Monday, February 15, 2010

Is This A Wise Policy?

We are killing terrorists with drone strikes rather than capturing them for their intelligence value.  Marc Thiessen reports at NRO:

"The Washington Post reported yesterday morning front-page, above the fold that the Obama administration has stopped capturing and interrogating senior al-Qaeda leaders, killing them instead with Predator drones. This confirms my story last week in Foreign Policy, "Dead Men Tell No Tales," explaining the danger of this approach.

The Post tells the story of a senior leader of al-Qaeda in East Africa named Saleh Ali Nabhan who was located last September. The White House was given the choice of either killing him or capturing him alive for interrogation. The military wanted to take him alive. But the White House chose instead to take him out. A senior military officer is quoted as saying: "We wanted to take a prisoner. . . . It was not a decision that we made.

The Post adds: "The opportunity to interrogate one of the most wanted U.S. terrorism targets was gone forever."

Well, I guess that this solves - or at least avoids - a new "Mirandize" debacle since dead men clearly have no constitutional protections.  I've got to hand it o the administration there (sarcasm off).  But doesn't this policy ultimately jeopardize us even more?  Won't it incite violence and encourage even more terrorist recruits?

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