Page 44 - Point Two News Today

Men all devoted, capable oh o fixeofficials shouldnt have to look over their shoulder and worry if they follow the orders of this president to carry out this interrogation program that at some point down the road it there is a change in policy and that they can expect to be prosecuted. >> chris: i want to change subjects with you. is it conceivable to you that no one in the pakistani government knew that bin laden was in that compound in that very sensitive area 30 miles from the capital and wha...

That it leads directly to the murder of osama bin laden seems petty and seems an attempt to diminish president obama -- >> let me finish this point. you know what, so what if we got information by means of torturing people. as president obama and we heard this morning from tom donilon it is not in our values to pull out peoples teeth and eye balls and secondly, you know what, we could get that information in other ways. >> chris: you mat made that po, bill, go ahead. >> eric holder suggested for...

100 members of al-qaeda in afghanistan and given the fact that you have had more threats, more attacks or attempted attacks on the u.s. homeland yemen in the last year than from afghanistan, does it make sense to keep 100,000 troops on the ground in afghanistan. >> brainal foal of our he for the is the strategic beneat at al-qaeda an and we took a big p towards that on sunday night. first point. second point is we also have ss a goal not to have afghanistan come again a safe haven or place where...

No single piece of intelligence led to this. david, thats not the way this works. over time, you have professionals combing through this, and the case goes cold and it heats up again, right, you know -- >> but the specific point, did harsh interrogation help in the effort to ultimately identify where he was? >> no single piece of intelligence led to this. now, we had intelligence -- >> but both things could be true. >> yes, but -- >> answer my question. did harsh interrogations help in the hunt ...

This, david, and you know me well enough to know im not going to say anything i havent had a chance to study at this point, right? were just starting to go through this large cache of information and well learn as we go along. well have, hopefully, information about our ability to additionally attack and strategically defeat al qaeda, but if we develop any information about planning or imminent threats, obviously, we will act on this. but it is important, it is important that osama bin laden -- ...

Military town, where they had an important military academy. this needs to be investigated. the pakistanis have said theyre going to investigate this. this is a very big issue in pakistan right now. how could this have happened in pakistan? we need to investigate it. we need to work with the pakistanis, and were pressing them on this, and the intelligence, by the way -- >> if we find out that pakistan harbored osama bin laden, what are the consequences? >> well, i dont want to speculate with res...

Office he decided to intensify efforts against al-qaedaed including globally. we intense fitded the efforts and had a tremendous amount of success in pressuring the organization and we have institutions like apap. >> chris: libya where the war between quaddafi and the rebels seem to be at a stalemate. they defended the presidents decision to turn over the lead of this operation to nato. here was the comment. obdz may be moving towards -- obama may be moving towards something resembling a dock st...

Assault last sunday that osama bin laden was not just a symbolic leader of al-qaeda. in fact, he had operational and strategic roles that he was playing and that is clear in the information that we have been able to see to date. >> chris: you talk about that information. has any one been caught, has any operation been stopped because of the information you picked up last night? >> i dont really want to comment on that at this point. >> chris: the administration released video this weekend of bin...

Believe that the military leadership had any foreknowledge that bin laden was there. thats the key question, isnt it? >> yes, and i think the information they have is stronger. they have really good, solid intelligence that the president of pakistan, zardari, the head military officer and the head of the intelligence service, general pasha, did not know in advance, and they are the key elements here, but donilon also said something very important. there was a support structure there in pakistan ...

That didnt have the ability to integrate information and to act on it in a timely way. both presidents deserve a lot of credit for maturing the apparatus over ten years to the point that, as tom donilon said, the president could have confidence that this apparatus would work, taking the intelligence, operationalizing it, moving it in realtime. all the pieces of that are part of the puzzle. some of them some people will like, some of them people wont like, but its the totality that gave this pres...