Osama bin Laden has been found, but the Obama administration’s search for the same page continues.

Deputy National Security Advisor John Brennan was on Morning Joe earlier in the day and countered a New York Times article that said information obtained by waterboarding helped lead US forces to Osama bin Laden:

When directly asked by Mika whether waterboarding was involved he responded:

Not to my knowledge. The information that was collected over the course of nine years or so came from many different sources: human sources, technical sources, as well as sources that detainees provided. It was something as a result of the painstaking work that the analysts did. They pieced it all together that lead us to the compound last year and resulted in the very successful operation Sunday.

Later in the day, Brian Williams spoke with CIA Director Leon Panetta and asked him a similar question in an interview that appeared on the NBC Nightly News:

BRIAN WILLIAMS:
Turned around the other way, are you denying that water boarding was, in part, among the tactics used to extract the intelligence that led to this successful mission?

LEON PANETTA:
No, I think some of the detainees clearly were, you know, they used these enhanced interrogation techniques against some of these detainees. But I’m also saying that, you know, the debate about whether– whether we would have gotten the same information through other approaches I think is always going to be an open question.

BRIAN WILLIAMS:
So finer point, one final time, enhanced interrogation techniques, which has always been kind of a handy euphemism in these post-9/11 years. That–

LEON PANETTA:
Right.

BRIAN WILLIAMS:
–in– includes water boarding?

LEON PANETTA:
That’s correct.

As for Eric Holder and whether or not “advanced interrogation techniques” helped get Bin Laden, the Attorney General said he didn’t know. This all must be especially traumatic for somebody who a while back couldn’t bring himself to say the words “radical Islam,” so let’s cut him a break for a while.

Did waterboarding help track down Osama bin Laden? So far from administration officials we have a no, a yes, and one “I don’t know.”

Which one of those answers will President Obama give when Steve Kroft asks him about it tomorrow for Sunday’s 60 Minutes? Will we get a little of all three? Will the question even be asked? As Eric Holder might say, I don’t know.

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

When the jack-booted era of Bush/Cheney came to a close I thought such human rights nightmares had ended, but apparently this kind of thing is still allowed in a so-called civilized society. Let’s just call it what it really is: Dairyboarding!

Detainees’ diets at Guantanamo Bay have been a controversial issue for some time and now the U.S. prison is said to be rationing ice cream.

The frozen dessert is allegedly being tightly measured, with only one ice cream allowed for each of its 147 detainees.

Journalist for The Miami Herald, Carol Rosenberg, photographed a refrigerator at Guantanamo, with two signs reading ‘DETAINEE FOOD ONLY’ and ‘Only 1 Ice Cream For each detainee!’

Even worse, Gitmo insiders tell me that if a detainee is thought to have information that could save lives, they’re threatened with being denied Magic Shell for up to a week. I’ve even heard that a US soldier once forced a detainee to watch as he tried to flush a pint of Chunky Monkey down a toilet, though I have yet to confirm that.

How must it makes detainees feel every time they see the US president, who not only promised to close Gitmo but to also declare life necessities such as ice cream to be a human right, publicly mocking those suffering under Gitmo’s frozen dessert limit:

Unbelievably cruel taunting.

This isn’t the Hope & Change I didn’t vote for.

(h/t Free Republic)

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

Thiessen has relentlessly exposed how the Left and Obama are sabotaging all the effective intelligence-gathering programs that the Bush administration created to prevent jihadi attacks after 9/11 — and how media propagandists are helping them.

Here’s one of his latest investigative op-eds, “A Tale of Two Terrorists,” on how the Obama administration defended the lengthy interrogation of one terror suspect days before the Christmas bomber was recklessly and hastily Mirandized.

Thiessen’s whistle-blowing work can be found here — and he has been spreading the word on cable TV.

No wonder President Obama wants you to turn it off.

***

Turn on PJTV for Glenn Reynolds’ interview with Thiessen right here!

The Left’s clown prince, Jon Stewart, “took on” UC Berkeley law professor/former Bush DOJ official John Yoo on Monday. Yoo has just published “Crisis and Command” — a thorough, compelling history of the use of executive power by America’s presidents from Washington to Bush. Yoo has been demonized by the nutroots and stalked at his home by Berserkeleyites. He has earned the respect of colleagues and students who are actually committed to an open, honest, rigorous academic environment — in contrast to the clown prince-wannabes who regularly disrupt his classes and have demanded his firing.

When he’s given more than 30 seconds to speak, Yoo’s scholarly command of history — coupled with calm confidence and a terrific sense of humor — are completely disarming. Which is why Jon Stewart failed miserably at giving his hungry “progressive” audience Yoo’s head on a platter.

A sample:

More excerpts here.

The scathing reviews by the liberal blogosphere prompted Stewart to apologize.

Better penance: Stewart should take Yoo’s class. He’s obviously got a lot more to learn from the professor.

On August 26, my syndicated column blasted the ACLU for its spying operation on undercover CIA agents. The pictures of covert American CIA officers – “in some cases surreptitiously taken outside their homes” – were shown to jihadi suspects tied to the 9/11 attacks in order to identify the interrogators.

The ACLU responded to my column here, defending their paparazzi operation as both legal and ethical and attacking me as — wait for it — “insensitive” to the “due process” needs of jihadi enemy combatants.

Have you heard a peep from ACLU supporters about the group’s special spying project on undercover CIA agents? Me neither. It’s the subject of my syndicated column this week. IBD has an excellent editorial. Few other MSM papers have weighed in.

ACLU: Spying for America’s enemies
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2009

Savor the silence of America’s self-serving champions of privacy. For once, the American Civil Liberties Union has nothing bad to say about the latest case of secret domestic surveillance. Because it is the ACLU that committed the spying.

Last week, the Washington Post reported on a new Justice Department inquiry into photographs of undercover CIA officials and other intelligence personnel taken by ACLU-sponsored researchers assisting the defense team of Guatanamo Bay detainees. According to the report, the pictures of covert American CIA officers – “in some cases surreptitiously taken outside their homes” – were shown to jihadi suspects tied to the 9/11 attacks in order to identify the interrogators.

The ACLU undertook the so-called “John Adams Project” with the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers – last seen crusading for convicted jihadi assistant Lynne Stewart. She’s the far Left lawyer who helped jailed 1993 World Trade Center bombing/NY landmark bombing plot mastermind Omar Abdel-Rahman smuggle coded messages of Islamic violence from the imprisoned sheik to outside followers in violation of an explicit pledge to abide by her client’s court-ordered isolation.

The ACLU’s team used lists and data from “human rights groups,” European researchers and news organizations who were involved in “[t]racking international CIA-chartered flights” and monitoring hotel phone records. Working from a witch hunt list of 45 CIA employees, the ACLU team then tailed and photographed agency employees or obtained other photos from public records.

And then they showed the images to suspected al Qaeda operatives implicated in murdering 3,000 innocent men, women, and children on American soil.

Where is the concern for the safety of these American officers and their families? Where’s the outrage from all the indignant supporters of former CIA agent Valerie Plame, whose name was leaked by Bush State Department official Richard Armitage to the late Robert Novak? Lefties swung their nooses for years over the disclosure, citing federal laws prohibiting the sharing of classified information and proscribing anyone from unauthorized exposure of undercover intelligence agents.

ACLU executive director Anthony Romero refused to comment on Project CIA Paparazzi and instead whined some more about the evil Bush/CIA interrogators. Left-wing commentators and distraction artists are dutifully up in arms about such “inhumane” tactics as blowing cigar smoke in the faces of Gitmo detainees. But it’s Romero blowing unconscionable smoke:

“We are confident that no laws or regulations have been broken as we investigated the circumstances of the torture of our clients and as we have vigorously defended our clients’ interests,” he told the Post. “Rather than investigate the CIA officials who undertook the torture, they are now investigating the military lawyers who have courageously stepped up to defend these clients in these sham proceedings.”

Courage? What tools and fools these jihadi-enablers be. Civil liberties opportunism is literally a part of the al Qaeda handbook. A terrorist manual seized in a Manchester, England raid in 2005 advised operatives: “At the beginning of the trial … the brothers must insist on proving that torture was inflicted on them by state security before the judge. Complain of mistreatment while in prison.” Jihadi commanders rehearsed the lines with their foot soldiers “to ensure that they have assimilated it.”

Since 9/11, the selective champions of privacy have recklessly blabbed about counterterrorism operations, endangered the lives of military and intelligence officials at Gitmo, and undermined national security through endless litigation. They accused Bush immigration officials of xenophobia for pursuing visa overstayers from jihadi-friendly countries. They accused local law enforcement, FBI, and other homeland security officials of “racial profiling” for placing heightened scrutiny on mosques and jihadi-linked charities.

Now, caught red-handed blowing the cover of CIA operatives, they shrug their shoulders and dismiss it as “normal” research on behalf of “our clients.”

But don’t you dare question their love of country. Spying to stop the next 9/11 is treason, you see. Spying to stop enhanced interrogation on Gitmo detainees is patriotic. And endangering America on behalf of international human rights is the ultimate form of leftist dissent.

Can’t say I’m getting all wee-weed up about the DOJ disclosure today that Bush/CIA interrogators threatened 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed’s family (info that isn’t even new.)

Nope. No tears.

How about you?

Flashback: 9/11 Children

Flashback: Angels on loan from God

Via Sgt. Tim Sumner, photos of the angel children murdered on 9/11:

Lan astaslem: Arabic for “I will not submit/surrender”

***

Distraction time:

The US attorney general is set to name a special prosecutor to probe CIA interrogators suspected of having violated anti-torture laws, US media said Monday.

Eric Holder, America’s top law enforcement official, will name veteran justice department prosecutor John Durham to examine nearly a dozen cases of potential violations, according to the Washington Post.

…Obama has previously ruled that terror interrogators acting on legal guidelines written by the Bush administration after the September 11 attacks in 2001 should not face prosecution.

The buck stops with Obama, except when it’s politically inexpedient:

Leaders at the Justice Department and the intelligence community have clashed this year over the release of sensitive interrogation memos, military photographs of detainee abuse and how to handle the cases of more than 200 detainees at the prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Holder’s decision could complicate the Justice Department’s relationship with the White House, where President Obama has repeatedly expressed a desire to move forward from the national security controversies of the Bush administration. Deputy White House press secretary Bill Burton told reporters Monday that the president had complete faith in Holder and that the decision whether to launch an investigation was the attorney general’s sole prerogative.

“The White House supports the attorney general making the decisions on who gets prosecuted and investigated,” Burton said.

***

Update: Left-wing letdown over CIA abuse report distraction.

Hype and change…the subject.

F-bomb alert!

ABC News reports profanity-laced screaming matches between CIA director Leon Panetta and the White House (via HA Headlines). You might say he’s a bit wee-weed up:

A “profanity-laced screaming match” at the White House involving CIA Director Leon Panetta, and the expected release today of another damning internal investigation, has administration officials worrying about the direction of its newly-appoint intelligence team, current and former senior intelligence officials tell ABC News.com.

Amid reports that Panetta had threatened to quit just seven months after taking over at the spy agency, other insiders tell ABCNews.com that senior White House staff members are already discussing a possible shake-up of top national security officials.

“You can expect a larger than normal turnover in the next year,” a senior adviser to Obama on intelligence matters told ABCNews.com.

…According to intelligence officials, Panetta erupted in a tirade last month during a meeting with a senior White House staff member. Panetta was reportedly upset over plans by Attorney General Eric Holder to open a criminal investigation of allegations that CIA officers broke the law in carrying out certain interrogation techniques that President Obama has termed “torture.”

See pp. 104-106 of Culture of Corruption.

More from ABCNews:

In addition to concerns about the CIA’s reputation and its legal exposure, other White House insiders say Panetta has been frustrated by what he perceives to be less of a role than he was promised in the administration’s intelligence structure. Panetta has reportedly chafed at reporting through the director of National Intelligence, Dennis Blair, according to the senior adviser who said Blair is equally unhappy with Panetta. “Leon will be leaving,” predicted a former top U.S. intelligence official, citing the conflict with [DNI Dennis] Blair. The former official said Panetta is also “uncomfortable” with some of the operations being carried out by the CIA that he did not know about until he took the job.

Flashback: Panetta on torture in the Washington Monthly.

Once more: So much for the Greatest Transition in World History!

***

Left-wing blogs are buzzing about the White House release later today of an internal CIA report on torture that Panetta fought to limit:

With the Obama administration set later today to release an internal CIA report on torture, director Leon Panetta is preemptively defending his agency, claiming that CIA personnel simply followed the legal guidelines they were given.

In a message to agency employees — but in fact intended for the reporters to whom it was sent moments ago — Panetta called the information contained in the 2004 report “old news.” He pointed out that the CIA referred cases of abuse to DOJ for prosecution. And he noted: “The Agency sought and received multiple written assurances that its methods were lawful.”

And this from the left-wing WaPo “Plum Line” blog:

The CIA today will release the two documents Dick Cheney requested this spring that he claims will prove torture worked.

I’ve also confirmed that the CIA will release a declassified version of the chapter in the CIA Inspector General’s 2004 report that’s widely expected to conclude that there’s no proof torture foiled any attacks.

What this means: The debate over whether torture worked is going to flare up in a big way today — and there may be a strong blast of evidence knocking down Cheney’s claims.

A source familiar with the situation confirmed that the above documents will be released. Over the weekend, news reports said this was “expected.” The two documents Cheney asked for date to 2004 and 2005, one of which may detail what top Al Qaeda official Khalid Muhammad revealed under torture.

The 2004 CIA I.G. report’s chapter on effectiveness, meanwhile, was reported to conclude that “it is difficult to determine conclusively whether interrogations provided information critical to interdicting specific imminent attacks.” The release of the full chapter could tell us lots more along these lines.

The source said the released materials will have some redactions, but we’ll definitely know more by the end of today than we do right now. Gonna get interesting.

But the left won’t call it a “climate of hate.” They’re just exercising their free speech.

***

Commenter Ragspierre: “Replace the name of Yoo with any abortion provider, and ask what the consequence would be…”

Last week, liberal blogs went ga-ga over radio talk show host Mancow’s waterboarding stunt.

Matthew Yglesias wet his pants. He featured Mancow’s photo and the blaring headline: “Conservative Radio Host Has Himself Waterboard to Prove It’s Not Torture, Realizes He Was Wrong.”

MSNBC and HuffPo embraced him. Ezra Klein at the Washington Post piled on. So did Jonathan Chait: “I think the torture debate would be mighty different if more of the conservatives who scoff at waterboarding would try the same thing.”

And Think Progress. And Andrew Sullivan.

And on and on and on.

Now, there’s a paper trail that suggests the glaringly obvious — that it was all an elaborate hoax, reportedly orchestrated with the help of Jerry Springer’s publicist.

Time for B.S. detector tune-ups, people. Next time, libs, don’t be so eager to hype a veteran radio entertainer crying “torture.”

You’re the ones who end up all wet.

***

Linda Shafran, publicist for Mancow and Springer among other celebs, e-mails the following statement:

BORED BLOGGERS ARE ALL WET
By Mancow Muller May 29, 2008

I am not a magician. Many news cameras were there!

Obviously, it was on the radio and I wasn’t in prison. I’m also not a radicalized Muslim terrorist. But it was not a hoax! I repeat: NOT A HOAX.

We kept telling management, the insurance companies, and the local Chicago cops we weren’t really going to do it – until we did. Otherwise, they weren’t gonna let us do it! We got a U.S. Marine that told us he had studied how to do it and he volunteered to waterboard me in return for a mention of his charity.

I was on a decline and I was waterboarded. Was I in chains? No. Does that make it less real? I am failing to get the point attempted by my detractors. We never claimed it was an exact recreation.

The CIA technique is exactly what we did:

1. Keep the chest elevated above the head and neck to keep the lungs “above the waterline.”
2. Incline the head, both to keep the throat open and to present the nostrils for easier filling.
3. Force the mouth open so that water can be poured into both the nose and mouth.
Sorry, I thought for years it wasn’t torture and now I do. The video is there for all to see.

The left has taken my message and distorted it as well. Would I wanterboard to save my daughters (or any American children)? Yes!

The three terrorists that were waterboarded at Guantanamo were done so by military professionals. And it was done to save lives with America’s best interests at heart. Mine was a silly radio time filler in comparison. Its apples & hand grenades!

It would be insane to equate what I did with anything that happens in prison. I am simply a free man in a radio studio that always tries to get inside the big issues. This is an ugly issue with no easy answers. But I now see it’s easier for some to dismiss me than to do any real soul searching on this very heady issue.

Shorter Obama:

I am against preventive detention (Bush’s), except when I am for it (mine).

I am for transparency (“torture/”interrogation memos), except when I am against it (“torture/”interrogation photos).

I am against the power to order enhanced interrogation techniques, except when I assume that power myself.

I am against “extended re-litigation of the last eight years,” except when I am doing it.

These are not contradictory, Obama tells us. They are judicious cases of striking a balance between civil liberties and national security.

Perfect: Dan Collins dubs it “Dance of the Sugarplum Failure.”

The House Republicans are not letting up on Nancy Pelosi. Good.

GOP House Leader Boehner says put up the evidence that the CIA lied or apologize:

And the House GOP Conference is pounding the Democratic culture of corruption: “Tonight, House Republican Conference Secretary John Carter will lead Special Orders live on CSPAN to review where we are to date on action into alleged ethics violations by Charlie Rangel, John Murtha, Alan Mollohan, and now the Speaker herself.”

As I’ve said before, rebranding the corruptocrat Dems is a far more effective strategy than sending out the same old loser Beltway Republicans to “rebrand” the GOP.

***

Eh. Mike Huckabee tries his hand at anti-Nan Pelosi poetry.

But nothing beats Treacher’s Pelosiku.

We had dueling press conferences this morning with Nancy Pelosi accusing the Bush CIA of lying to her about waterboarding and House GOP leader John Boehner defending the integrity of the briefers.

Pelosi had a particularly frozen look on her face throughout her presser as she repeated the “Bush lied about Iraq” mantra to justify her own inaction:

“They mislead us all the time,” she said. And when a reporter asked whether the agency lied, she did not disagree.

She also suggested that the current Republican criticism marked an attempt to divert attention from the Bush administration’s actions.

“They misrepresented every step of the way, and they don’t want that focus on them, so they try to turn the focus on us,” she said.

Projection: It’s what’s for breakfast.

If Pelosi were so incensed about how the CIA misled her, why wasn’t this her response to news of the 2002 briefing a week ago?

Blink, blink.

Pelosi issued a renewed call for a “truth commission.”

Boehner’s response: “Let’s put it all on the table.”

Other Dems (including Harry Reid, who opposes the “truth commission” as, um, a distraction) aren’t happy about where this dangerous blame game might take them.

William Jacobson analyzes the Dems’ lack of a waterboarding exit strategy and concludes:

Here’s my prediction of what will happen if Democrats push the investigation to the bitter end causing damage to national security, a political death match with the CIA, and Democrat-on-Democrat finger pointing:

Steny Hoyer, Speaker; Jane Harman, Majority Leader; Nancy Pelosi, Chair of the House sub-committee on fresh water fisheries; Republicans, unexpected gains in 2010 mid-term elections.

The Democrats wished hard for an investigation into waterboarding and other interrogation methods. They may have wished too hard, because they are about to get what they wished for, with no way out.

Well, well, well.

Reality bites the White House in the ass, again.

From the administration that was against military tribunals before they were for them and which flip-flopped on a “truth commission” after a public backlash comes the decision to bail on the ACLU and fight the release of detainee “torture” photos after signaling last month that it would distribute them.

WaPo reports on the White House’s newly-discovered “great concern” about the photos.

Allahpundit et al. saw it coming yesterday.

Will Medea Benjamin and the Code Pink screechers be trailing Obama at his next dinner engagement yelling “WAR CRIMINAL” at The Fallen One?

***

Lorie Byrd: “I don’t understand how Obama argues that these pictures would endanger the troops, but that the “torture memos” he released did not. I have to wonder if he now believes he should not have released those memos. If he does regret it, is it because of national security concerns or politics?”

Andy McCarthy yesterday: “If President Obama wanted to refrain from releasing these photos in order to protect the military forces he commands or promote the security of Americans — his two highest obligations as president — he could do so by simply issuing an executive order. The applicable statute expressly allows for it, just as it provides for Congress — now in the firm control of the president and his party — to withhold the photos from disclosure.”

Well?