President Obama's terror strategy puts America at risk

President Obama's terror strategy puts America at risk
Wednesday, August 26th 2009, 4:00 AM

Michael Goodwin

Pull together the loose threads of recent events and President Obama's
vision for fighting the war on terror becomes one very scary picture.
Scary, that is, for innocent Americans.

From interrogation to adjudication, the White House plan offers more
legal protections to terror suspects and less to our nation. It's a
kinder, gentler tilt that favors bad guys and raises the risk of
attack at home because it compromises national security to promote
other concerns and values.

One thread is Attorney General Eric Holder's misguided decision to
appoint a special prosecutor to investigate whether CIA agents broke
the law in aggressive questioning of suspects captured in Iraq and
Afghanistan. Holder, who shamelessly gave Bill Clinton the legal okay
to pardon megacriminal Marc Rich, has little mercy for the agents who
risked their lives to protect America.

Knowing Holder stands ready to second-guess its every move is
reportedly sending chills through the spook agency.

Another scary thread is the plan to take the job of terror questioning
away from the CIA and move it to a new group in the FBI. The move is
part of an effort to treat terror as just another law enforcement
problem, a downgrade that led the White House to drop the words "war
on terror."

As the new unit's rules show, the downgrade is more than just
semantics. The unit will be limited to noncoercive techniques, meaning
even sleep deprivation is out.

More aggressive techniques are controversial, but former CIA leaders
and ex-Vice President Dick Cheney, among others, insist they yielded
valuable information that allowed authorities to disrupt terror plots
and save lives.

A just-released 2004 report by the CIA inspector general also seems to
reach the same conclusion, saying several top terror suspects became
more useful and compliant after aggressive techniques were used.

Scary thread No. 3 is the plan to close the Guantanamo Bay prison and
move some of the worst terrorists to American prisons and give some
detainees trials in civilian courts. Playing by the legal rule book
raises the chance mad killers will walk free because of the vast
defendant protections built into our criminal justice system.

All those threads come together with the insane decision of Scotland
to release the Libyan agent convicted in the attack that blew up Pan
Am Flight 103, killing 270 people, most of them Americans. Scottish
Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill defended his decision on
humanitarian grounds because the agent, who served only eight years of
a 27-year minimum sentence, is dying of prostate cancer.

Completely lacking, of course, was any compassion for the victims and
their families. The outrage was compounded when Libya gave the agent a
hero's welcome on his return home, a sickening scene that can serve
only to inspire future terrorists.

Amid strong evidence the release was part of a deal to get British
companies oil and gas contracts, Prime Minister Gordon Brown finally
broke his silence yesterday to say he was "repulsed" by the Libyan
welcome. But he has failed to give a convincing denial to a comment by
Seif al-Islam el-Khadafy, a son of Libya's leader, that the agent's
release was "always on the negotiating table" when oil and gas deals
were discussed.

The case raises the specter of American judges and politicians one day
releasing terrorists for similarly loopy reasons. Indeed, once
national security is compromised by raising other issues to equal
stature, like compassion for killers and lucrative business deals,
appeasement of terror inevitably results.

Obama often insists that keeping Americans safe is his most important
duty, yet his actions and those of Holder say otherwise. By tying our
nation's hands against an enemy that knows no rules or boundaries, the
President is adding to the already considerable chance we will suffer
a national catastrophe.

mgoodwin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx



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