WASHINGTON – President Obama’s national intelligence director told colleagues in a private memo last week that the harsh interrogation techniques banned by the White House did produce significant information that helped the nation in its struggle with terrorists.
“High value information came from interrogations in which those methods were used and provided a deeper understanding of the al Qa’ida organization that was attacking this country,” Adm. Dennis C. Blair, the intelligence director, wrote in a memo to his staff last Thursday.
Hmmm, the same thing Dick Cheney said over the weekend and the White House castigated him for it. Of the same information was actually in the memos if anyone in the media had actually bothered to read them.
It also might have helped if the memo that Admiral Blair had released to the media last week had contained that information but it was "inadvertently" (Ha!) left out:
Admiral Blair’s assessment that the interrogation methods did produce important information was deleted from a condensed version of his memo released to the media last Thursday. Also deleted was a line in which he empathized with his predecessors who originally approved some of the harsh tactics after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
...
A spokeswoman for Admiral Blair said the lines were cut in the normal editing process of shortening an internal memo into a media statement emphasizing his concern that the public understand the context of the decisions made in the past and the fact that they followed legal orders.
It doesn't really matter I guess, the administration got what they wanted four days of attacks on the Bush administration and now President Obama can safely signal an intent to prosecute people who's political policies he disagrees with.
politics, war, war on terror
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