Danielle Pletka
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Danielle Pletka (born June 12, 1963 in Melbourne, Australia) is vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. Pletka researches topics related to the Middle East, South Asia, terrorism, and weapons proliferation, and is an American Enterprise Institute expert on Iraq. Pletka is also involved in various other projects such as the Committee on the Present Danger.
Formerly, she was a senior professional staff member for Near East and South Asia with the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations from 1992 to 2002 . She was a staff writer for Insight Magazine from 1987 to 1992 and an editorial assistant with the Los Angeles Times and Reuters, working in Jerusalem from 1984 to 1985 .
Pletka was a strong supporter of Iraqi opposition leader, Ahmed Chalabi, even after it emerged he was being investigated by the US authorities as an Iranian spy. Pletka defended Mr Chalabi saying that he had been "shoddily" treated and that C.I.A. and US State Department people had been fighting "a rear guard" action against him.[1]
On the use of torture, she told the BBC, "I'm not a big fan of torture. Unfortunately, there are times in war when it is necessary to do things in a way that is absolutely and completely abhorrent to most good, decent people. I don't want to say that the United States has engaged routinely in such practices, because I don't think that it is routine by any standard. But that said, if it is absolutely imperative to find something out at that moment, then it is imperative to find something out at that moment, and Club Med is not the place to do it."[2]
Pletka's advocacy of sometimes forthright political positions has not been without critics; Antiwar.com described her as ‘a conduit for neocon disinformation’ [3].
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