Fair-Weather Indeed

Ed Morrissey has a must-read post about the sudden collapse of support, tacit or otherwise, for aggressive interrogation methods used to gather much-needed intelligence.  From the post:

I have had a lot of criticism for the intel community, but in this case they have a real grievance. For three years after the 9/11 attacks, they got overwhelming criticism for their inability to "connect the dots" and stop the terrorist attack before it started. Some of that criticism was justified, but a lot of it related more to bureaucratic hurdles in allowing communication between law enforcement and intelligence agents, as well as interagency barriers that had long stood in the way of cooperative intelligence. Instead of addressing these issues, the 9/11 Commission surfed that wave of recrimination to establishing even more bureaucratic obstacles rather than streamlining intelligence.

The failure to connect the dots came from bureaucratic interference. Failure to collect dots came from a lack of resources and poor prioritization. In the case of the former, America demanded a much more robust effort to collect intel that could prevent another 9/11. The administration and its agencies responded with aggressive tactics that have prevented dozens of attacks and identified hundreds of terrorists abroad. For six years, despite the bloodthirsty appetites of our enemies, we have not suffered another attack on our soil, and not even one against our diplomatic or military assets around the world, save in Iraq.

What have we done to celebrate that success? We have newspapers like the New York Times exposing the programs that have kept us safe and that have identified and caught major terrorists before they could strike. We have people in Congress like Nancy Pelosi screaming for prosecutions against the agents and the administration for efforts she personally witnessed and to which she never objected until years later.

People wondered on 9/12 why our intel operatives were so risk-adverse. In 2007, the question answers itself. They conducted aggressive, effective national defense in 2002 with the enthusiastic support not just of the nation, but specifically of politicians in both parties, with no dissent whatsoever. In 2007, they risk prosecution for the actions they took in 2002.