John Yoo & Jay Bybee Deserve the Presidential Medal of Freedom Not Presidential Disdain

John Yoo and Jay S. Bybee deserve the Presidential Medal of Freedom for saving thousands of American lives.

The Presidential Medal of Freedom is a decoration bestowed by the President of the United States and is, along with the equivalent Congressional Gold Medal bestowed by an act of U.S. Congress, the highest civilian award in the U.S. It recognizes those individuals who have made “an especially meritorious contribution to the security or national interests of the United States, world peace, cultural or other significant public or private endeavors.”

Yesterday, it was reported that the enhanced interrogation techniques (EIT) implemented during the Bush years and authorized by John Yoo and Jay Bybee thwarted the number of Al-Qaeda attacks and saved thousands of American lives.
Judicial Watch released the report based on CIA documents it had recently obtained:

According to a June 1, 2005, CIA report entitled, Detainee Reporting Pivotal for the War Against Al-Qa’ida, “Detainee reporting accounts for more than half of all HUMINT reporting on al-Qa’ida since the program began…” Interestingly, this fact was omitted in later versions of the report obtained by Judicial Watch. All versions, however, conclude: “One of the gains to detaining the additional terrorists has been the thwarting of a number of al-Qa’ida operations in the United States and overseas.”

Despite the apparent effectiveness of “enhanced interrogation techniques,” the federal government suspended their use in 2005 by passing the Detainee Treatment Act. President Obama officially banned the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” during his first week in office in January 2009. Two months later, in March 2009, President Obama overruled objections from national security officials and released documents detailing the government’s enhanced interrogation program (the so-called “torture” memos). However, President Obama initially withheld information detailing the results of this program, including alleged terrorist plots that the program prevented.

Moreover, according to an April 2009 CNN report, President Obama’s Intelligence Director, retired Admiral Dennis Blair, told colleagues in an April 16 memo on the subject of “enhanced interrogation techniques,” that “High value information came from interrogations in which those methods were used and provided a deeper understanding of the al Qa’ida organization that was attacking this country.” This sentence was omitted from a version of the memo released by Blair’s office to the press.

“It is unfortunate that it took a federal court order to force the Obama administration to release these documents,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “These documents indicate that members of Congress approved of and were well aware of the use of these enhanced interrogation techniques and their lifesaving value. It is disturbing that we no longer use interrogation techniques that have demonstrably stopped terrorist attacks and saved American lives. The Obama administration has made this country less safe by its mishandling of the enhanced interrogation program.”

But there’s more…
Using EITon 9-11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed helped the US disrupt “dozens” of planned al-Qaida attacks and save hundreds and thousands of lives. Waterboarding 9-11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed led to information that prevented a similar attack on Los Angeles. According to a former intelligence agent, waterboarding of terrorist Abu Zubaydah got him to talk in less than 35 seconds. 

So how were the authors of the EIT program treated by the Obama Adminstration? They were threatened with jail time and ridiculed. Uber Pig at BlackFive put it this way:

DOJ bureaucrats in general and the Obama administration in particular threw him as hard as they could, as often as they could, under that 1962 Volkswagen bus otherwise known as the anti-American and self-loathing Left. And he dodged and he dodged and he dodged, Eric Holder grinding the gears until the transmission slipped and the axle bent, and he could be pursued no more.

These heroes won’t get a medal from Team Obama… But they deserve one.

Today John Yoo wrote how leftist policies are working for our soldiers.
The Wall Street Journal reported:

In 2005, a Navy Seal team dropped into Afghanistan encountered goat herders who clearly intended to inform the Taliban of their whereabouts. The team leader ordered them released, against his better military judgment, because of his worries about the media and political attacks that would follow.

In less than an hour, more than 80 Taliban fighters attacked and killed all but one member of the Seal team and 16 Americans on a helicopter rescue mission. If a president cannot, or will not, protect the men and women who fight our nation’s wars, they will follow the same risk-averse attitudes that invited the 9/11 attacks in the first place.

The left must be very proud of the fact that they have the blood of our brave men and women on their hands. Do they even care?

More… Via Instapundit: “John Yoo is entitled to dance a jig on the grave of Eric Holder’s credibility. And he does.”

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Jim Hoft is the founder and editor of The Gateway Pundit, one of the top conservative news outlets in America. Jim was awarded the Reed Irvine Accuracy in Media Award in 2013 and is the proud recipient of the Breitbart Award for Excellence in Online Journalism from the Americans for Prosperity Foundation in May 2016. In 2023, The Gateway Pundit received the Most Trusted Print Media Award at the American Liberty Awards.

You can email Jim Hoft here, and read more of Jim Hoft's articles here.

 

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