The intel that led to the taking-out of Osama was developed, at least in part, through prisoner interrogation. But Obama has changed everything in dealing with such prisoners. In Iraq, the Iraqis now hold all prisoners. In Afghanistan, I think there are several POW compounds run by the US military and several run by the Afghan security forces. Under Obama our military started keeping all captured enemy combatants in Afghanistan because of the uncertainty of using Gitmo. The CIA may still be doing its thing very quietly with any “high value” al-Qaeda or Taliban prisoners—but, since the CIA director is a political appointee with zero intel or ops experience, I doubt it.
The point: We are not capturing and holding and interrogating any high-value prisoners any more. Perhaps some detainees are handled by the Afghans–so they can make prison breaks and escape to fight us again. But indications are that we aren’t getting any intel ourselves from those detainees. Back in the day we heard about our allies picking up high-value detainees and turning them over to us for interrogation. Now all we hear is how this President is killing lots of Taliban/al-Qaeda– but nothing about prisoners.
Are there any high-value targets captured any more, or are they really just foot-soldiers? Something is wrong here.
