Headline: "CIA Held Qaeda Leader in Secret Jail for Months" -- Our reaction, rather than "Oh My God No!" needs to be, "Keep up the good work fellows."

From The New York Times:

The Central Intelligence Agency held a captured Qaeda leader in a secret prison since last fall and transferred him last week to the American military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, officials said Friday.

Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, an Iraqi Kurd who is said to have joined Al Qaeda in the late 1990s and ascended to become a top aide to Osama bin Laden, is the first terrorism suspect known to have been held in secret C.I.A. jails since President Bush announced the transfer of 14 captives to Guantánamo Bay last September.
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One fear of middle America is that our party is weak on national defense. Regardless of all the damage that George W. Bush and Cheney have done to our country in the past six years, this is still America, the greatest country in the world. And the C.I.A., despite the George Tenet years, has done one hell of a lot more good than harm.

Thus our party and our party leaders need to show confidence in our country's institutions, give such institutions the benefit of the doubt that they do know their mission and what they are about, and not automatically fall for the initial temptation to criticize, thinking it will be politically expedient to do so. Dividends will follow.