A prominent lawyer from the Department of Justice during the Bush years accuses Obama of executing too many of America’s enemies, which he says greatly compromises U.S. intelligence operations. So, even when Obama proves undoubtedly that he’s not soft on terrorism, Republicans manage to find something to criticize Obama on nevertheless.
Georgetown University law professor Viet Dinh, a Bush aid and one of the authors of the US Patriot Act, questioned why the body count is higher under Obama. “”Why have executions increased?” he asked, adding that “the President and vice president expound this fact as a fact that they are actually successful in war.”
Dinh then tried to qualify his criticism of Obama, saying he’s right in a sense. “That doesn’t mean I think they are not illegitimate,” he added. “No, we have every right to kill the other side’s warriors. But at what cost? When we do not have an effective detention policy, the only option we have is to kill them before we can detain them. And if we don’t detain them, we don’t know what they know and what they are up to.”
The Washington Post says Dinh received applause on this statement; however, he was roundly booed with hisses when he tried to defend the Patriot Act. – terry shropshire
