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Jeb Bush Campaign Press Release - Jeb Bush: Reverse President Obama's Risky Counterterrorism Policies

December 09, 2015

Jeb Bush understands that the threat of radical Islamic terrorism has grown while President Obama's policies have undermined our national security and the security of our allies.

Under President Obama's failed leadership, the U.S. intelligence community is increasingly overburdened and underfunded. At the same time, we are struggling to respond to our adversaries' technical advances and damaging leaks of sensitive information.

The cornerstone of any effective military, counterterrorism or homeland security effort is ensuring accurate, timely and actionable intelligence. As president, Governor Bush would immediately reverse constraints imposed on our intelligence community by the Obama Administration, including:

  • PDD-28, a Presidential Decision Directive that restricts overseas intelligence collection and imposes other White House-directed, self-imposed restrictions on our intelligence community.
  • Obama's Presidential Policy Guidance (PPG) regarding counterterrorism that imposes an overly bureaucratic approach to targeting foreign terrorists overseas. This guidance is emblematic of the Obama Administration's flawed approach to counterterrorism that has ignored growing terrorist safe havens and proliferating threats while reducing effectiveness through risk-averse rules of engagement.

Governor Bush would also immediately call for Congress to fully reauthorize the USA PATRIOT Act's counterterrorist metadata program to allow the intelligence community to connect the dots between foreign terrorists and potential operatives in the United States, and to make permanent other key provisions of the PATRIOT Act that increase our ability to monitor terrorist communications.

This important and carefully overseen program appropriately protected both privacy and civil liberties. If we abandon our technological advantages over our determined enemies, we are putting the safety we hold most dear at risk. If we identify or capture an ISIS terrorist in Syria, we should have the tools to determine if they've been communicating with someone in Sacramento.

Under President Obama, our enemies do not fear us, and our allies do not trust us. Governor Bush would also move to restore intelligence liaison relationships with allies and partners overseas that have atrophied during the Obama Administration. Now more than ever, we need to enhance our intelligence cooperation with partners, both in the Middle East and Europe. Neither law enforcement at home nor special operators in the field can effectively keep America safe without adequate intelligence capabilities, and Governor Bush intends to make restoring America's intelligence community a top priority.

America will not be safe if we only play defense. Governor Bush believes that in addition to bolstering our defenses at home, we must take the fight to the terrorists who have declared war on us and our way of life. In his August speech at the Reagan Library, he proposed a comprehensive strategy to abandon President Obama's failed incrementalism and destroy ISIS and discredit its radical ideology.

Jeb Bush is the only candidate in the race who has outlined serious and substantive plans to destroy ISIS, restore the American military and reverse President Obama's risky counterterrorism policies.

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Jeb Bush, Jeb Bush Campaign Press Release - Jeb Bush: Reverse President Obama's Risky Counterterrorism Policies Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/312711

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