Has Obama destroyed our intelligence?

Obama and the rest of his naive,politically correct minions put us all at unnecessary risk! Infuriating!!

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, in his riveting new book - Courting
Disaster, How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting
the Next Attack - Thiessen reveals how, as the result of waterboarding
and other enhanced interrogation techniques that were used on a very
selective basis, the CIA obtained a huge quantity of information. The
information obtained Thiessen explains, prevented numerous terrorist
assaults on the U.S. and catastrophic damage to America and its allies.
In dismantling this program, shutting down the strategic interrogation
center at Guantanamo and cloaking KSM and fellow terrorists with the
constitutional rights of an average U.S. citizen, Barack Obama,
according to the author, is courting another 9/11. 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; and 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 Mike Hayden 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 safe, 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."
And in his first 48 hours in office, President Barack Obama shut
the program down!. 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.