Thomas Joscelyn
The Weekly Standard
Vol. 18, No. 25
3/11/2013
During a speech at the Woodrow Wilson Center on April 30, 2012, John Brennan, President Obama’s nominee to head the CIA, discussed “The Ethics and Efficacy of the U.S. President’s Counterterrorism Strategy.” Brennan explained that President Obama has “pledged to share as much information with the American people ‘so that they can make informed judgments and hold us accountable.’ ” Obama, he continued, “has consistently encouraged those of us on his national security team to be as open and candid as possible.” After all, “our democracy depends” upon “transparency.”
But nearly two years after the May 1, 2011, assault on Osama bin Laden’s compound, the Obama administration has made public just 17 documents out of the huge cache of information captured during that raid. U.S. intelligence officials tell The Weekly Standard that the vast collection includes “hundreds of thousands of documents and files.” Obama administration officials themselves have referred to the documents as a “treasure trove” the size of a “small college library.” Why hasn’t the public seen them?
One of the main reasons: John Brennan….
…Al Qaeda cannot be “on the path to defeat,” as President Obama repeatedly claimed during the 2012 presidential campaign, if bin Laden’s vision of terror lives on. That vision is outlined in bin Laden’s documents…
The complete article is at The Weekly Standard.
Related: Syrian rebels form exile government, await U.S. aid
Update: From Britain’s The Telegraph: Barack Obama a ‘dithering, controlling, risk-averse’ US president
Barack Obama is a “dithering” president whose controlling tendencies and extreme risk-averse attitude to foreign policy has damaged US interests in the Middle East, according to a new book by a senior former State Department adviser…
…Vali Nasr, a university professor who was seconded in 2009 to work with Richard Holbrooke, Mr Obama’s special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, records his profound disillusion at how a “Berlin Wall” of domestic-focused advisers was erected to protect Mr Obama…
…”I wrote this book to problematise the way Obama has approached this whole region, and that it is dangerous to disengage and confuse a low-level foreign policy with success in foreign policy,” he concluded.
“My hope is that Kerry will be able to do more, but it is still early. He’s definitely trying to create more US engagement, but there has to be a fundamental, strategic decision in the White House to reorientate our approach.”
Read the whole thing.
