Tony Camerino still clinging to his own lies

In his latest missive at VoteVet’s VetsVoice, Anthony Camerino (aka Matthew Alexander) dismisses a Washington Post op-ed piece by Michael V. Hayden because of Camerino’s perception of the Bush Administration’s policy of treating terrorists as terrorists;

Jumping on the bandwagon of fear-mongering and criticizing the Justice Department’s handling of Abdulmullatab is Hayden’s method for shielding against the Justice Department’s investigation of war crimes committed by CIA agents, which may ultimately lead to the top.

Camerino thinks that Abdulmullatab should be treated as a criminal instead of a soldier in the war against America because it “shames” him and “shames” al Qaeda. Is Camerino so naive that he thinks that these Stone Age thugs are influenced by shame? That we can win the war against terrorists by shaming them into submission?

Hayden writes;

We got it wrong in Detroit on Christmas Day. We allowed an enemy combatant the protections of our Constitution before we had adequately interrogated him. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab is not “an isolated extremist.” He is the tip of the spear of a complex al-Qaeda plot to kill Americans in our homeland.

In the 50 minutes the FBI had to question him, agents reportedly got actionable intelligence. Good. But were there any experts on al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in the room (other than Abdulmutallab)? Was there anyone intimately familiar with any National Security Agency raw traffic to, from or about the captured terrorist? Did they have a list or photos of suspected recruits?

Of course, Hayden is right, there were no al Qaeda experts in the room when Abdulmutallab – he admits the limitations of not having an experienced team. So how does Camerino respond?

Perhaps Hayden lacks perspective of never having been on the ground in the Middle East and working with Arabs or Muslims.

Seems to me Camerino should have been outraged that interrogators like him, with a measure of experience in interrogating jihadists, weren’t doing the work they’re trained to do. Instead, Camerino claims Hayden doesn’t have the experience to judge the situation.

It’s hard to give credence to someone who authorized war crimes, repeatedly, or who’s actions (the torture and abuse of detainees) resulted in thousands of new recruits for Al Qaida, costing us the lives of American troops on the ground.

It’s even harder to give credence to someone who hides behind a pseudonym and makes outrageous claims like our strategy against terrorists creates terrorists with no real evidence other than the word of a few terrorists avoiding questions from an interrogator with less than four months of experience in the field.

Category: Antiwar crowd, Military issues, Terror War, Usual Suspects