Amidst the heated ongoing national debate over healthcare reform, the Obama administration last week took aim at the CIA and pulled the trigger. Attorney General Eric Holder appointed a special prosecutor to review cases involving CIA contractors; and President Obama relieved the CIA of responsibility for high-value detainee interrogations and gave it to a multi-agency task force reporting to the National Security Council (NSC). In doing so, they seriously wounded the Agency and reenergized the national debate over how it interrogated high-value terrorists after 9/11. If this is about America’s moral compass, as the president has often phrased it, is he and are we reading it correctly?

CIA Director Leon Panetta’s profane outburst at Rahm Emanuel, if the reports are true, when he confronted the White House chief of staff following these two decisions, is understandable. Morale at the CIA hasn’t been this low since the Church-Committee investigations. Obama’s and Holder’s decisions are a clear vote of no confidence in the CIA and its director.

Unless new information has come to light, and there’s no reason to believe it has, Holder’s action is unnecessary if not counterproductive. In 2004, the CIA provided an un-redacted copy of its self-initiated Office of the General Counsel “Review of Counterterrorism and Detention Activities” to both the Senate and House Intelligence Committees and to the Department of Justice. Career Justice attorneys found insufficient evidence to pursue prosecution in all but one case.

Obama administration critics, former Vice President Dick Cheney in particular, believe it’s beating up on the CIA for political purposes. Obama is under great pressure from the anti-war left in the Democratic Party and Congress to go after CIA interrogators and the Bush administration officials whose policies they executed. Obama knows he’ll have to compromise on healthcare reform, they argue, and he’s just placating the left with another not-so-subtle attempt to use the CIA, Bush, and Cheney as he so successfully used them during the campaign and the first months of his administration.

Perhaps they’re correct. If so, that’s unfortunate; but it works against Obama with the majority of Americans--including politically critical independent voters--who believe the use of enhanced interrogation techniques on al Qaeda detainees were justified. This has more to do with America's political compass than its moral one, but they're not unrelated.

Regardless of how many Americans disagree with President Obama when he says America lost its moral compass during the Bush administration, the passion to oppose him on his counterterrorism policies, like many are doing on healthcare reform, just isn’t there. The mood of the nation is dramatically different than it was after 9/11. There’s no sense of urgency.

It’s been eight years since the US was attacked. As the CIA IG review points out, we have successfully thwarted numerous al Qaeda plots to attack the US, but rather than heighten Americans perception of the threat, those successes have lulled us into complacency. The US has been at war in Afghanistan and Iraq most of that time, and the country is war weary. Americans are far more concerned about the state of the US economy, deficits, and healthcare reform than they are about another terrorist attack on the United States.

As for the debate over how the CIA and the Bush administration interrogated Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his colleagues, it’s an important one we should have. Reasonable people can disagree over what constitutes torture, whether we should use coercion of any kind to obtain information from high-value terrorist detainees, and whether we should try them in US courts or military tribunals. As we continue to have that debate, with 9/11 receding even further in the rearview mirror of history, we must be exceedingly careful how we read America’s collective moral compass.

As those who support what the CIA and the Bush administration did after 9/11 point out, America’s actions in World War II make enhanced interrogation techniques look like child’s play. We firebombed cities, dropped atomic bombs, killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people, and used harsh interrogation techniques on the battlefield and elsewhere. We did all this to save millions of lives. Americans revere the people who did these things as national heroes not war criminals.

The CIA has had its ups and downs over the years, and many past criticisms of the Agency have been justified. What we learned from past experiences, however, is that overreaction damages the agency and diminishes US intelligence collection capabilities. That makes us all vulnerable. We remain a nation at war. We can not afford an emasculated CIA. President Obama should strengthen, not weaken it.

When we capture top terrorist leaders who have information that will allow us to thwart mass-casualty attacks we must use every effort within the law to obtain that information. The President of the United States must have the authority, if he does not already have it, to authorize coercive interrogation techniques when he determines their use is necessary to protect the American people.

The time is fast approaching when terrorists will acquire a nuclear, chemical, or biological device that could kill tens of thousand of Americans. Such a strike in Washington, DC, or New York City could leave the United States forever changed. Terrorists can’t be deterred, they must be stopped. The president and Congress must ensure that we have the strongest, most effective intelligence capability possible with all the necessary tools at their disposal.