No Prosecution for Patriots

While I would certainly argue that President Obama has championed and proposed terrible pieces of legislation such as the stimulus bill, and supports liberal fantasies such as a radical environmentalist agenda and single payer health care, he has made the right call with regards to the proposed prosecution of CIA officials.
The President and Attorney General Eric Holder who has called us ?a nation of cowards,? have decided not to prosecute CIA officials who used harsh interrogation techniques during the post 9/11 administration of President George Walker Bush. Obama did however condemn the ?enhanced interrogation techniques? as the President said he seeks to move beyond ?a dark and painful history.? I find this to be a bit unpatriotic as courtesy of Mr. Bush?s national security policies, America has not been subject to another act of terrorism while the UK and other countries such as India have. But that?s another argument.
Furthermore, it would be extremely unpatriotic to prosecute these CIA officials for merely following through with their orders. The Attorney General shares my view, “It would be unfair to prosecute dedicated men and women working to protect America for conduct that was sanctioned in advance by the Justice Department.?
The President did however release four memos in which Bush-era lawyers approved in often graphic detail tough interrogation methods used against 28 terror suspects. This was a horrible idea considering we are still fighting a war in Afghanistan, Iraq, and a war on terror. A former top official in the administration of President Bush called the publication of the memos ?unbelievable.? ?It’s damaging because these are techniques that work, and by Obama’s action today, we are telling the terrorists what they are,? the official said. ?We have laid it all out for our enemies. This is totally unnecessary. ? Publicizing the techniques does grave damage to our national security by ensuring they can never be used again ? even in a ticking-time- bomb scenario where thousands or even millions of American lives are at stake.”
The most controversial of these interrogation techniques is undoubtedly waterboarding and members of both parties including Republican Presidential nominee John McCain have condemned the practice. I think it is fair to note in that argument that many military personnel undergo waterboarding in training. “Tens of thousands of American Air Force and naval airmen were waterboarded as part of their survival training,” says a Senior U.S. intelligence official, who has spoken on condition of anonymity. “We don’t maim as part of our training. We don’t mutilate. We don’t sodomize. Those are things that are always bad. . . . Intellectually, there has got to be a difference between [waterboarding] and the others; otherwise we wouldn’t have done it in training.”

-sam