Witness the idiocy of John R. Guardiano

In a brilliantly stupid post, TAS contributor John Guardiano trots out the GOP's greatest hits on the subject of terrorism:

• Has the Obama administration's ban on enhanced interrogations, and its pledge to investigate and prosecute past enhanced interrogations, resulted in lax counterterrorism efforts, which might otherwise have prevented Abdulmutallab from boarding the plane?

• Did the Obama administration opt to cede Abdulmutallab to the courts and his ACLU-loving lawyers vice interrogating him about his terrorist connections and knowledge?

• How much actionable intelligence was lost -- and how many terror plots might have been averted -- because the Obama administration opted to treat the Christmas Day terrorist attack as a law enforcement matter rather than an incident of war?

• Does the Obama administration truly recognize that America is at war with al-Qaeda and the terror masters; or does it still view terrorism as an issue best delegated to the courts and the criminal justice system?

Yes, those are deep and probing questions - let's dive into them a bit.

The ban on torture - has it led to lax counterterrorism efforts? I don't know - but neither does Guardiano. He offers nothing in support of this question, he just waves it around in the hopes his readers will uncritically accept his speculation as fact.

Think of the breadth of information you would need to even begin supporting that hypothesis - and then recall that torture has been repudiated by professional interrogators many, many times as ineffective - even counter productive.

This is my favorite though:

How much actionable intelligence was lost -- and how many terror plots might have been averted -- because the Obama administration opted to treat the Christmas Day terrorist attack as a law enforcement matter rather than an incident of war?

Exactly how does one treat the underwear bomber as an act of war? Invade Nigeria? The idea that we cannot use our criminal justice system to dispose of this man has been so thoroughly debunked you wonder if Guardiano spent the last week living under a rock.

Or that we somehow lost intelligence because AbdulMutallab is in the custody of civilian courts instead of the military. Is there any doubt that the man will be interrogated while in custody? More importantly, Is there any liklihood that Al Qaeda in the Arabian Penninsula entrusted this man with their deepest secrets? We're talking about a young man depressed enough to literally blow his balls off.

Yes, Abdul, we should tell this one everything. Give him Usama's home number. What could it hurt?

Please.

"Does the Obama administration truly recognize that America is at war with al-Qaeda and the terror masters?"

Yes, I believe they do. Not only do they know there's a war going on, they know where it is happening better than the previous administration did.

The C.I.A. has launched 53 [Predator] strikes in Obama’s first year in office, more than during Bush’s entire presidency, according to data compiled by Peter Bergen and Katherine Tiedemann at the New America Foundation. In part, that strategy owes to increasingly precise technology that has made it easier in the last couple of years to hit a desired target with fewer civilian casualties. And in part, it underscores the ability to redirect resources away from Iraq now that the war has subsided there; when the Obama administration came into office, it learned that dozens of drones were devoted to operations in Iraq and Afghanistan but just five or six in the tribal areas of Pakistan where Al Qaeda’s leadership is mainly holed up, according to officials who declined to be identified discussing a classified program. Obama has authorized doubling the number of drones in the Pakistani border area, as well as increasing the presence over Yemen and Somalia, officials said.

You can doubt the efficacy of such strikes - or the moral costs incurred by them - but their intent is plain. We are now trying very hard to kill high value targets along the Afghanistan and Pakistan border.

The idea that we cannot simultaneously pursue war on a battlefield and prosecute crime as crime is one of those ideas that seem to incubate only in morons.

I have an inconvenient question for Guardiano: Do you really believe what you are saying? or are you just saying what your audience will buy?"