Just wanna make sure I have this straight. A federal Grand Jury has found probable cause to believe Ahmed Omar Abu Ali was conspiring to murder the President of the United States, and the New York Times is worried about … why we didn’t bring Ahmed home sooner. Just want to make sure I was clear on that.
BTW, the Times’s whining about interrogation is misplaced. To the extent it is suggesting that the interrogations amounted to torture which we tolerated in the hope of gleaning statements that could be used to convict people like Abu Ali, that’s absurd. Under federal law, statements elicited by torture are absolutely inadmissible for any purposes — they would not have helped in any trial, and might well be damaging to the government’s case since juries do not like it when people are tortured.
To the extent the Times is contending that the interrogations have been an abject failure, they have absolutely no way of knowing that. The fruits of the interrogations are classified (and even where not classified are not made public and are protected from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act).
As for the lame-o bit at the end about “America’s conscience,” what the Times is talking about is the Times’s conscience. It is fine that they have one, but they really ought to stop pretending that what is thought on West 43d Street is reflective of what is thought in the rest of America.