the war will resume, and they assume they will ultimately defeat the government already in kabul. so they have no incentive to concede anything. and i think karzai was absolutely right to blow up over what happened yesterday because it was a sheer propaganda move. it was a way in which the rebels, the taliban, were claiming the legitimacy of the government of the priest one, the pre-9/11 government, and obama in a clip that you showed earlier on the show dismissed it as a couple of words on a wall. i mean, doesn t he understand this is all about who s a legitimate government? to dismiss it as a couple of words is to misunderstand exactly why the rebels are coming to the table. it s to achieve legitimacy, to get equal status in the world with the karzai government, you have one choice in kabul, one choice in the taliban, and that is exactly what exactly what th
criminal mind set. pre-9/11, yeah, at a time when in fact the threat is changing. it is actually i would say metastasized and mutated but certainly not diminished. we ll get into that with mike baker a little bit later but let me get back to this because it seems to me, colonel, mcsally, that you are passionate and concerned that the president is not calling it a war on terror. with that in mind i would believe that many of our viewers agree with your position on that. a lot of our viewers also though are concerned about the drone program. right. arthel: so walk us through how, both are important. sure. absolutely. again, if we agree that it is legal for us to use lethal force, which, again the president put out the legal argument many years late yesterday, but i do believe it is legal by domestic an international law to use lethal force against terrorists abroad that are trying to kill americans. so if you decide it s legal and you decide it is good
and in fact, turning the ship around at the c.i.a., the c.i.a. has now since 9/11 been a paramilitary organization. as much as it is a spy-gathering, let s find secrets. it needs to be shifted very dramatically. and you ve got john brennan there, who has the president s complete alliance and trust. but this is a big deal. it is. the c.i.a., pre-9/11 was about strategic intelligence, targets like china and russia. and post 9/11 became a paramilitary force. and we have to say, an incredibly effective one. it is largely the c.i.a. that disrupted al qaeda overseas in places like pakistan. john brennan is an incredibly strong leader. he has the president s trust in the c.i.a., he knows that. john is going to reduce that effort towards counterterrorism to some extent and move it back towards the traditional intelligence roles that it really does need. agencies don t give back money. if we re not going to be involved in as big a drone war,
tolls from the terrorists they targeted dwarfed estimates of civilian kauscasualties. he made a renewed push to close guantanamo bay and asked congress to lift restrictions from gitmo and speed up the process of trials and military commissions and transferring detainees. a lot to chew on and we re going to start with congressman tho thornberry, a member of the house armed services and intelligence. congressman, what is your reaction? well, i thought it was interesting. when he was interrupted and went off-script the president said he s these are serious issues we can t gloss over and yet he s also seemed to say in the speech that we can finish defeating al qaeda and get back to a pre- 9/11 sort of mentality. well, that s kind of glossing over, i think, a lot of the details. even on guantanamo, he said if we are just committed to cloeing it we can work out the details later and what happens to people there and so forth. that s kind of glossing over what s been the hold-up.
of the terrorist attacks here in boston attacks just two weeks ago today. we re live herey square in boston where many are still asking if there was any way this tragedy could have been prevented. in our politics lead today we ask this question is this a case of intelligence failure? it s an issue splittingzr congress. it s a failure tohare information and missing obvious warning siphons. we re going back to the pre-9/11 stove piping. i don t think we ve seen any ofssues that predated 9/11. i think we ve fixed a lot of those problems. let s try to bak through this. is this just p spin another blame game in washington blame this party, blame that part 88,y or is there more to it? we ll take answers from someone who was respointelligence keeping the information, agencies. joining me from washington is ambassador thomas mcnamara, manager from 2006 to 2009 for the information sharing a law in