January 19, 2010
Next to health care, the issue that has dominated the debate in the Massachusetts Senate race is terrorism.
Scott Brown, the Republican running ahead in the race for Ted Kennedy's Senate seat today, has campaigned as an unabashed supporter of enhanced interrogation.
Brown - who serves as a JAG lawyer in the Army National Guard - has argued that the Christmas Day bomber should be interrogated as an enemy combatant, not given the right to remain silent. And he has said of waterboarding, "I do not believe it is torture. America does not torture ... we used aggressive, enhanced interrogation techniques."
There is a lesson here for Republicans. If an outspoken supporter of waterboarding can run this strongly in the People's Republic of Massachusetts, imagine how the issue will play in the rest of America.
The fact is President Obama has placed our country in grave danger by dismantling the CIA's program to interrogate senior terrorist leaders like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. By limiting all terrorist interrogations to the techniques in the Army Field Manual, Obama is actually requiring that captured terrorists receive better treatment in the interrogation room than common criminals being questioned at your local police precinct.
Not only has he eliminated lawful interrogation techniques, under his administration the United States is no longer trying to capture the leaders of al Qaeda alive, and bring them in for interrogation so they can tell us their plans for future attacks.
Despite these facts, some in the GOP have been hesitant to speak out about President Obama's elimination of the CIA program, for fear of being branded as supporters of torture. They have nothing to fear. The label is false and it will not stick. As I make clear in my book, Courting Disaster, Scott Brown has it right: The CIA's interrogation of senior al Qaeda terrorists was not torture.
Moreover, these interrogations were responsible for helping the CIA breaking up a number of terrorist attacks - including plots to blow up the U.S. Consulate in Karachi, the U.S. Marine camp in Djibouti, and to fly hijacked airplanes into buildings in London and Los Angeles. This is a strong record to run on - and dismantling the CIA program that foiled these plots is a major vulnerability for Obama and the Democrats.
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