From Steve Benen at The Washington Monthly:
I suppose it was only a matter of time before far-right voices started criticizing President Obama for having too much success killing terrorists. Here's former Bush speechwriter Marc Thiessen, writing, "Dead Terrorists Tell No Tales."
[...]
I see. The conservative line for the better part of a year is that President Obama isn't doing enough to go after terrorists. Reality shows the exact opposite is true, but for the right, this is an inconvenient detail best ignored.
If Thiessen's piece is any indication, however, the argument is now shifting. President Obama is doing too much to go after terrorists, and is taking out too many bad guys before they can be captured and tortured.
I can see the campaign slogans now: "Vote GOP: Obama kills too many terrorists." Read on...
Transcript via Nexis Lexis.
O'REILLY: "Impact" segment tonight, a former speechwriter for President Bush, Mark Thiessen says that President Obama's use of drone missiles to terrorize and kill al Qaeda may be counterproductive in some areas. Mr. Thiessen is the author of the bestselling book, "Courting Disaster: How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama is Inviting the Next Attack."
He joins us now from Washington.
All right, now look, I've been a big supporter of President's Obama's drone missile. And the CIA is obviously executing this very, very well. Wiped out a lot of al Qaeda, a lot of Taliban in Pakistan. We've dropped a few in other places in the world. And you are saying not so fast. So explain it?
MARK THIESSEN, FORMER CHIEF SPEECHWRITER FOR PRES. GEORGE W. BUSH: Well, predators are an important tool on the war on terror, but the problem is that Obama is escalating the predator attacks, at the same time that he has eliminated one of the most important intelligence capabilities we have, the CIA's program to detain, capture and detain and interrogate terrorist leaders. Dead terrorists cannot tell you their plans for new attacks. So if you vaporize a terrorist with a predator strike you're vaporizing all the intelligence in his head that we could be getting by interrogating him.
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