Former Bush Aide John Yoo: Obama “Too Afraid” to Take Bin Laden Alive

by Jane Jamison | May 7, 2011 8:00 am

Cross-posted at UNCOVERAGE.net[1]

The man America should REALLY be thanking for Osama bin Laden’s capture is John Yoo, yet very few people have even heard his name.


Yoo is the George W. Bush administration attorney who wrote the memo legalizing waterboarding and other forms of “enhanced interrogations” for Al Qaeda suspects. He has come forward in the past few days to blast President Obama’s handling of the Osama bin Laden as a “huge fail.” John Yoo is an incredibly brave truth-teller, and what he is saying now is absolutely correct. [read his WSJ editorial last year: “My Gift to the Obama Administration.”[2] ]

Important background: John Yoo became a favorite whipping boy of the left[3] during the Bush years. He was also threatened by the Obama administration with prosecution for “war crimes,” a witch hunt that quietly went by the boards during one late Friday night document dump.[4] Even in finding no wrongdoing, the Obama administration insidiously leaked negative information[5] about Yoo and others, knowing he was under gag order and couldn’t respond.

No Obama ideologue ever made an apology to Yoo for the defamation of his character. No member of any leftist group [6]ever expressed remorse for the years of nearly 24/7 stalking, threats and harassment at his home and workplace in Berkeley, California. [See “No Shame on Yoo”[7] for details of what he endured.]

One of the many leftist demonstrations "demanding the arrest" of John Yoo

Now read John Yoo’s assessment of the bin Laden bungling by this leftist, radical, rookie president who won’t even get his fingernails dirty at a Mexican restaurant, and certainly has no clue what it takes to be a warrior. Listen to how Yoo tore smirking liberal slimester Elliott Spitzer on CNN a new one.

I pray we elect a Republican president and bring back John Yoo to the nation’s service. We need him.

TalkingPointsMemo:[8]

John Yoo says President Obama is too afraid of the politics of Guantanamo Bay to capture and interrogate terrorists.

The former Gorge W. Bush administration lawyer, Yoo wrote the infamous torture memos[9] used to justify the “enhanced interrogation techniques” that were a central legacy of Bush’s Global War On Terror. He now says that the killing of Osama bin Laden will go down in history as one of President Obama’s biggest national security fails.

Yoo told CNN on Thursday night that the special forces team sent to kill bin Laden should have instead taken him alive and kept him as a source of future intelligence. Failing to do that, Yoo says, cost the U.S. a valuable asset. That was a mistake, Yoo says.

“If they were going in with no options other than to kill him, then that’s a problem,” Yoo told CNN’s Eliot Spitzer.

In an op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal[10] Wednesday, Yoo wrote that shooting the unarmed bin Laden meant “one of the most valuable intelligence opportunities since the beginning of the war has slipped through our hands.”

Yoo told Spitzer “that a deliberately small force was sent in” to Abbottabad, Pakistan by the White House because “they don’t want to capture high-level al Qaeda leaders.”

Why? As Yoo said in his op-ed, the administration is terrified of backing the Bush administration’s moves in the war on terror.

“Capturing [bin Laden] alive would have required the administration to hold and interrogate bin Laden at Guantanamo Bay,” Yoo wrote, “something that has given this president allergic reactions bordering on a seizure.”

Endnotes:
  1. Cross-posted at UNCOVERAGE.net: http://www.uncoverage.net/2011/05/john-yoo-obamas-big-fail-too-afraid-to-take-bin-laden-alive-and-interrogate-him/
  2. “My Gift to the Obama Administration.”: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704188104575083473537079844.html
  3. whipping boy of the left: http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2008/04/02/yoo
  4. during one late Friday night document dump.: http://www.newsweek.com/blogs/declassified/2010/01/29/justice-official-clears-bush-lawyers-in-torture-memo-probe.html
  5. Even in finding no wrongdoing, the Obama administration insidiously leaked negative information: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704757904575078182303405948.html
  6. No member of any leftist group : http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2010/01/29/18636562.php
  7. “No Shame on Yoo”: http://../2010/02/no-shame-on-yoo/
  8. TalkingPointsMemo:: http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/05/john-yoo-killing-bin-laden-was-a-bad-idea-video.php
  9. torture memos: http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/02/the_torture_memo_author_youve_never_heard_of.php
  10. Wall Street Journal: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703834804576301032595527372.html

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