Morning Bell: Top Six Reasons We Got Osama bin Laden

James Carafano / May 04, 2011

Taking down Osama bin Laden was an achievement resulting from a culmination of a decade of national security policy. Soft power and diplomacy helped along the way, but it was hard power and military might that made it possible. President George W. Bush put the correct policies in place, including the PATRIOT Act, Gitmo and increased intelligence gathering. President Barack Obama was wise to continue executing many of the same strategies. Here are the main reasons we were able to take him out.

#1. We Invaded Afghanistan. Anyone who is a hunter knows you have to flush game out before you bag it. It often works the same way with terrorists. The Taliban refused to give up bin Laden because the two groups were joined at the hip and saw Afghanistan as just the first step in building bin Laden’s worldwide terrorist empire—pushing him out was job #1.

#2. We Set Up Gitmo. When the full story of the long war against terrorism is told, we will learn that detaining and interrogating enemy combatants was a critical tool in winning the war. Indeed, we have found that when we released Gitmo detainees, many of them went back to the battlefield. There are already reports that detainees through lawful interrogations provided key intelligence cues that helped tracked down bin Laden. CIA Director Leon Panetta told NBC News yesterday that “enhanced interrogation techniques” were used to extract information that led to the mission’s success. (more…)