Don, I give Obama high marks for making the tough decision to take out Bin Laden.
You are right that Bush failed to get Bin Laden as did the POTUS before him when the opportunity presented itself.
I have mixed emotions on torture and question how much good intel we got when we used it. However folks need to remember it started before Bush only was more severe then waterboarding and was done by other governments with no oversight through the use of "extraordinary rendition."
Here is an interesting read I came across while Googling the use of torture by our country.
Civil libertarians concerned about the Bush administration sometimes pine for theClintonyears. What usually gets lost in the shuffle is the fact that theClintonadministration was almost as oppressive--and that was during peacetime.
Civil libertarians concerned about the Bush administration sometimes pine for theClintonyears. What usually gets lost in the shuffle is the fact that theClintonadministration was almost as oppressive--and that was during peacetime.
When President Bush admitted to violating the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978 with his secret wiretapping program, critics suggested that it was a blatant and unprecedented act of executive gall. Blatant, yes. Unprecedented, no. TheClintonadministration violated FISA during its warrantless search of accused spy Aldrich Ames, and (in the pre-Bush years) was described by ACLU legislative director Laura Murphy as "the most wiretap-friendly administration in history."
Civil libertarians are up in arms over the Bush administration's practice of extraordinary rendition, in which theUnited Statesoutsources its interrogation of international terrorism suspects to countries that practice torture. And we certainly should be--but it was theClintonadministration that pioneered this despicable practice.
