Biden shows ignorance of al Qaeda motivation

NY Times:

Visiting the Central Intelligence Agency to swear in Leon E. Panetta as the agency’s 19th director, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. said Thursday that the Bush administration’s detention and interrogation policies “gave Al Qaeda a powerful recruiting tool.”

Considering the setting — the C.I.A. lobby where several hundred agency employees greeted the vice president with cheers — Mr. Biden’s remarks implied a tough judgment on parts of the agency’s record under the previous administration. He stood in front of a marble memorial wall, where 89 stars represent C.I.A. officers who have died in the line of duty.

Mr. Biden spoke of executive orders that President Obama issued on his second full day in office to close the Guantánamo Bay detention camp in Cuba, require the C.I.A. to use the same noncoercive interrogation methods as the military and report all detainees to the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Mr. Obama also ordered the closing of the secret overseas detention program for Al Qaeda that the C.I.A. created after the 2001 terrorist attacks.

Mr. Biden said the new president’s actions “reverse the policies that in my view and the view of many in this agency caused America to fall short of its founding principles and which gave Al Qaeda a powerful recruiting tool.”

...
This is an example of double dog dumb at work. Does Biden really think al Qaeda operatives are motivated by Bush policies? If you look at what al Qaeda operatives say they are probably more upset about losing Spain in the 1400's. The driving force behind al Qaeda is Islamic religious bigotry. That bigotry is expansive enough to include all Muslims who do not agree with their weird religious beliefs. Al Qaeda is a grievance monger, but its very actions have driven people away from al Qaeda. Iraqis hate al Qaeda now. That seems to be happening in other Muslim countries too. I don't hear any Iraqis complaining about Gitmo are even abu Ghraid.

There is a general resentment in al Qaeda of anyone who rejects their policies, but how many videos have the al Qaeda guys made about Gitmo? Not many.

Comments

  1. Comrade Tovya4:27 PM

    The sad thing is that this guy is the #2 man in charge of protecting us from al-Qaeda. G-d forbid that terrorism strike the U.S. again, because I have absolutely no faith in the leadership of this administration.

    ReplyDelete

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