Posted on 04/21/2009 5:15:57 AM PDT by Schnucki
President Obama visited the CIA headquarters yesterday to placate officials dismayed by his decision to release top secret “torture” memos, a move that has provoked accusations that he is willing to compromise America’s safety out of political correctness.
Mr Obama’s first visit to the CIA, to boost morale there and shore up his own reputation, came as his decision to release the memos detailing brutal interrogation sessions of terror suspects continued to attract criticism.
There were claims from inside the agency’s ranks that the move had undermined its ability to extract vital intelligence from America’s enemies, and could even blow the cover of some secret operatives.
Michael Hayden, who ran the CIA under President Bush, said before Mr Obama’s visit that the release of the memos had compromised the CIA’s intelligence gathering work and, in effect, aided America’s enemies.
Mr Obama sought to assure CIA staff that they still had his support and that he was prepared to draw a line under the agency’s dubious recent practices.
“Don’t be discouraged by what’s happened the last few weeks,” he said. “Don’t be discouraged that we have to acknowledge potentially we have made some mistakes — that’s how we learn.
“But the fact that we are willing to acknowledge them and then move forward, that is precisely why I am proud to be President of the United States and that’s why you should be proud to be members of the CIA.”
The meetings between President Obama and the agency’s leadership and staff in Langley, Virginia, were also overshadowed by the revelation, contained in the Bush-era memos, that the CIA had used waterboarding techniques on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-confessed mastermind of the September 11 terror attacks, 183 times in March 2003. It suggested that the use of the technique, which simulates drowning,
(Excerpt) Read more at timesonline.co.uk ...
Obammy WANTS us put in DANGER!! Why ELSE would he be sooooo damn STUPID! He doesn’t like America being top dog.
I’m surprised Barry can spell CIA.
They’ll need to compare it to releasing DNC/Rahm documents Re: ACORN and Blagoiovich (sp?) in order to zero to understand.
Obama is a traitor mole. Gutting the CIA is one of his top goals.
When I think of the never-ending manufactured outrage over the Valerie Plame case and its coverage in the press, it makes my head want to explode. Now Obama has truly compromised who knows how many lives, and nary a peep from the traitorous media.
Ping.
I think Zero is inviting an attack so he and others can prove a point, make history or something. He is trying to cause as much confusion as possible so we will go along with his plans for our country.
but guess what, 50% or more of us will not do it.
Barack Hussein Obama is a traitor.
I don’t see any other countries getting on the Barack Bandwagon, airing their interrogation techniques to the world. You’d think that would be a clue that it was a stupid idea.
That is why NOW the memos must now be declassified that reveal the terrorist plots that were uncovered and thwarted as a result of CIA’s “advanced and enhanced interrogation”
Passengers who were booked on flights that were cancelled or delayed, or trains that were delayed, or tunnels or bridges that were subject to increased security- etc... deserve to know their lives were saved.
Any congressman who tipped off his.her personal family to avoid a terror threat uncovered by this interrogation....needs to be revealed and go on record about our “mistakes”
Even Leon Panetta wasn’t quite red enough to go along with this damaging action
so WHO IS REALLY IN CONTROL OF OUR NATIONAL SECURITY
What I find most interesting about this article, coming from the British press (doing the work American journalists won’t) is that there is no mention of the wild cheering, spontaneous applause, shout outs of love and support that the thousands of CIA employees who ‘came out’ to ‘greet’ the President exhibited at the HQ visit. The US accounts have palm fronds being waved...
We can only hope that the CIA tuns on this bass turd. It’s strange that he went over to CIA HQ to “warm” things over. He knows they can bring him down.
That’s exactly Bambi’s plan.
Obama just cares about saving lives is why he did it. Countless lives have been spared by his releasing those documents. Just think how many of his muslim brothers will be spared the horrors of caterpillars.
“Obammy WANTS us put in DANGER!! ...He doesn’t like America being top dog.”
* * *
Yup.
Zero’s real response to the CIA uproar: “I won”.
FUBO
Don't pi$$ off folks who know stuff.
Barak need to watch his back. (Metaphorically speaking of course)
How? The fact that people were tortured is an open secret, and Obama has said he'd end the practices so it's not like we would be doing it going forward. So how does the memo alone compromise the intelligence gathering?
Boost morale? More likely to do an "in your face" visit. He alreadyhas a reputation of a liberal fool, as the laughingstock of leaders, lacking foresight; why would he want to shore that up?
Unfortunately, only the interogation techniques were released. The results of the interogations were redacted.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/20/AR2009042002818_pf.html
Carter was the first traitor president with what he did to the CIA. obummer is the second traitor president.
Blowjob Bill was just totally corrupt.
“Obama is a traitor mole. Gutting the CIA is one of his top goals.”
Isn’t that what JFK tried to do? Didn’t work out to well for him did it?
And I guess he would know.
where are the noble, whistle blowing Joe and Valerie Wilson when the nation needs them
sarc
(Swooning...) Yea right.
Its a shame that foreign media can ‘report’ yet US media has to assure us, that yes, ObamaLove is still at a fever pitch whereever he goes. The story, whatever the story maybe, isn’t important. Its all about how Barry is received and loved.
Isn’t p*ssing off the CIA a really, REALLY bad idea?
The tape shows Obama standing at a podium before a screaming, cheering, waving crowd. Absent the CIA logos on the wall behind him, I would swear it was a campaign rally. Many of the attendees appeared to be blacks and women, which I also found somewhat curious given the historical composition of the agency.
Is it possible this was a White House "rent-a-crowd" or am I being unduly paranoid/pessimistic?
Because when the enemy knows what techniques will be used, they can focus their training on resisting those techniques. If a major element of a technique is the threat that something may occur and the subject knows in advance that the threat is false, the technique is useless. It is like one super bowl team telling the other in advance what defense it will play for any given situation.
He’s also a mollycoddle and a prig whose closest advisor is the sugarplum fairy. We’re in for four long years of very peculiar decisions.
Who’s this “We” that you are talking about, Hussein?
As if the premier gave a rat’s ass about America. He damns, speaks against, trashes, abuses, down plays, America, or Americans everytime the puking ass opens his brown hole.
Yo Leon...get with the program. Your boss says he knows more than you. BTW, if you have a high prized prisoner, best be nice to him or your arse is grass.
Our own special forces are waterboarded as part of their training
changing Gonzalez’ legal opinion after the fact might be a bam way of doing business (like his abandonment of contract law has become) but look out if it is
Second of all- the identities of the sources and their willingness to talk- are now public information. Do you not think al Qaeda has now changed or eliminated everyone, every agent, every sleeper cell, every plot- of which those sources had even possible knowledge?
Third- al Qaeda trains its agents. Now it knows what to train them to expect and to resist.
Fourth- how would YOU like to risk your life, and that of your friends and family, to cooperate with the CIA, knowing that if someone made an ideological “mistake” you would end up on the front page of the US news with the approval of the POTUS?
People who assigned those memos a classification of TOP SECRET (release would cause grave damage to US national interests) were not partisan ideologues, unlike whoever urged obama to declassify NOW.
I understand they did the same thing with the military. Folks were asked if they voted for zero and if they said yes, they were offered places up front and provided with digital cameras.
After the staged Iraq visit he made....I don’t trust any appearances he makes. These are well staged events.
This is getting creepier by the day.
It's not torture if you are willing to do it to your own military members during training. These "torture" memos read like the curriculum of the Navy's SERE (survival, evasion, resistance, escaped) training. Every Naval Aviator, Naval Flight Officer, or Enlisted Crewman was required to go through the training. We got to experience first hand each of these techniques. I went through the training in Warner Springs, CA with the Navy. Never once had I ever looked back and thought it was torture. This is complete liberal bull crap.
Tortue to me is sticking needles under your fingernails or pulling your fingernails off. Did they do stuff like that.
Not to bring on the abortion issue, I don’t like it when people bring up abortion while talking about something like animal cruelty. But here I go. I do find it quite hypocritical that these forms of so called tortue are prohibited but he would allow a baby’s brains to be sucked out. Is that not the strangest thing.
A President who needs to hold staged events in his first 100 days in order to gin up a crowd is going to be in a lot of trouble. Or we are.
Obama tries out his magic lipstick after condemning the CIA to swinehood.
President Bush fought back when America was attacked.
President O is laying down for the world to trample.
Pathetic for those political prisoners in Central America, pathetic for those citizens praying for someone to speak for them while the economy in their country is decimated.
Instead, O stood up tall for their tormentors.
This is not my America. This is the action of the left’s Ameica.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/21/us/politics/21intel.html?_r=1&th&emc=th
No matter how much Barry shucks and jives, the left DEMANDS show trials to be followed by executions
will guillotines be erected in front of the WH?
Geeze...his language sounds like a kid with a 2-year management degree lecturing the employees of a Pizza Hut for taking too many smoke breaks. And this clownhat is POTUS? Sigh.
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