Obama will be responsible for the next attack on the U.S.

from The National Review
May 19, 2009

The CIA's Methods Have Changed; Will the Results?

Tucked in the bottom of page A4 of the Washington Post, about the CIA "worrying about its future":

Another intelligence official, who also asked not to be identified, said waterboarding and other harsh techniques "were meant to get hardened terrorists to a point where they were willing to answer questions." That capability, the official said, "is now gone."

As a nation, we are placing our bet that these techniques are not necessary to get useful intelligence about al-Qaeda and the attacks it plans. If nothing happens, then the critics of these techniques will be vindicated; the proof will be in the pudding, so to speak.

But if there is another attack on American soil in the coming years, people will notice that we had no successful attacks on U.S. soil for more than seven years. And then we changed to a new administration, which changed the way our intelligence agencies operate. And then the results changed.

The public would not be unreasonable to conclude that there is a correlation there.