http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204524604576610600084278090.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop
With interrogations and even Guantanamo detention ‘off the table,’ drone strikes are the default option in our war against al Qaeda.
The elimination of Anwar al-Awlaki last week was a splendid achievement. Awlaki was a terror guidance counselor whose ghastly roster of alumni included two of the 9/11 hijackers, Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan, would-be Christmas Day underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, would-be Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad, and participants in more than a half dozen other terrorist incidents.
An American citizen fluent in English, Awlaki was a formidable recruiter and tactician. The attack on him also killed another American, Samir Khan, who barely a week ago published the seventh edition of a slick al Qaeda magazine called Inspire. Among its articles: an exhortation of readers to imitate the exploits of Hasan, and detailed instructions in how to build bombs.
It may be that capturing Awlaki and Khan wasn’t feasible logistically. But what could we have done had we captured them? Were they subjected to the interrogations techniques renounced by the Obama administration with great fanfare, they could have provided a wealth of intelligence on potential attacks and attackers.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), the admitted mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, is probably the most famous but certainly not the only captured terrorist to have broken following experience with these harsh techniques. Indeed the mere availability of that program caused at least one captured al Qaeda operative to cooperate once he learned he was in CIA custody, even though he didn’t know precisely what the harsh techniques entailed.
