One aspect of the excessive information about the killing of Osama bin Laden troubles me. Enhanced interrogation techniques (e.g. waterboarding) have been an effective weapon in this war on terrorism. It resulted in stopping specific attacks on the U.S. and as we all have heard more than a few times provided key clues that led to bin Laden. Sadly, it is no longer used by our side in this war. If we captured bin Laden or other high-value terrorists, we can no longer effectively interrogate them. And, one of your loved ones might be part of their next target.
My concern and question is why should Barack Obama and Eric Holder be allowed to determine that we cannot use one of our most effective weapons against terrorism? If they ruled that we could no longer use airplanes to defend our country, we would be up in arms and we would not accept the ruling. Other weapons that we have to defend our liberty such as tanks and aircraft carriers are not effective against terrorism by a suicide bomber. Our most effective weapon in this war is intelligence and enhanced interrogation techniques when authorized in very special circumstances are a key tool to get critical intelligence in time to stop another Sept. 11. Water boarding has only been used on three captives by the U.S. and the results have been extraordinary.
Instead of standing by while our inexperienced President continues to try and bring legal action against the CIA for legally using these interrogation techniques; we should bring legal action against this non-qualified President for stopping our CIA and our military from using this weapon to defend our country and our citizens. It is not his right to put all of us in harms way. The torture argument is significant and means a lot to most of us. However techniques such as waterboarding are not torture. Waterboarding is used on our military officers during training, we do not torture them. This is an enemy that follows no rules. They have publicly beheaded our citizens that they have captured. They continually target unarmed citizens. We must not allow this administration to take this effective weapon away from us.
Ed Calkins
Kelseyville
