Woman in anti-Obama ad complains president stopped torture

The ad was produced by Secure America Now (SAN), which describes its mission as supporting “policies that will protect our nation against terrorist infiltration, attack and capitulation to our enemies.” In it, a worried-looking woman sitting at her kitchen table begins by appealing to Americans’ fear of terrorism. “You know, it seems these days that not a single one of us steps on a train, boards an airplane, attends a concert or a sporting event and doesn’t have at least a fleeting concern that terror could strike,” she says as images of jetliners crashing into the World Trade Center play in the background. “The reality of the post-9/11 world is that we are at war, and we are a target. We all live with some level of uncertainty and fear.” She then goes on to slam President Barack Obama for “apologizing for America” for making it clear that “the era of American exceptionalism is over.” “He campaigned on closing Guantánamo,” she says, referring to the US military prison in Cuba where, alongside terrorists, hundreds of innocent men were knowingly imprisoned under President George W. Bush. “On his second day in office, he stopped enhanced interrogation,” the woman laments, referring to practices like waterboarding which even conservatives such as Bush-era Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, Bush Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell and 2008 GOP presidential nominee John McCain publicly admit are torture. The worried woman in the ad then criticizes Obama for “closing down the black sites,” the secret prisons around the world where terrorism suspects were imprisoned and tortured. But as the Associated Press reported last year, Obama’s executive order only applied to CIA secret prisons– the military still operates black sites in Afghanistan and, presumably, elsewhere. Dozens of War on Terror detainees imprisoned by the US at sites secret and not-so-secret have died in custody as a result of ‘enhanced interrogation’ and other abuse; ‘homicide’ was officially listed as the cause of many of their deaths. The woman in the ad also claims that President Obama has “all but abandoned Israel,” ignoring the fact that the US continues to give more than $3 billion in annual military aid to the Jewish state. In fact, just days ago the president announced an additional $70 million to help Israel fund it’s Iron Dome rocket defense system. She then accuses Iran of openly calling “for the annihilation of Israel,” something it has never done, and of developing nuclear weapons– an assertion that the White House, the Pentagon, US and Israeli intelligence officials and the International Atomic Energy Agency all say is false. “The question for every American is simply, are we safer?” the woman asks.