I would have to agree with him.
I Am the Democratic Liberal-Progressive's Worst Nightmare.
I am a White, Conservative, Tax-Paying, American Veteran, Gun Owning Biker. I am a Master leather worker. I work hard and long hours with my hands to earn a living.
I believe in God and the freedom of religion, but I don't push it on others. I ride Harley Davidson Motorcycles, and drive American-made cars, and I believe in American products and buy them whenever I can.
I believe the money I make belongs to me and not some liberal governmental functionary, Democratic or Republican, that wants to share it with others who don't work!
I'm in touch with my feelings and I like it that way!
I think owning a gun doesn't make you a killer; it makes you a smart American.
I think being a minority does not make you noble or victimized, and does not entitle you to anything. Get over it.
We don't allow the KKK anymore, so we don't need the NAACP, or the ACLU either.
I believe that if you are selling me a Big Mac or any other item, you should do it in English. I believe there should be no other language option.
I believe everyone has a right to pray to his or her God when and where they want to.
I don't hate the rich. I don't pity the poor.
I know wrestling is fake and I don't waste my time watching or arguing about it.
I've never owned a slave, nor was a slave. I haven't burned any witches or been persecuted by the Turks, and neither have you!
I believe if you don't like the way things are here, go back to where you came from and change your own country!
This is AMERICA ...We like it the way it is and more so the way it was ...so stop trying to change it to look like Russia or China , or other socialist countries!
If you were born here and don't like it, you are free to move to any Socialist country that will have you. (And take Barack Hussein Obama and his group with you.) Massachusetts started the ball rolling. Keep it going.
I believe it is time to really clean house, starting with the White House, the seat of our biggest problems.
I want to know which church is it, exactly, where the Reverend Jesse Jackson preaches, where he gets his money, and why he is always part of the problem and not the solution.
Can I get an AMEN on that one? AMEN...
I also think the cops have the right to pull you over if you're breaking the law, regardless of what color you are, but not just because you happen to ride a bike.
And, no, I don't mind having my face shown on my driver's license.
I think it's good.... And I'm proud that 'God' is written on my money..
I think if you are too stupid to know how a ballot works, I don't want you deciding who should be running the most powerful nation in the world for the next four years.
I dislike those people standing in the intersections trying to sell me stuff or trying to guilt me into making 'donations' to their cause.... Get a job and do your part to support yourself and your family!
I believe that it doesn't take a village to raise a child, it takes two parents....
I believe 'illegal' is illegal no matter what the lawyers think.I I believe the American flag should be the only one allowed in AMERICA ! If this makes me a BAD American, then yes, I'm a BAD American.
If you are a BAD American too, please forward this to everyone you know....
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
Well The Truth Comes Out But Will Media Share It ???
The WikiLeaks Vindication of George W. Bush
Larry Elder
December 9, 2010
The WikiLeaks de facto declassification of privileged material makes it case closed: Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction -- and intended to restart his program once the heat was off.
President George W. Bush, in the 2003 State of the Union address, uttered the infamous "16 words": "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
Former Ambassador Joe Wilson sprang into action and, in an op-ed piece, in effect wrote, "No, the Cheney administration sent me to investigate the allegation -- and I found it without merit."
Put aside that Wilson's CIA-employed wife, not the evil Vice President Dick Cheney -- as Wilson implied -- sent him on the African errand. Put aside that the British still stand by the intelligence on which Bush made the claim. And put aside that the anti-Bush Washington Post, in an editorial, concluded that Wilson had lied about not finding evidence to support the Iraq-in-Africa-for-uranium claim, since he told the CIA the opposite when he reported back from Africa.
Bush claimed that Iraq sought uranium, specifically "yellowcake." What is yellowcake, and why would its presence or attempted acquisition corroborate the nearly unanimous assumption that Saddam possessed WMD?
The Associated Press called yellowcake "the seed material for higher-grade nuclear enrichment" and said that it "also can be enriched for use in reactors and, at higher levels, nuclear weapons using sophisticated equipment."
"Bush and Iraq: Follow the Yellow Cake Road" headlined a euphoric Time magazine July 2003 piece -- written when the Bush administration began backtracking from the Iraq-sought-uranium-from-Africa claim. Time said no yellowcake equals no WMD equals bogus basis for war.
The article led with this ripper: "Is a fib really a fib if the teller is unaware that he is uttering an untruth? That question appears to be the basis of the White House defense, having now admitted a falsehood in President Bush's claim, in his State of the Union address, that Iraq had tried to buy uranium in Africa."
Time hoisted (the now discredited) Joe Wilson on its shoulders as The Man Who Told the Truth to Power: "Just last weekend, the man sent by the CIA to check out the Niger story broke cover and revealed that he had thoroughly debunked the allegation many months before President Bush repeated it." Never mind that the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee concluded that Wilson's report "lent more credibility to the original Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reports on the uranium deal" sought by Iraq in Niger.
Let's recap.
Bush, in building the case for war against Iraq, lied to the nation. He falsely claimed that Iraq was attempting to purchase yellowcake from Africa. Time magazine specifically referred to the yellowcake "lie" in accusing Bush of fabricating the case for war. Therefore, were Iraq to have had yellowcake -- an assertion called a "lie" -- it would have confirmed the presence of WMD, giving credence to Bush's declaration of Iraq as a "grave and gathering threat."
But ... there ... was ... yellowcake. This brings us back to WikiLeaks.
Wired magazine's contributing editor Noah Shachtman -- a nonresident fellow at the liberal Brookings Institution -- researched the 400,000 WikiLeaked documents released in October. Here's what he found:
"By late 2003, even the Bush White House's staunchest defenders were starting to give up on the idea that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. But WikiLeaks' newly-released Iraq war documents reveal that for years afterward, U.S. troops continued to find chemical weapons labs, encounter insurgent specialists in toxins and uncover weapons of mass destruction (emphasis added). ... Chemical weapons, especially, did not vanish from the Iraqi battlefield. Remnants of Saddam's toxic arsenal, largely destroyed after the Gulf War, remained. Jihadists, insurgents and foreign (possibly Iranian) agitators turned to these stockpiles during the Iraq conflict -- and may have brewed up their own deadly agents."
In 2008, our military shipped out of Iraq -- on 37 flights in 3,500 barrels -- what even The Associated Press called "the last major remnant of Saddam Hussein's nuclear program": 550 metric tons of the supposedly nonexistent yellowcake. The New York Sun editorialized: "The uranium issue is not a trivial one, because Iraq, sitting on vast oil reserves, has no peaceful need for nuclear power. ... To leave this nuclear material sitting around the Middle East in the hands of Saddam ... would have been too big a risk."
Now the mainscream media no longer deem yellowcake -- the WMD Bush supposedly lied about -- a WMD. It was, well, old. It was degraded. It was not what we think of when we think of WMD. Really? Square that with what former Democratic National Chairman Howard Dean said in April 2004: "There were no weapons of mass destruction." MSNBC's Rachel Maddow goes even further, insisting, against the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that "Saddam Hussein was not pursuing weapons of mass destruction"!
Bush, hammered by the insidious "Bush Lied, People Died" mantra, endured one of the most vicious smears against any president in history. He is owed an apology.
When Hollywood makes "The Vindication of George W. Bush," maybe Sean Penn can play the lead.
Larry Elder
December 9, 2010
The WikiLeaks de facto declassification of privileged material makes it case closed: Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction -- and intended to restart his program once the heat was off.
President George W. Bush, in the 2003 State of the Union address, uttered the infamous "16 words": "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
Former Ambassador Joe Wilson sprang into action and, in an op-ed piece, in effect wrote, "No, the Cheney administration sent me to investigate the allegation -- and I found it without merit."
Put aside that Wilson's CIA-employed wife, not the evil Vice President Dick Cheney -- as Wilson implied -- sent him on the African errand. Put aside that the British still stand by the intelligence on which Bush made the claim. And put aside that the anti-Bush Washington Post, in an editorial, concluded that Wilson had lied about not finding evidence to support the Iraq-in-Africa-for-uranium claim, since he told the CIA the opposite when he reported back from Africa.
Bush claimed that Iraq sought uranium, specifically "yellowcake." What is yellowcake, and why would its presence or attempted acquisition corroborate the nearly unanimous assumption that Saddam possessed WMD?
The Associated Press called yellowcake "the seed material for higher-grade nuclear enrichment" and said that it "also can be enriched for use in reactors and, at higher levels, nuclear weapons using sophisticated equipment."
"Bush and Iraq: Follow the Yellow Cake Road" headlined a euphoric Time magazine July 2003 piece -- written when the Bush administration began backtracking from the Iraq-sought-uranium-from-Africa claim. Time said no yellowcake equals no WMD equals bogus basis for war.
The article led with this ripper: "Is a fib really a fib if the teller is unaware that he is uttering an untruth? That question appears to be the basis of the White House defense, having now admitted a falsehood in President Bush's claim, in his State of the Union address, that Iraq had tried to buy uranium in Africa."
Time hoisted (the now discredited) Joe Wilson on its shoulders as The Man Who Told the Truth to Power: "Just last weekend, the man sent by the CIA to check out the Niger story broke cover and revealed that he had thoroughly debunked the allegation many months before President Bush repeated it." Never mind that the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee concluded that Wilson's report "lent more credibility to the original Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reports on the uranium deal" sought by Iraq in Niger.
Let's recap.
Bush, in building the case for war against Iraq, lied to the nation. He falsely claimed that Iraq was attempting to purchase yellowcake from Africa. Time magazine specifically referred to the yellowcake "lie" in accusing Bush of fabricating the case for war. Therefore, were Iraq to have had yellowcake -- an assertion called a "lie" -- it would have confirmed the presence of WMD, giving credence to Bush's declaration of Iraq as a "grave and gathering threat."
But ... there ... was ... yellowcake. This brings us back to WikiLeaks.
Wired magazine's contributing editor Noah Shachtman -- a nonresident fellow at the liberal Brookings Institution -- researched the 400,000 WikiLeaked documents released in October. Here's what he found:
"By late 2003, even the Bush White House's staunchest defenders were starting to give up on the idea that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. But WikiLeaks' newly-released Iraq war documents reveal that for years afterward, U.S. troops continued to find chemical weapons labs, encounter insurgent specialists in toxins and uncover weapons of mass destruction (emphasis added). ... Chemical weapons, especially, did not vanish from the Iraqi battlefield. Remnants of Saddam's toxic arsenal, largely destroyed after the Gulf War, remained. Jihadists, insurgents and foreign (possibly Iranian) agitators turned to these stockpiles during the Iraq conflict -- and may have brewed up their own deadly agents."
In 2008, our military shipped out of Iraq -- on 37 flights in 3,500 barrels -- what even The Associated Press called "the last major remnant of Saddam Hussein's nuclear program": 550 metric tons of the supposedly nonexistent yellowcake. The New York Sun editorialized: "The uranium issue is not a trivial one, because Iraq, sitting on vast oil reserves, has no peaceful need for nuclear power. ... To leave this nuclear material sitting around the Middle East in the hands of Saddam ... would have been too big a risk."
Now the mainscream media no longer deem yellowcake -- the WMD Bush supposedly lied about -- a WMD. It was, well, old. It was degraded. It was not what we think of when we think of WMD. Really? Square that with what former Democratic National Chairman Howard Dean said in April 2004: "There were no weapons of mass destruction." MSNBC's Rachel Maddow goes even further, insisting, against the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that "Saddam Hussein was not pursuing weapons of mass destruction"!
Bush, hammered by the insidious "Bush Lied, People Died" mantra, endured one of the most vicious smears against any president in history. He is owed an apology.
When Hollywood makes "The Vindication of George W. Bush," maybe Sean Penn can play the lead.
Monday, December 20, 2010
Is This Really What a Standing Army Is All About
HJJ comments: War and our troops is not about some social standard & feel good rulings. Our troops were not really asked about this issue please read Col. Spencer's comments below... What we have allowed to happen in this country will take us decades to repair. God help us
Commentary: With ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,’ It’s Too Late to Care Now
Posted by Col. Bill Spencer
The steady, incessant drumbeat of the homosexual lobby won’t be silenced by the repeal of the so-called “don’t ask, don’t tell” provision. It seems the drums finally got to the American people — 65 of your senators voted to end the ban this weekend. The homosexual activists’ fight for cultural acceptance of a particular behavior will go on. You’ll need some earplugs because the drums will continue.
Since the advent of “don’t ask, don’t tell” in 1993, no idea or position forwarded by homosexuals has been tied to improved mission readiness and effectiveness — none. The media’s sound bite that there would be a loss of skilled personnel if the policy remained was nothing more than a smoke screen. The political reality is that we have a commander in chief who has never served in the military who had promised repeal to a special-interest support group. And Democratic majorities in the House and Senate could make it happen, regardless of the fact that the 111th Congress has fewer veterans than any Congress in history.
What can change this now? Sadly, I think only a future war will have us rethink how we best organize our troops to fight and win wars. At that time, cooler heads will prevail, and we’ll determine who best should be fielded to defend us. The social curiosity that will have been the openly gay service experience will vanish as the nation — at great cost — rediscovers the real purpose for having a military.
But for today, I fear that our military members in the field are left with these thoughts: “Does my country not think of me that much? Does the country think it should hobble its forces in the field with these distractions during time of war? Does the country require us to deal with this, as well? Am I indeed a patriot without a country? What moral madness awaits us next? When bullets are flying at me, and everyone back home is apparently just thinking about themselves and their own private behaviors, it’s too much to ask of me to sacrifice my life.”
I ask you, fellow citizen, after Saturday’s vote, would you give your life for our Senate? Would you give your life for our president? Or, would you go home to your family? Sadly, you know the answers already. If you never made a phone call or never entered the debate on this issue, it’s too late to care now. You have just received a 2010 Christmas present from the United States Senate. Inside, please find some really good earplugs, for the drumbeat will continue. Whether you choose to put them in your ears is entirely up to you.
Col. Bill Spencer (Ret.) served in the U.S. Air Force for nearly 29 years. He is now a family policy council representative at Focus on the Family.
Commentary: With ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,’ It’s Too Late to Care Now
Posted by Col. Bill Spencer
The steady, incessant drumbeat of the homosexual lobby won’t be silenced by the repeal of the so-called “don’t ask, don’t tell” provision. It seems the drums finally got to the American people — 65 of your senators voted to end the ban this weekend. The homosexual activists’ fight for cultural acceptance of a particular behavior will go on. You’ll need some earplugs because the drums will continue.
Since the advent of “don’t ask, don’t tell” in 1993, no idea or position forwarded by homosexuals has been tied to improved mission readiness and effectiveness — none. The media’s sound bite that there would be a loss of skilled personnel if the policy remained was nothing more than a smoke screen. The political reality is that we have a commander in chief who has never served in the military who had promised repeal to a special-interest support group. And Democratic majorities in the House and Senate could make it happen, regardless of the fact that the 111th Congress has fewer veterans than any Congress in history.
What can change this now? Sadly, I think only a future war will have us rethink how we best organize our troops to fight and win wars. At that time, cooler heads will prevail, and we’ll determine who best should be fielded to defend us. The social curiosity that will have been the openly gay service experience will vanish as the nation — at great cost — rediscovers the real purpose for having a military.
But for today, I fear that our military members in the field are left with these thoughts: “Does my country not think of me that much? Does the country think it should hobble its forces in the field with these distractions during time of war? Does the country require us to deal with this, as well? Am I indeed a patriot without a country? What moral madness awaits us next? When bullets are flying at me, and everyone back home is apparently just thinking about themselves and their own private behaviors, it’s too much to ask of me to sacrifice my life.”
I ask you, fellow citizen, after Saturday’s vote, would you give your life for our Senate? Would you give your life for our president? Or, would you go home to your family? Sadly, you know the answers already. If you never made a phone call or never entered the debate on this issue, it’s too late to care now. You have just received a 2010 Christmas present from the United States Senate. Inside, please find some really good earplugs, for the drumbeat will continue. Whether you choose to put them in your ears is entirely up to you.
Col. Bill Spencer (Ret.) served in the U.S. Air Force for nearly 29 years. He is now a family policy council representative at Focus on the Family.
Friday, December 17, 2010
Courting Disaster Mr President
Courting Disaster
As President George W. Bush's top speechwriter, Marc Thiessen was provided unique access to the CIA program used in interrogating top Al Qaeda terrorists, including the mastermind of the 9/11 attack, Khalid Sheikh Mohammad (KSM).
Now, his riveting new book, Courting Disaster, How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack. (Regnery), has been published.
Here is an excerpt from Courting Disaster: Just before dawn on March 1, 2003, two dozen heavily armed Pakistani tactical assault forces move in and surround a safe house in Rawalpindi. A few hours earlier they had received a text message from an informant inside the house. It read: "I am with KSM."
Bursting in, they find the disheveled mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, in his bedroom. He is taken into custody. In the safe house they find a treasure trove of computers, documents, cell phones and other valuable "pocket litter". Once in custody, KSM is defiant. He refuses to answer questions, informing his captors that he will tell them everything when he gets to America and sees his lawyer.
But KSM is not taken to America to see a lawyer. Instead he is taken to a secret CIA "black site" in an undisclosed location. Upon arrival, KSM finds himself in the complete control of Americans. He does not know where he is, how long he will be there, or what his fate will be.
Despite his circumstances, KSM still refuses to talk. He spews contempt at his interrogators, telling them that Americans are weak, lack resilience, and are unable to do what is necessary to prevent the terrorists from succeeding in their goals.
He has trained to resist interrogation. When he is asked for information about future attacks, he tells his questioners scornfully: "Soon you will know." It becomes clear he will not reveal the information using traditional interrogation techniques. So he undergoes a series of "enhanced interrogation techniques" approved for use only on the most high-value detainees.
The techniques include waterboarding. His resistance is described by one senior American official as "superhuman". Eventually, however, the techniques work, and KSM becomes cooperative, for reasons that will be described later in this book. He begins telling his CIA de-briefers about active al Qaeda plots to launch attacks against the United States and other Western targets. He holds classes for CIA officials, using a chalkboard to draw a picture of al Qaeda's operating structure, financing, communications, and logistics.
He identifies al Qaeda travel routes and safe havens, and helps intelligence officers make sense of documents and computer records seized in terrorist raids. He identifies voices in intercepted telephone calls, and helps officials understand the meaning of coded terrorist communications. He provides information that helps our intelligence community capture other high-ranking terrorists. KSM's questioning, and that of other captured terrorists, produces more than 6,000 intelligence reports, which are shared across the intelligence community, as well as with our allies across the world.
In one of these reports, KSM describes in detail the revisions he made to his failed 1994-1995 plan known as the "Bojinka plot" to blow up a dozen airplanes carrying some 4,000 passengers over the Pacific Ocean.
Years later, an observant CIA officer notices that the activities of a cell being followed by British authorities appear to match KSM's description of his plans for a Bojinka-style attack. In an operation that involves unprecedented intelligence cooperation between our countries, British officials proceed to unravel the plot.
On the night of Aug. 9, 2006 they launch a series of raids in a northeast London suburb that lead to the arrest of two dozen al Qaeda terrorist suspects. They find a USB thumb-drive in the pocket of one of the men with security details for Heathrow airport, and information on seven trans-Atlantic flights that were scheduled to take off within hours of each other:
United Airlines Flight 931 to San Francisco departing at 2:15 p.m.
Air Canada Flight 849 to Toronto departing at 3:00 p.m.
Air Canada Flight 865 to Montreal departing at 3:15 p.m.
United Airlines Flight 959 to Chicago departing at 3:40 p.m.
United Airlines Flight 925 to Washington departing at 4:20 p.m.
American Airlines Flight 131 to New York departing at 4:35 p.m.
American Airlines Flight 91 to Chicago departing at 4:50 p.m.
They seize bomb-making equipment and hydrogen peroxide to make liquid explosives. And they find the chilling martyrdom videos the suicide bombers had prepared. Today, if you asked an average person on the street what they know about the 2006 airlines plot, most would not be able to tell you much.
Few Americans are aware of the fact that al Qaeda had planned to mark the fifth anniversary of 9/11 with an attack of similar scope and magnitude, and still fewer realize that the terrorists' true intentions in this plot were uncovered thanks to critical information obtained through the interrogation of the man who conceived it: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
This is only one of the many attacks stopped with the help of the CIA interrogation program established by the Bush Administration in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Editor's Note: For other foiled terrorist plots, see page 9 of Courting Disaster.
In addition to helping break up these specific terrorist cells and plots, CIA questioning provided our intelligence community with an unparalleled body of information about al Qaeda. Until the program was temporarily suspended in 2006, intelligence officials say, well over half of the information our government had about al Qaeda, how it operates, how it moves money, how it communicates, how it recruits operatives, how it picks targets, how it plans and carries out attacks, came from the interrogation of terrorists in CIA custody.
Former CIA Director George Tenet has declared: "I know that this program has saved lives. I know we've disrupted plots. I know this program alone is worth more than what the FBI, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Agency put together have been able to tell us."
Former CIA Director Gen. Mike Hayden, USAF Ret. has said: "The facts of the case are that the use of these techniques against these terrorists made us safer. It really did work."
Even Barack Obama's Director of National Intelligence, Dennis Blair, has acknowledged: "High-value information came from interrogations in which those methods were used and provided a deeper understanding of the al Qaeda organization that was attacking this country."
Leon Panetta, Obama's CIA Director, has said: "Important information was gathered from these detainees. It provided information that was acted upon."
And John Brennan, Obama's Homeland Security Advisor, when asked in an interview if enhanced-interrogation techniques were necessary to keep America, he replied: "Would the U.S. be handicapped if the CIA was not, in fact, able to carry out these types of detention and debriefing activities? I would say yes."
On Jan. 22, 2009, President Obama issued Executive Order 13491, closing the CIA program and directing that, henceforth, all interrogations by U.S personnel must follow the techniques contained in the Army Field Manual.
The morning of the announcement, Mike Hayden was still in his post as CIA Director. He called White House Counsel Greg Craig and told him bluntly: "You didn't ask, but this is the CIA officially nonconcurring.
The president went ahead anyway, overruling the objections of the agency. A few months later, on April 16, 2009, President Obama ordered the release of four Justice Department memos that described in detail the techniques used to interrogate KSM and other high-value terrorists.
This time, not just Hayden (who was now retired) but five CIA directors -- including Obama's own director, Leon Panetta -- objected.
George Tenet called to urge against the memos' release. So did Porter Goss. So did John Deutch. Hayden says: "You had CIA directors in a continuous unbroken stream to 1995 calling saying, 'Don't do this.'"
In addition to objections from the men who led the agency for a collective 14 years, the President also heard objections from the agency's covert field operatives. A few weeks earlier, Panetta had arranged for the eight top officials of the Clandestine Service to meet with the President. It was highly unusual for these clandestine officers to visit the Oval Office, and they used the opportunity to warn the President that releasing the memos would put agency operatives at risk. The President reportedly listened respectfully and then ignored their advice!
With these actions, Barack Obama arguably did more damage to America's national security in his first 100 days of office than any President in American history.
Grant Bornzin
As President George W. Bush's top speechwriter, Marc Thiessen was provided unique access to the CIA program used in interrogating top Al Qaeda terrorists, including the mastermind of the 9/11 attack, Khalid Sheikh Mohammad (KSM).
Now, his riveting new book, Courting Disaster, How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack. (Regnery), has been published.
Here is an excerpt from Courting Disaster: Just before dawn on March 1, 2003, two dozen heavily armed Pakistani tactical assault forces move in and surround a safe house in Rawalpindi. A few hours earlier they had received a text message from an informant inside the house. It read: "I am with KSM."
Bursting in, they find the disheveled mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, in his bedroom. He is taken into custody. In the safe house they find a treasure trove of computers, documents, cell phones and other valuable "pocket litter". Once in custody, KSM is defiant. He refuses to answer questions, informing his captors that he will tell them everything when he gets to America and sees his lawyer.
But KSM is not taken to America to see a lawyer. Instead he is taken to a secret CIA "black site" in an undisclosed location. Upon arrival, KSM finds himself in the complete control of Americans. He does not know where he is, how long he will be there, or what his fate will be.
Despite his circumstances, KSM still refuses to talk. He spews contempt at his interrogators, telling them that Americans are weak, lack resilience, and are unable to do what is necessary to prevent the terrorists from succeeding in their goals.
He has trained to resist interrogation. When he is asked for information about future attacks, he tells his questioners scornfully: "Soon you will know." It becomes clear he will not reveal the information using traditional interrogation techniques. So he undergoes a series of "enhanced interrogation techniques" approved for use only on the most high-value detainees.
The techniques include waterboarding. His resistance is described by one senior American official as "superhuman". Eventually, however, the techniques work, and KSM becomes cooperative, for reasons that will be described later in this book. He begins telling his CIA de-briefers about active al Qaeda plots to launch attacks against the United States and other Western targets. He holds classes for CIA officials, using a chalkboard to draw a picture of al Qaeda's operating structure, financing, communications, and logistics.
He identifies al Qaeda travel routes and safe havens, and helps intelligence officers make sense of documents and computer records seized in terrorist raids. He identifies voices in intercepted telephone calls, and helps officials understand the meaning of coded terrorist communications. He provides information that helps our intelligence community capture other high-ranking terrorists. KSM's questioning, and that of other captured terrorists, produces more than 6,000 intelligence reports, which are shared across the intelligence community, as well as with our allies across the world.
In one of these reports, KSM describes in detail the revisions he made to his failed 1994-1995 plan known as the "Bojinka plot" to blow up a dozen airplanes carrying some 4,000 passengers over the Pacific Ocean.
Years later, an observant CIA officer notices that the activities of a cell being followed by British authorities appear to match KSM's description of his plans for a Bojinka-style attack. In an operation that involves unprecedented intelligence cooperation between our countries, British officials proceed to unravel the plot.
On the night of Aug. 9, 2006 they launch a series of raids in a northeast London suburb that lead to the arrest of two dozen al Qaeda terrorist suspects. They find a USB thumb-drive in the pocket of one of the men with security details for Heathrow airport, and information on seven trans-Atlantic flights that were scheduled to take off within hours of each other:
United Airlines Flight 931 to San Francisco departing at 2:15 p.m.
Air Canada Flight 849 to Toronto departing at 3:00 p.m.
Air Canada Flight 865 to Montreal departing at 3:15 p.m.
United Airlines Flight 959 to Chicago departing at 3:40 p.m.
United Airlines Flight 925 to Washington departing at 4:20 p.m.
American Airlines Flight 131 to New York departing at 4:35 p.m.
American Airlines Flight 91 to Chicago departing at 4:50 p.m.
They seize bomb-making equipment and hydrogen peroxide to make liquid explosives. And they find the chilling martyrdom videos the suicide bombers had prepared. Today, if you asked an average person on the street what they know about the 2006 airlines plot, most would not be able to tell you much.
Few Americans are aware of the fact that al Qaeda had planned to mark the fifth anniversary of 9/11 with an attack of similar scope and magnitude, and still fewer realize that the terrorists' true intentions in this plot were uncovered thanks to critical information obtained through the interrogation of the man who conceived it: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
This is only one of the many attacks stopped with the help of the CIA interrogation program established by the Bush Administration in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Editor's Note: For other foiled terrorist plots, see page 9 of Courting Disaster.
In addition to helping break up these specific terrorist cells and plots, CIA questioning provided our intelligence community with an unparalleled body of information about al Qaeda. Until the program was temporarily suspended in 2006, intelligence officials say, well over half of the information our government had about al Qaeda, how it operates, how it moves money, how it communicates, how it recruits operatives, how it picks targets, how it plans and carries out attacks, came from the interrogation of terrorists in CIA custody.
Former CIA Director George Tenet has declared: "I know that this program has saved lives. I know we've disrupted plots. I know this program alone is worth more than what the FBI, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Agency put together have been able to tell us."
Former CIA Director Gen. Mike Hayden, USAF Ret. has said: "The facts of the case are that the use of these techniques against these terrorists made us safer. It really did work."
Even Barack Obama's Director of National Intelligence, Dennis Blair, has acknowledged: "High-value information came from interrogations in which those methods were used and provided a deeper understanding of the al Qaeda organization that was attacking this country."
Leon Panetta, Obama's CIA Director, has said: "Important information was gathered from these detainees. It provided information that was acted upon."
And John Brennan, Obama's Homeland Security Advisor, when asked in an interview if enhanced-interrogation techniques were necessary to keep America, he replied: "Would the U.S. be handicapped if the CIA was not, in fact, able to carry out these types of detention and debriefing activities? I would say yes."
On Jan. 22, 2009, President Obama issued Executive Order 13491, closing the CIA program and directing that, henceforth, all interrogations by U.S personnel must follow the techniques contained in the Army Field Manual.
The morning of the announcement, Mike Hayden was still in his post as CIA Director. He called White House Counsel Greg Craig and told him bluntly: "You didn't ask, but this is the CIA officially nonconcurring.
The president went ahead anyway, overruling the objections of the agency. A few months later, on April 16, 2009, President Obama ordered the release of four Justice Department memos that described in detail the techniques used to interrogate KSM and other high-value terrorists.
This time, not just Hayden (who was now retired) but five CIA directors -- including Obama's own director, Leon Panetta -- objected.
George Tenet called to urge against the memos' release. So did Porter Goss. So did John Deutch. Hayden says: "You had CIA directors in a continuous unbroken stream to 1995 calling saying, 'Don't do this.'"
In addition to objections from the men who led the agency for a collective 14 years, the President also heard objections from the agency's covert field operatives. A few weeks earlier, Panetta had arranged for the eight top officials of the Clandestine Service to meet with the President. It was highly unusual for these clandestine officers to visit the Oval Office, and they used the opportunity to warn the President that releasing the memos would put agency operatives at risk. The President reportedly listened respectfully and then ignored their advice!
With these actions, Barack Obama arguably did more damage to America's national security in his first 100 days of office than any President in American history.
Grant Bornzin
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