For which act I give him credit for thinking clearly on this tricky matter:
Obama preserves renditions as counter-terrorism tool
The role of the CIA’s controversial prisoner-transfer program may expand, intelligence experts say.
The CIA’s secret prisons are being shuttered. Harsh interrogation techniques are off-limits. And Guantanamo Bay will eventually go back to being a wind-swept naval base on the southeastern corner of Cuba.
But even while dismantling these programs, President Obama left intact an equally controversial counter-terrorism tool.
Under executive orders issued by Obama recently, the CIA still has authority to carry out what are known as renditions, secret abductions and transfers of prisoners to countries that cooperate with the United States.
Current and former U.S. intelligence officials said that the rendition program might be poised to play an expanded role going forward because it was the main remaining mechanism — aside from Predator missile strikes — for taking suspected terrorists off the street.
As I’ve said before, I don’t think that Obama will close Gitmo, at least not before January of 2013…when he’s either safely re-elected or equally safely defeated for re-election, and thus a released Gitmo terrorist no longer poses a political threat to Obama and his Democrats (hey, they are Democrats – and that means that everything takes a back seat to political power). After all is said and done, unless Obama proves to be the biggest fool in history (which I don’t think he is) he’ll end up retaining most, if not all, President Bush’s anti-terrorism policies…even if some of them are disguised by new terminology and/or are revived under different guise shortly after being “ended” by Obama.
While the left was shrieking in complete absurdity about threats to American liberty and violations of human rights under President Bush, the fact remains that no liberties were threatened and no one’s rights were violated. All we did, under President Bush, was work out the best means available for dealing with terrorists once captured – the alternatives to doing what Bush did were to either shoot them out of hand, or turn them loose, neither action being in our best interests. It really is a difficult situation – we’re dealing with men who are very wicked and who’s home countries often don’t want them back, except perhaps to kill them.
President Obama, to his shame, joined in with the leftwing slanders about what we were doing – but now that he’s President he’s probably having his eyes opened to just what sort of people we’re dealing with and just how narrow our margin of error is when dealing with people who believe that slaughtering innocent people is a good thing.
And now, lefties, where is your outrage? Of was there ever really anything to it outside of a hatred of all things Bush?
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