USS Cole Commander to Obama: You can’t keep screwing with the CIA and expect results

US Navy Commander Kirk Lippold was the commander of the USS Cole when it was attacked in Yemen in 2000, where 17 soldiers lost their lives when Al Qaeda blew a whole in our navy ship that was under his command. So when this man speaks about our response to terror, I listen. And he has some advice for Obama which I hope doesn’t go unheeded:

“First thing I’d tell him to do is keep Guantanamo Bay open. It is a functioning facility; it does an excellent job of keeping the detainees safely housed and off the battlefield. It also is a great intelligence gathering center and should be used for that purpose. That’s what it was setup and designed for when we initially went out and did that on the joint staff. That would be number one. Number two – I would tell him that the Military Commissions process works. We do not need to be giving KSM and everyone else constitutional rights and privileges that our troops on the battlefield are dying to give Americans that right and privilege for. So right off the bat we’ve got a facility that needs to stay open. We don’t need to make this a criminal action. The administration right now, you cannot sit there and create a mindset where we aren’t even going to call it a war on terror. We’re going to make the CIA the whipping boy for this administration because of their policies. We’re going to put some of its members under criminal investigation but then turn right around to that same agency and say ‘why aren’t you giving us the intelligence we need to perform’. It’s a demoralized organization right now that deserves better from the Command in Chief.


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