Posted on 10/24/2006 9:10:47 PM PDT by sruleoflaw
Hi,
Here's an op-ed I've written with some help from others. Most House Democrats opposed the Bush policy of aggressive interrogations, which have led to breaking up terrorist plots, capturing terrorists and SAVING AMERICAN LIVES. Please use this information in letters to the editor and please forward it to others. This is another story the old media won't report.
sruleoflaw
Tough tactics produce leads
Steve Wampler/For the Tracy Press Tuesday, 24 October 2006 Democrats should ask themselves why they're against tough interrogation tactics when the alternative could cost American lives.
As President Bush has led America’s fight against Islamic terrorism for the past five years, many congressional Democrats have fought him at almost every turn.
They have obstructed or criticized nearly every tool that Bush has employed to keep the United States safe from any terrorist attacks since 2,973 Americans were brutally murdered Sept. 11, 2001.
Not content to oppose Bush’s policies in good faith or to offer any solutions of their own, his political opponents have belittled and personally attacked him. Sen. Hillary Clinton compares Bush to Alfred E. Neuman, Sen. Harry Reid calls him a “loser” and a “liar,” Rep. Nancy Pelosi hints that he’s mentally unstable and Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean suggests that Bush may have known of the 9/11 attacks in advance.
It’s worth looking at only one of Bush’s policies, aggressive interrogations of terrorists, to see how this policy has stopped terrorist attacks, led to the capture of terrorists and saved American lives.
On Sept. 27, the House passed, with 160 Democrats in opposition, legislation to detain, aggressively question and bring terrorists to justice. Democrats tried hard to stop this legislation because they wanted to extend a constitutional right of Americans — habeas corpus — to alien terrorists. Pelosi claimed America needs to extend the “golden rule” to terrorists who live to kill us.
In the past five years, information gleaned from aggressive questioning of terrorists has allowed intelligence officials to stop eight attacks, two of them planned for within the United States, according to The Associated Press.
About 100 detainees have provided information that has assisted intelligence officers in identifying 86 individuals picked by al-Qaida for terrorist strikes against the West. So far, about half of these terrorists have been captured.
Aggressive questioning has allowed U.S. intelligence officers to peel off successive layers of al-Qaida terrorists almost like an onion.
In March 2002, al-Qaida’s one-time operations chief, Abu Zubaydah, was captured in Pakistan. Zubaydah had supervised Afghanistan’s “Khaldan group” of guesthouses and terror-training camps between 1995 and 2000.
Zubaydah reportedly kept his lips sealed at first, but he started talking once his interrogators placed him in a cold room and piped in the music of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Later, Zubaydah identified Ramzi bin al-Shibh, one of the key organizers of the 9/11 attacks, Omar al Farq, Rahim al-Nashiri and other terrorists.
At the time of his arrest in Karachi, Pakistan, in September 2002, bin al-Shibh had already recruited four terrorists for an al-Qaida plan to hijack passenger airplanes and slam them into Heathrow Airport in London.
With other detailed information from Zubaydah providing assistance, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, also known as KSM and the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, was eventually captured.
KSM reportedly refused to talk to his questioners until they employed waterboarding, a technique in which he was placed under water until he feared drowning, then returned to safety. KSM broke ... and eventually he “unlocked a virtual Swiss vault of priceless information on terrorists and their designs,” reported one writer.
In a Sept. 6 speech, Bush stated that KSM told interrogators about a plot to detonate bombs in American skyscrapers. The terrorist instructed his colleagues, Bush said, “to ensure that the explosives went off high enough to prevent the people trapped above from escaping out the windows.” In other words, KSM wanted more Americans to face the choice that many had confronted five years earlier — to decide between death in a tall burning building or death from jumping to the ground.
KSM also “gave up” a number of terrorists — Majid Khan, Hambali, Rusman “Gun Gun” Guanawan, Yazid Suffat, Jose Padilla and Lyman Faris.
Hambali, who was captured in 2003, was the orchestrator of the first Bali nightclub bombing on Oct. 12, 2002, that killed 202 people, including 89 Australians and seven Americans. Suffat was part of al-Qaida’s anthrax program.
Padilla, dubbed the “dirty bomber,” was instructed by KSM to find materials for a radiological device and to find apartment buildings that could be exploded by filling rental units with natural gas and igniting them with timers.
Faris is serving a 20-year sentence. This terrorist-to-be sought to sabotage a train in Washington, D.C., checked the Brooklyn Bridge for weak points and was seeking acetylene torches to break the span’s suspension cables and plunge the bridge into New York’s East River.
“By providing everything from initial leads to photo identification to precise locations of where terrorists were hiding, this program has helped us to take potential mass murders off the streets before they were able to kill,” Bush said.
As Bush has sought to protect Americans, many Democrats, including 11th Congressional District candidate Jerry McNerney, have fought him on aggressive interrogations that have protected the American people.
Democrats, such as McNerney, claim that placing terrorists in cold rooms, making them listen to the music of the Red Hot Chili Peppers or waterboarding them is torture. If they truly want to understand “torture,” maybe they should take another look at news videos from Sept. 11, 2001, when people leaped from the World Trade Center’s upper stories to avoid burning to death.
Aggressive interrogation techniques have already potentially saved the lives of dozens or more Americans.
Here’s a question McNerney, Pelosi and Reid need to face: Why are the lives of Americans less important than tough or even harsh treatment of barbaric terrorists whose sole mission in life is to murder us It’s not a question of these people’s patriotism; it is a question of their judgment.
• Steve Wampler, a Tracy resident, is a former radio talk show host. He holds a master’s degree in political science from the University of Kent in Canterbury, England.
This is a bump
I'll see your bump and raise you a ping...
Tough interrogations stopped a west coast 9-11.
Nuff said.
and
L
Seeing your ping Jinx and calling with Patriots PING!!!
bump for later
It’s not a question of these people’s patriotism; it is a question of their judgment.
Why can't it be both?
Don't tell teh liberals. They think anythigntougher than "Please tell us the information, oh great respected caliph" is torture.
Turlit Dunkin' uses less water...;0)
ping
That would certainly break me.
Obviously the left doesn't want us to stop the terrorist attacks. They want them to happen so that they can blame them on Bush's war in Iraq.
PLEASE BUMP THIS ARTICLE -- even though I've written it. It clearly shows how only one of the Bush anti-terrorism tools -- aggressive interrogations -- has helped to protect America, while the Dems seek to undermine the war on terror.
Please send the article to people on your e-mail lists -- and use the material for letters to the editor.
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