Day by day, week in week out, 'Oprah' slips further down my ratings. I was prepared to give him a fair crack of the whip, indeed, I mentioned on this blog, my hope that his spiel during the campaign was just rhetoric for the faithful, and that once in office he would revert to some intelligent real-politik. Fat chance!
Marc Thiessen, a former high-ranking 'Bushie', has studied the CIA memos concerned with interrogation techniques which were released by 'Oprah' a few days ago. He reports in the 'WaPo' that the administration even failed to get their censoring quite right. Thus, whilst they struck out reams of stuff specifying the positive intelligence results obtained, lest the American voter realised how effective the techniques were, they missed some of it:
"Before the CIA used enhanced techniques . . . KSM [Khalid Sheik Mohammed] resisted giving any answers to questions about future attacks, simply noting, 'Soon you will find out.' " Once the techniques were applied, "interrogations have led to specific, actionable intelligence, as well as a general increase in the amount of intelligence regarding al Qaeda and its affiliates."
Thiessen continues:
Specifically, interrogation with enhanced techniques "led to the discovery of a KSM plot, the 'Second Wave,' 'to use East Asian operatives to crash a hijacked airliner into' a building in Los Angeles." KSM later acknowledged before a military commission at Guantanamo Bay that the target was the Library Tower, the tallest building on the West Coast. The memo explains that "information obtained from KSM also led to the capture of Riduan bin Isomuddin, better known as Hambali, and the discovery of the Guraba Cell, a 17-member Jemmah Islamiyah cell tasked with executing the 'Second Wave.' " In other words, without enhanced interrogations, there could be a hole in the ground in Los Angeles to match the one in New York. Can you imagine the howls of outrage and the calls for his impeachment from the Dems if Los Angeles had been hit on George Bush's watch - after 9/11? 'Oprah's' action in stopping these techniques and releasing secret intelligence reports into the public arena amounts to a dereliction of duty. The man is not fit for office. Hat tip to James Forsyth at The Coffee House.
Comments