from ideal, saying "now there's an even greater proclivity for doing it that way. . . . We need to have the capability to snatch when the situation calls for it." He is right. As I explain in Courting Disaster, the interrogation of high-value terrorists is not just one additional source of intelligence -- it is often the only tool we have to connect the dots and stop a terrorist attack. In the book, former CIA director Mike Hayden explains that intelligence is having to put together a puzzle without being allowed to see the picture on the cover of the box. You can't see how the pieces are supposed to fit together. There are lots of ways to get more pieces. But the only way to find out how they fit together is to capture the senior leaders who know what the picture on the cover of the box looks like. Today, we no longer have the ability to see the picture on the cover of the box -- a fact that is confirmed by this morning's story in the Washington Post. And that is putting our country at grave risk. corner.nationalreview.com

To: Sully- who wrote (77558)	2/15/2010 7:13:08 PM
From: Sully-	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 90947

Liz Cheney: Biden, Obama Administration Ignoring Al Qaeda Pursuit of WMD FOXNews.com Liz Cheney, Vice President Dick Cheney's daughter and a former Bush administration official, on Monday accused Vice President Biden of downplaying the threat from Al Qaeda and suggested the Obama administration isn't doing everything in its power to stop terror. Cheney came to her father's defense Monday after Biden said the former vice president is "misinformed or is misinforming" the country about the Obama administration's unnamed War on Terror. Liz Cheney repeated her father's contention -- backed up by a study issued last week by Harvard's Kennedy school of Government -- that Al Qaeda is trying "very hard" to get and use a weapon of mass destruction. "There's very strong concern that still remains that Al Qaeda is working very hard to try to obtain weapons of mass destruction and Al Qaeda armed with any nuclear or biological weapon is clearly one of the gravest threats we face," Liz Cheney said. "The notion that this White House and this administration is minimizing that possibility makes you very concerned, I think has to make us very concerned about whether or not they are doing everything in their power to prevent it," she added. Cheney followed her father, who on Sunday said that Biden's claim that another Sept. 11 attack is unlikely is "dead wrong." "I think the biggest strategic threat the United States faces today is the possibility of another 9/11 with a nuclear weapon or a biological agent of some kind, and I think Al Qaeda is out there even as we meet trying to figure out how to do that," he told ABC's "This Week." In a separate interview that aired Sunday, Biden said that Al Qaeda is on the run because of the efforts of the Obama administration "The president of the United States said in the State of the Union we're at war with Al Qaeda," Biden told NBC's "Meet the Press." "We're pursuing that war with a vigor like it's never been seen. We've eliminated 12 of the top 20 people, we have taken out 100 of their associates, we are making -- we've sent them under ground. They are, in fact, not able to do anything remotely like they were in the past. They are on the run. I don't know where Dick Cheney has been. Look, it's one thing, again, to criticize. It's another thing to sort of re-write history. What is he talking about?" Biden continued. Liz Cheney said it's no surprise that her father or others would question whether the administration is doing it all it can when the country has no detention policy that assigns a designated holding facility for captured Al Qaeda leaders nor does it have an effective interrogation policy. She added that the drone program being used to assassinate leaders is important, but it's also important to capture some senior Al Qaeda leaders in order to interrogate them. "There's simply no way you can say that he president is using every tool at his disposal to fight and win this war without being able to get the intelligence you need actually to defeat Al Qaeda," she said. Biden has a "famously tenuous relationship to reality, frankly," she added. Liz Cheney said her father is speaking up because he is very concerned about the unraveling of Bush administration security policies, particularly the decisions to close Guantanamo Bay and try Khalid Sheik Mohammad and other Sept. 11 suspects in a federal court, and that impact on the War on Terror. You Decide: Is Biden's declaration of no more Sept. 11 attacks similar to saying "mission accomplished"? foxnews.com