by Tina Grazier
** LANGLEY, Virginia: Visiting the Central Intelligence Agency to swear in Leon Panetta as the agency’s 19th director, Vice President Joseph Biden Jr. said Thursday that the Bush administration’s detention and interrogation policies “gave Al Qaeda a powerful recruiting tool.” International Herald Tribune **
Mr. Vice President, I respectfully disagree. The procedures and techniques used to discover information and enemy plans were conducted to save lives and defeat a monstrous enemy. The policy didnt create a recruitment tool for Al Qaeda. The enemy would expect such methods to be used. Instead, it was the public vitriol aimed at President Bush over the facilities and interrogation policies by fellow Americans in Congress, the press, and in public protests that did it. The enemy simply took advantage of anti-war sentiment, mimicking words certain Americans used against their own government to inflame young men and to recruit them.
Such criticisms used to be reserved for private correspondence and council in times of war, when patriots could be counted on to hold their tongues until victory was assured. In this war members of your party, its supporters and others chose to make public comments that aided and abetted the enemy and undermined the efforts of our soldiers and their leadership. This would never have happened during WWII.
President Barack Obama is now the Commander-in-Chief in the ongoing wider war. It is a dangerous time for our country and the world.It is my hope that his efforts to combat this evil will be as wise and constant as were President Bushs and that he will be respected and supported as he makes difficult decisions to keep our country safe. Remarks that favor the enemies of America do not make a presidents job easier or change the difficult conditions of war, and I pray President Obama, and our military, are spared similar unfortunate instances of disloyalty and betrayal.