Former Bush speechwriter Mark Thiessen wrote:

Less than 48 hours after taking office, Obama has begun dismantling those institutions without time for any such review. The CIA program he is effectively shutting down is the reason why America has not been attacked again after 9/11. He has removed the tool that is singularly responsible for stopping al-Qaeda from flying planes into the Library Tower in Los Angeles, Heathrow Airport, and London’s Canary Warf [sic], and blowing up apartment buildings in Chicago, among other plots. It’s not even the end of inauguration week, and Obama is already proving to be the most dangerous man ever to occupy the Oval Office. [emphasis mine]

Previously in the article, the only CIA program listed was its overseas prisons; placing them overseas effectively allowed the CIA to ignore all laws regarding the handling of prisoners. But, hey, this is what I asked for earlier: examples of specific terror attacks that Bush’s policies stopped. So let’s review all the horrific terror plots that Bush’s secret CIA prisons were “singularly” responsible for stopping:

Library Tower in Los Angeles: supposedly, Al Qaeda planned to use Asian men to use shoe bombs to breach an airplane’s cockpit door and then fly the plane into the U.S. Bank Tower in Los Angeles. However, officials later characterized this as a plot that “had not gone much past the conceptual stage.” Another official reported, “There was no definitive plot. It never materialized or got past the thought stage.” In short, when you get past all the chest-puffing on the part of Bush, it was nothing more than terrorist wanna-bes cooking up schemes that never amounted to anything, but Bush, wanting to seem like he was being effective, grabbed the paper-napkin “plot” and claimed it was some kind of imminent threat thwarted by his own heroic efforts.

Heathrow Airport: The infamous water-bottle plot, which is responsible for your having to surrender water bottles, toothpaste, shampoo, and other exotic explosive devices before boarding airplanes. The advanced stages of the plot? “None of the alleged terrorists had made a bomb. None had bought a plane ticket. Many did not have passports. It could be pretty difficult to convince a jury that these individuals were about to go through with suicide bombings, whatever they bragged about on the net. What is more, many of those arrested had been under surveillance for more than a year….” At best, this was another bunch of terrorist wanna-bes dreaming up an improbable plan, one which explosives experts doubt would ever have worked. And before real connections could actually be made with terror groups so that authorities could maybe flush out people who actually posed some potential threat, the Bush administration pressured the Brits to arrest these guys so that Bush could flaunt yet another “foiled” terror plot. But again, we have another paper-napkin plot that never advanced beyond the “aspirational” phase.

London’s Canary Wharf: It’s kind of hard to track this one down, but again seems to be a would-be plot. Despite claims of a “real” threat, the claims of wanting to fly airplanes into skyscrapers at Canary Wharf were soon called out as “bogus.” This one was probably just another paper-napkin idea listed in the sketchbook of yet another terrorist wanna-be, trotted out by officials desperate to show how “effective” they were at protecting the people.

Blowing up apartment buildings in Chicago: Here, Thiessen appears to be referring to the “plot” to detonate hand grenades in a Chicago shopping mall around Christmastime. In fact, it was some young punk in Illinois whom an FBI agent goaded into trying to trade stereo speakers for hand grenades. Or maybe Thiessen was thinking of the infamous Miami “plot” to attack Sears Tower in Chicago, hatched by seven doofuses who needed the help of their FBI mole to buy boots. I don’t know, there are so many “terror plots” by disaffected losers who never had a snowball’s chance in hell of doing anything, it’s hard to sort them all out. As with most of the above terror “plots,” it’s difficult to track down exactly how these apocalyptic threats were somehow thwarted by secret prisons.

In short, the horrific terror plots that our heroic former president saved us all from amount to pretty much squat–just a collection of pathetic someday-maybe crackpot schemes that never would have worked.

But hey, if all you’ve got is bupkis, then I guess you gotta make the most of it, eh?

But the real question is: how can you argue with Thiessen’s central thesis that Obama is “the most dangerous man ever to occupy the Oval Office” because he shut down Bush’s secret CIA prison network? The answer: you don’t have to argue with it, as it’s complete BS.