XPost: alt.politics.bush, misc.survivalism, austin.general   
   XPost: talk.politics.guns   
   From: jebstevens@guess.com   
      
   Jose A. Rodriguez Jr. is a 31-year veteran of the CIA and the   
   author of “Hard Measures: How Aggressive CIA Actions After 9/11   
   Saved American Lives.”   
      
   As we mark the anniversary of Osama bin Laden’s death, President   
   Obama deserves credit for making the right choice on taking out   
   Public Enemy No. 1.   
      
   But his administration never would have had the opportunity to   
   do the right thing had it not been for some extraordinary work   
   during the George W. Bush administration. Much of that work has   
   been denigrated by Obama as unproductive and contrary to   
   American principles.   
      
   He is wrong on both counts.   
      
   Shortly after bin Laden met his maker last spring, courtesy of   
   U.S. Special Forces and intelligence, the administration proudly   
   announced that when Obama took office, getting bin Laden was   
   made a top priority. Many of us who served in senior   
   counterterrorism positions in the Bush administration were left   
   muttering: “Gee, why didn’t we think of that?”   
      
   The truth is that getting bin Laden was the top counterterrorism   
   objective for U.S. intelligence since well before the Sept. 11,   
   2001, attacks. This administration built on work pain­stakingly   
   pursued for many years before Obama was elected — and without   
   this work, Obama administration officials never would have been   
   in a position to authorize the strike on Abbottabad, Pakistan,   
   that resulted in bin Laden’s overdue death.   
      
   In 2004, an al-Qaeda terrorist was captured trying to   
   communicate with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of the terror   
   organization’s operations in Iraq. That captured terrorist was   
   taken to a secret CIA prison — or “black site” — where,   
   initially, he was uncooperative. After being subjected to some   
   “enhanced interrogation techniques” — techniques authorized by   
   officials at the most senior levels of the U.S. government and   
   that the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel confirmed   
   were consistent with U.S. law — the detainee became compliant.   
   He was not one of the three al-Qaeda operatives who underwent   
   waterboarding, the harshest of the hard measures.   
      
   Once this terrorist decided that non-cooperation was a non-   
   starter, he told us many things — including that bin Laden had   
   given up communicating via telephone, radio or Internet, and   
   depended solely on a single courier who went by “Abu Ahmed al-   
   Kuwaiti.” At the time, I was chief of the CIA’s Counterterrorism   
   Center. The fact that bin Laden was relying on a lone courier   
   was a revelation that told me bin Laden had given up day-to-day   
   control of his organization. You can’t run an operation as   
   large, complex and ambitious as al-Qaeda by communicating only   
   every few months. It also told me that capturing him would be   
   even harder than we had thought.   
      
   Armed with the pseudonym of bin Laden’s courier, we pressed on.   
   We asked other detainees in our custody if they had ever heard   
   of “al-Kuwaiti.” Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the mastermind of 9/11,   
   reacted in horror when he heard the name. He backed into his   
   cell and vigorously denied ever hearing of the man. We later   
   intercepted communications KSM sent to fellow detainees at the   
   black site, in which he instructed them: “Tell them nothing   
   about the courier!”   
      
   In 2005 another senior detainee, Abu Faraj al-Libi, told us that   
   this courier had informed him that Libi had been selected to be   
   al-Qaeda’s No. 3 official. Surely that kind of information is   
   delivered only by highly placed individuals.   
      
   A couple of years later, after I became head of the National   
   Clandestine Service, the CIA was able to discover the true name   
   of the courier. Armed with that information, the agency worked   
   relentlessly to locate that man. Finding him eventually led to   
   tracking down and killing bin Laden.   
      
   With some trying to turn bin Laden’s death into a campaign   
   talking point for Obama’s reelection, it is useful to remember   
   that the trail to bin Laden started in a CIA black site — all of   
   which Obama ordered closed, forever, on the second full day of   
   his administration — and stemmed from information obtained from   
   hardened terrorists who agreed to tell us some (but not all) of   
   what they knew after undergoing harsh but legal interrogation   
   methods. Obama banned those methods on Jan. 22, 2009.   
      
   This past weekend, Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Carl Levin   
   attacked statements made in May 2011 by me, former CIA director   
   Michael Hayden and former attorney general Michael Mukasey   
   regarding what led to bin Laden’s death. They misunderstood and   
   mischaracterized our positions.   
      
   No single tactic, technique or approach led to the successful   
   operation against bin Laden. But those who suggest it was all a   
   result of a fresh approach taken after Jan. 20, 2009, are   
   mistaken.   
      
   http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-path-to-osama-bin-   
   ladens-death-didnt-start-with-   
   obama/2012/04/30/gIQAfFmdsT_story.html?hpid=z2   
      
   You mean they're plain lying assholes, so just say it.   
      
   --- SoupGate-DOS v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)