Killing Osama bin Laden vindicates Cheney policies, Guantanamo

Osama Bin Laden killers.

Without the leadership and creative genius of the Cheney-Bush administration, without a president who is passionate about assassinating terror suspects, we wouldn't be celebrating today.  

A report in today's Washington Post testifies that the killing of Osama bin Laden was a direct result of intelligence obtained under the previous administration from a Guantanamo Bay prisoner.  This single fact is the ultimate vindication of various Cheney-Bush policies.  WaPo:

...members of the Bush administration — as well as Obama officials — said the prior administration deserved credit, too.

Without information from detainees [DoF: often obtained through enhanced  interrogation techniques] at the Guantanamo Bay prison and elsewhere [DoF: black sites, extraterritorial rendition program, etc.], U.S. officials would never have tracked the courier who led them to bin Laden’s compound, they said.  Much of the intelligence and logistical groundwork [DoF: "illegal" NSA wiretapping, etc] was also laid during the Bush era...

DoF comment:  This isn't reported in the Washington Post as mere speculation, or the assertion of one government official, but historical fact.  It's the truth.

The Obama administration took office strongly opposed to aspects of the Bush administration’s anti-terrorism policy, vowing to prohibit torture during interrogation and to close the detention center at Guantanamo Bay. But under public and political pressure [DoF: the public remained terrified], the Obama team has backed off from shuttering Guantanamo...

Still, there was some zing in the comments of Bush officials who had been heavily criticized for adopting harsh interrogation techniques and establishing the Guantanamo prison.

Paul D. Wolfowitz, the former deputy secretary of defense, said Monday that “most Republicans have been applauding what [Obama] did.” However, he added, the operation “also rested heavily on some of those controversial policies” instituted by Bush, such as setting up the Guantanamo camp. He spoke in a conference call organized by the American Enterprise Institute.

“All of this was made possible by the relentless, sustained pressure on al-Qaeda that the Bush administration initiated after 9/11 and that the Obama administration has wisely chosen to continue,” former Defense secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld wrote on Facebook.

Condi Rice explains that the capture of OBL was the result of the bipartisan work of two administrations.   In fact, every top Cheney-Bush administration official interviewed or quoted by WaPo for the article appears to have come to the same conclusion: that the capture of Osama bin Laden vindicates the policies of Bush and Cheney (and by extension Guantanamo, the enhanced interrogation techniques, extradition, and the wiretapping program).  Moreover, the newspaper informs us that various anonymous Obama administration officials agree with this assessment.   Of course, the killing of OBL also vindicates the Obama administration's enthusiasm for extrajudicial assassination programs.

These new facts expose the treasonous nature of attacks against Bush and Cheney administration officials and President Obama for his defense of those policies and the targeted killing of terror suspects on an unprecedented scale.  Now there can be little doubt that those who have criticized US terror policies have helped the terrorists.  To what extent such assistance to the terrorists had been intentional is something the government will have to determine with regards to each outspoken citizen on a case by case basis (through NSA wiretapping, the monitoring of private email correspondence).