Obama Used Policies He Opposed to Get bin Laden

There are a lot of people on the right making note of the fact that in order to get bin Laden Obama had to use many policies he opposed and decried back when he was Candidate Obama (and even in the early days of his presidency). A lot of things Obama told us didn't work...worked.  Michael Barone lists a few:

While we may not know all the details about and behind this operation, it's fascinating to see how many of the things that made the success of this operation possible were not so long ago decried by many of the president's fans and fellow partisans.

For one thing, it apparently would not have happened without those infamous enhanced interrogation techniques -- "torture," according to critics of the Bush administration.

The enhanced interrogation techniques reportedly led to identification of the courier who eventually led our forces to bin Laden's hiding place. Critics of waterboarding and other enhanced interrogation techniques assured us that "torture" could not produce reliable information.

They were probably right that sometimes such techniques yield false information. But the bin Laden operation shows that they can also produce actionable intelligence.

You may remember that many Democrats called for criminal prosecution of CIA interrogators who were acting under orders vetted by legal counsel. Attorney General Eric Holder actually considered bringing such prosecutions.

Fortunately he decided not to do so -- fortunately for the individuals involved but fortunately also for his own reputation. Who would want to be known for prosecuting the people who helped track down bin Laden?

It has also been reported that in hunting down bin Laden our forces relied on intercepted communications. I wonder if any of them included contacts between suspected terrorists abroad and persons in the United States.

This was the "domestic wiretapping" revealed to great acclaim by the New York Times and presented as an intolerable infringement of civil liberties. Given what we know now, it's a good thing our folks were tuning in.

Obama deserves credit also for employing the Navy SEALs who are part of the Joint Special Operations Command. It was fashionable a few years ago to call the JSOC Cheney's death squad and Cheney's assassination team.

Read the whole thing.