Four years ago I promised to end the war in Iraq. We did. I promised to refocus on the terrorists who actually attacked us on 9/11. We have. We've blunted the Taliban's momentum in Afghanistan and in 2014 our longest war will be over. A new tower rises above the New York skyline al Qaeda is on the path to defeat and Osama bin Laden is dead.

We know that al Qaeda is seeking radioactive materials and technology to launch a devastating attack and that hundreds of radioactive sources have been lost or stolen in the U.S. and around the world.

This is technology that will not go away. And to risk it moving into the hands of a terrorist group like al Qaeda or to other focused enemies of the United States would have tragic consequences.

It was not a religion that attacked us that September day. It was al-Qaeda. We will not sacrifice the liberties we cherish or hunker down behind walls of suspicion and mistrust.

In my book I detail the critical information we obtained from al Qaeda terrorists after they became compliant following a short period of enhanced interrogation. I have no doubt that that interrogation was legal necessary and saved lives.

Once the attacks occur as we learned on Sept. 11 it is too late. It makes little sense to deprive ourselves of an important and legal means to detect and prevent terrorist attacks while we are still in the middle of a fight to the death with al Qaeda.

The effort to blur the lines between Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib reflects a deep misunderstanding about the different legal regimes that apply to Iraq and the war against al Qaeda.

Human-rights advocates for example claim that the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners is of a piece with President Bush's 2002 decision to deny al Qaeda and Taliban fighters the legal status of prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions.

Al Qaeda is not the organization now that it was before. It is under stress organizationally. Its leadership spends more time trying to figure out how to keep from getting caught than they do trying to launch operations.

The plan we developed to deal with al Qaeda depended on developing sources of human and technical intelligence that could give us insights into his plans at the tactical level. This is easy to say but hard to accomplish.