It only makes sense ... if we don't interogate, we don't gain valuable intelligence that can prevent future attacks. The value of intel is often cumulative and, over time, the lack of it leaves us more and more vulnerable. Yet the concept apparently means little to the Obama administration and its leftist political base that somehow believe that 'droning' terrorists to death is less offensive to those infamous Muslim sensitivities than 'Gitmoing' them and gaining intelligence to prevent future attacks. In other words, Obama has avoided those 'vexing detention issues' that so concern his base by depriving terrorists of all of whatever rights they may have -- by killing them.

Bill Gertz reports:

The Obama administration has taken the CIA "out of the business" of interrogating high-value terrorists and the lack of data is endangering the U.S. security, according to former CIA counterterrorism chief Jose A. Rodriguez.

nce or military personnel capture a senior terror leader today, no system is in place or facilities set up where he could be questioned, said the 31-year agency veteran who was awarded several medals for his intelligence work before retiring in 2007.

"We are out of the business of doing that," he said of terrorist leader interrogations in an interview with the Free Beacon. "We don't have anywhere to take them. If you capture a high-value target outside the war zone, where [are] you going to take them? They are not taking prisoners in Guantanamo, [and] the black sites have been closed."Much more here.

As is later pointed out in Gertz' piece, when we over-rely on drone strikes, we miss out on the intelligence, and right now we are still living off the intelligence that was collected over the first eight or nine years of post-9/11. At some point, likely sooner than later, we're going to be needing information regarding the actual status of al Qaeda, and what they are thinking, and what they are planning, and what their intentions are. As time goes on we are increasing less secure and more likely to pay a price for the lack of intelligence.

Simply put, although ridding the earth of Islamic terrorists is most definitely a good thing, just killing the bastards from a distance provides us no actionable intelligence, whatsoever. It destroys possible evidence that was at or near the target, and it sacrifices the long-term strategic planning that comes with that intelligence for shortsighted political expediency. Had we launched drone strikes on the likes of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abu Zubaydah instead of interrogating them, we would have never been able to nab bin Laden.

Related: John Yoo: Obama, Drones and Thomas Aquinas