This is incredible -- will African Americans and the media give Reid a pass (b/c he's a Dem) ?
Your Reid Gaffe of the Week [Stephen Spruiell]
I'm going to be just a little sad when Harry Reid loses his re-election bid. What fun it's been:
Harry Reid apologizes for "light skinned" remark about Obama
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) apologized today for referring to President Barack Obama as "light skinned" and "with no Negro dialect" in private conversations during the 2008 presidential campaign.
"I deeply regret using such a poor choice of words," said Reid in a statement. "I sincerely apologize for offending any and all Americans, especially African Americans for my improper comments."
Geraghty tweets, "Good thing Harry Reid never said anything like 'we should have elected Strom Thurmond president,' or something like that."
Saturday, January 9, 2010
Why O's "fixes" will fail: Ralph Peters & others pile on ...
The deadly attack in Fort Hood, Texas, by Maj. Malik Hassan in November, the close call in the air above Detroit on Christmas Day, and now the double-agent suicide bombing in Khost have exposed incredible lapses in our intelligence and counter intelligence systems. It exposes the befuddled lunacy of the State Dept. when it comes to issuing visas, particularly in certain third world countries infested with terror supporters.
Mr. Obama must surely know that one large-scale terrorist strike inside the U.S. would likely effectively end his presidency. Yet he golfs and surfs and hoops on.
O's 'fixes' will fail: Feeding more fat to obese US intelligence
by Ralph Peters
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/fixes_will_fail_hvOrRHKzCpnAHZOjjlX2qO#ixzz0c9KWEmkb
On Christmas day, a terrorist known to our intelligence system tried to blow up 300 innocents on a US-bound flight. Our government's response is to take porno pictures of your wife and daughter.
A radical-Islamist US Army major, known to our intelligence system, massacred his fellow soldiers at Fort Hood. Our government's response was to offer counseling sessions.
A triple agent, known to our intelligence system, detonated a suicide bomb at a CIA outpost, killing seven Americans and a cousin of Jordan's king. Our government's response is to shift intelligence assets away from targeting terrorists to support development efforts.
Our president assures us that no individual is to blame. No one will be fired. It was only "the system," that elusive beast, that failed.
Well, our intelligence system is made up of people. People failed. Starting at the top.
The dazzlingly incompetent Janet Napolitano, a "man-caused disaster" if ever there was one, needs to be removed from her job heading Homeland Security. White House counterterrorism advisor John Brennan should be placed on double-secret probation and warned to pull up his grades.
As for the National Counterterrorism Center chief who abandoned his post to go on a ski vacation the day after Christmas, I leave his fate to you, gentle reader.
None of these people, including our president, took what almost happened on Christmas seriously -- until the public outcry spooked them.
To energize the bureaucratic proles, you have to chop off aristocratic heads. But President Obama won't use the guillotine. He's protecting incompetents. At our nation's expense.
The corrective measures announced Thursday boil down to two things: Buy more stuff (additional computer systems, full-body scanners, etc.), and re-arrange the deck chairs.
That won't do it. These measures don't address the two enduring handicaps our intelligence community (and our government) suffers in our duel with Islamist terrorists.
First, you can't win by playing defense. Our unseemly protective measures relinquish the initiative to our enemies. Punishing law-abiding US citizens at airports is a disgrace, not a virtue. The only effective way to reduce the terrorist threat is to kill terrorists. Nothing else -- not even the humiliation of innocent air travelers -- will work.
Yet the politically correct group-think mentality in Washington is so pervasive and pernicious that even Robert Gates, who's been a great secretary of defense in so many ways, parrots the cliché that "we can't kill our way out of this."
Oh, really? Suppose we had killed young Umar Abdulmutallab on the ground with al Qaeda in Yemen? Might that not have protected Americans more effectively than making them miss their holiday flight connections?
Any program that takes intelligence assets away from finding and killing terrorists is a mistake. Improving crop yields in southern Afghanistan won't keep Americans safe from Islamist fanatics. What about this is hard to understand?
Problem No. 2 is the nature of our intelligence system itself: It's morbidly obese. The well-intentioned creation of new bureaucracies after 9/11 only worsened the problem, creating more layers of fat. I prescribe a rigorous diet and exercise -- not force-feeding the system more funding calories.
Our intel system is vast, redundant, intractable, self-satisfied, cautious and slower than crosstown traffic during a presidential motorcade.
Our Islamist enemies are lean, really mean, agile, ruthless and, above all, imaginative. Ragtag fanatics are out-thinking us. Why? Because bureaucracy, although it has its place, hates fresh ideas. The terrorists grab a good concept and run with it. We staff it to death, then decide it's far too risky.
Before launching an attack on a confirmed terrorist target in Afghanistan, our combat units need up to a dozen different permission slips. Think al Qaeda or the Taliban work that way?
We're not being defeated. We're defeating ourselves.
As a former Military Intelligence officer, I know the answer isn't more inexperienced hires or throwing more money at well-connected defense contractors. The answer is to emphasize quality, and for our leaders to foster a culture of risk in the field and personal responsibility in the Cabinet.
We need to be creative and willing to commit sins of commission, rather than waiting for terrorists to expose our sins of omission.
Instead, we'll continue to penalize honest citizens (handing al Qaeda a massive, continuing win). Those full-body scanners? If you don't think porn shots of innocent women will end up on the Internet, you probably believe that trying terrorist butchers in civilian courts will make al Qaeda respect us.
We need to check under the burqas, not the halter tops.
Charles Krauthammer gets in on the act as well with his comments on President Obama’s speech:
I thought it was rather appalling. I find it mind-numbingly bureaucratic, flat, bloodless. It was almost inside baseball describing how bureaucracies work.
And his conclusions? Directive # 1 is: High-priority intelligence will now have to be treated urgently not just some of the time, but all of the time. That's a remarkable advance!!
And then he said at the beginning: The first conclusion [of his review] is that, in this world, timely intelligence, etc, etc, is of the utmost importance. Well, this is a president who after we seized Abdulmutallab — who had extremely timely intelligence regarding Yemen, who had been armed and trained in Yemen — was given a lawyer and Miranda rights and shut up almost immediately after singing at the beginning about everything he knew.
That is the timeliest of intelligence regarding Yemen, which the president's terrorism advisor said today is the newest and the most aggressive and the most surprising al-Qaeda element in the world. Here is information waiting to be gleaned and received — and we are gratuitously giving it away [by lawyering up Abdulmutallab].
Talk about not connecting the dots! The administration has little control over what happened before a terrorist attack, but it had total control over what happened afterwards, and it blew it. ...
It looks as if he gave this speech in order to undo the impression of his earlier addresses [of the Christmas bombing].
A, he said the buck stops here, because it looked as if he was detached and blaming everybody else. Secondly, he said we are at war, which is a concession, because people are complaining about the fact, rightly so, that he gave the bomber over Detroit a defense lawyer and treated him as a civilian defendant.
But here is how the president actually sees it. He said we are at war with al-Qaeda, who are "a network of hatred."
Now, first of all, it's not just al-Qaeda. It's jihadism. al-Qaeda is a leading edge of it, but there are imitators, affiliates, cells all over the world. It's a religious ideology, a religious cult. It's an extremist cult.
And when he speaks about hatred — there is a lot of hatred in the world. It's not an inchoate hatred. It's hatred of a specific kind. It's religious fanaticism, hatred of the West and of its liberties, et cetera.
And when you don't identify what the war is about, you leave everyone cold. And you end up saying, as Obama did, one of our responses ... was reaching out and assuring Muslims of an interest in mutual respect, that we understand their aspirations, meaning three items: education, secure job, and security.
Well, the bomber over Detroit was well-educated and he had all the security of a mansion in London. The guy who killed the seven CIA agents in Afghanistan was a doctor. Osama bin Laden is a multimillionaire. This is not about oppression or poverty or lack of education. The Fort Hood shooter had education and security as an army psychiatrist.
He [Obama] will not speak about the nature of the war ... That remains incomprehensible.
And thus you've got to ask yourself: “A network of hatred” — why? and over what?
Mr. Obama must surely know that one large-scale terrorist strike inside the U.S. would likely effectively end his presidency. Yet he golfs and surfs and hoops on.
O's 'fixes' will fail: Feeding more fat to obese US intelligence
by Ralph Peters
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/fixes_will_fail_hvOrRHKzCpnAHZOjjlX2qO#ixzz0c9KWEmkb
On Christmas day, a terrorist known to our intelligence system tried to blow up 300 innocents on a US-bound flight. Our government's response is to take porno pictures of your wife and daughter.
A radical-Islamist US Army major, known to our intelligence system, massacred his fellow soldiers at Fort Hood. Our government's response was to offer counseling sessions.
A triple agent, known to our intelligence system, detonated a suicide bomb at a CIA outpost, killing seven Americans and a cousin of Jordan's king. Our government's response is to shift intelligence assets away from targeting terrorists to support development efforts.
Our president assures us that no individual is to blame. No one will be fired. It was only "the system," that elusive beast, that failed.
Well, our intelligence system is made up of people. People failed. Starting at the top.
The dazzlingly incompetent Janet Napolitano, a "man-caused disaster" if ever there was one, needs to be removed from her job heading Homeland Security. White House counterterrorism advisor John Brennan should be placed on double-secret probation and warned to pull up his grades.
As for the National Counterterrorism Center chief who abandoned his post to go on a ski vacation the day after Christmas, I leave his fate to you, gentle reader.
None of these people, including our president, took what almost happened on Christmas seriously -- until the public outcry spooked them.
To energize the bureaucratic proles, you have to chop off aristocratic heads. But President Obama won't use the guillotine. He's protecting incompetents. At our nation's expense.
The corrective measures announced Thursday boil down to two things: Buy more stuff (additional computer systems, full-body scanners, etc.), and re-arrange the deck chairs.
That won't do it. These measures don't address the two enduring handicaps our intelligence community (and our government) suffers in our duel with Islamist terrorists.
First, you can't win by playing defense. Our unseemly protective measures relinquish the initiative to our enemies. Punishing law-abiding US citizens at airports is a disgrace, not a virtue. The only effective way to reduce the terrorist threat is to kill terrorists. Nothing else -- not even the humiliation of innocent air travelers -- will work.
Yet the politically correct group-think mentality in Washington is so pervasive and pernicious that even Robert Gates, who's been a great secretary of defense in so many ways, parrots the cliché that "we can't kill our way out of this."
Oh, really? Suppose we had killed young Umar Abdulmutallab on the ground with al Qaeda in Yemen? Might that not have protected Americans more effectively than making them miss their holiday flight connections?
Any program that takes intelligence assets away from finding and killing terrorists is a mistake. Improving crop yields in southern Afghanistan won't keep Americans safe from Islamist fanatics. What about this is hard to understand?
Problem No. 2 is the nature of our intelligence system itself: It's morbidly obese. The well-intentioned creation of new bureaucracies after 9/11 only worsened the problem, creating more layers of fat. I prescribe a rigorous diet and exercise -- not force-feeding the system more funding calories.
Our intel system is vast, redundant, intractable, self-satisfied, cautious and slower than crosstown traffic during a presidential motorcade.
Our Islamist enemies are lean, really mean, agile, ruthless and, above all, imaginative. Ragtag fanatics are out-thinking us. Why? Because bureaucracy, although it has its place, hates fresh ideas. The terrorists grab a good concept and run with it. We staff it to death, then decide it's far too risky.
Before launching an attack on a confirmed terrorist target in Afghanistan, our combat units need up to a dozen different permission slips. Think al Qaeda or the Taliban work that way?
We're not being defeated. We're defeating ourselves.
As a former Military Intelligence officer, I know the answer isn't more inexperienced hires or throwing more money at well-connected defense contractors. The answer is to emphasize quality, and for our leaders to foster a culture of risk in the field and personal responsibility in the Cabinet.
We need to be creative and willing to commit sins of commission, rather than waiting for terrorists to expose our sins of omission.
Instead, we'll continue to penalize honest citizens (handing al Qaeda a massive, continuing win). Those full-body scanners? If you don't think porn shots of innocent women will end up on the Internet, you probably believe that trying terrorist butchers in civilian courts will make al Qaeda respect us.
We need to check under the burqas, not the halter tops.
Charles Krauthammer gets in on the act as well with his comments on President Obama’s speech:
I thought it was rather appalling. I find it mind-numbingly bureaucratic, flat, bloodless. It was almost inside baseball describing how bureaucracies work.
And his conclusions? Directive # 1 is: High-priority intelligence will now have to be treated urgently not just some of the time, but all of the time. That's a remarkable advance!!
And then he said at the beginning: The first conclusion [of his review] is that, in this world, timely intelligence, etc, etc, is of the utmost importance. Well, this is a president who after we seized Abdulmutallab — who had extremely timely intelligence regarding Yemen, who had been armed and trained in Yemen — was given a lawyer and Miranda rights and shut up almost immediately after singing at the beginning about everything he knew.
That is the timeliest of intelligence regarding Yemen, which the president's terrorism advisor said today is the newest and the most aggressive and the most surprising al-Qaeda element in the world. Here is information waiting to be gleaned and received — and we are gratuitously giving it away [by lawyering up Abdulmutallab].
Talk about not connecting the dots! The administration has little control over what happened before a terrorist attack, but it had total control over what happened afterwards, and it blew it. ...
It looks as if he gave this speech in order to undo the impression of his earlier addresses [of the Christmas bombing].
A, he said the buck stops here, because it looked as if he was detached and blaming everybody else. Secondly, he said we are at war, which is a concession, because people are complaining about the fact, rightly so, that he gave the bomber over Detroit a defense lawyer and treated him as a civilian defendant.
But here is how the president actually sees it. He said we are at war with al-Qaeda, who are "a network of hatred."
Now, first of all, it's not just al-Qaeda. It's jihadism. al-Qaeda is a leading edge of it, but there are imitators, affiliates, cells all over the world. It's a religious ideology, a religious cult. It's an extremist cult.
And when he speaks about hatred — there is a lot of hatred in the world. It's not an inchoate hatred. It's hatred of a specific kind. It's religious fanaticism, hatred of the West and of its liberties, et cetera.
And when you don't identify what the war is about, you leave everyone cold. And you end up saying, as Obama did, one of our responses ... was reaching out and assuring Muslims of an interest in mutual respect, that we understand their aspirations, meaning three items: education, secure job, and security.
Well, the bomber over Detroit was well-educated and he had all the security of a mansion in London. The guy who killed the seven CIA agents in Afghanistan was a doctor. Osama bin Laden is a multimillionaire. This is not about oppression or poverty or lack of education. The Fort Hood shooter had education and security as an army psychiatrist.
He [Obama] will not speak about the nature of the war ... That remains incomprehensible.
And thus you've got to ask yourself: “A network of hatred” — why? and over what?
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Obama is "Clueless" on Nat'l Security - Secy John Lehman
Lehman: Clueless Obama [Robert Costa]
After watching President Obama’s remarks on national security this afternoon, John Lehman, the secretary of the Navy in the Reagan administration and a member of the 9/11 Commission, tells National Review Online that, “frankly, I’m pissed off.”
“President Obama just doesn’t get it,” says Lehman. “I don’t think he has a clue. It’s all pure spin. He’s ignoring key issues and taking respectable professionals like John Brennan and turning them into hacks and shills. It’s beyond contempt.”
“The president has ignored the 9/11 Commission’s report,” says Lehman. “This whole idea that we can fix things by jumping higher and faster is ridiculous. The fact is that the system worked just like we said it would work if the president failed to give the Director of National Intelligence the tools he needs: it’s bloated, bureaucratic, layered, and stultified.”
“President Obama continues to totally ignore one of the important thrusts of our 9/11 recommendations, which is that you have to approach counterterrorism as a multiagency intelligence issue, and not as a law-enforcement issue. He’s made a lot of commission’s members angry for dismissing our report and ignoring key recommendations.” Obama, he adds, has taken a “lawyer-like, politically-correct approach” to national security issues like terrorist watchlists and no-fly lists. “You got to blame the president for enforcing the politically-correct and legalistic policies that led to these failures.”
The Christmas Attack Report summary here.
The Message Filters Down [Victor Davis Hanson]
The repeated signs of radical Islamic furor that were shown by Major Hasan and ignored by his colleagues vested with authority, the assassination of CIA agents in Afghanistan by a double-agent Islamic operative, and the numerous missed opportunities to stop the Christmas Day airline terrorist, all should make us concerned about the effectiveness of various branches of our anti-terrorism services.
None of these deadly lapses are the direct fault of the present administration, but they are ominous signals that it is past time to once again think about counterterrorism as a necessary war against murderous Islamists rather than a criminal-justice matter that can be defused through serial outreach to the Islamic world, renunciation of effective Bush policies, and the personal charm and unique heritage of the president.
As worrisome as the actual acts themselves have been the immediate and baffling responses to them — in the Hasan case, military worries that Hasan's murdering might imperil efforts at diversity enhancement and was proof of a new sort of secondary post-traumatic stress syndrome; in the Abdulmutallab matter, initial assurances that the system "worked" and legalisms what he had "allegedly" attempted to do (blow up 300 people). As for the CIA matter, last year we shifted our attention to the supposed culpability of past CIA acts and the need to investigate our own agents, failing to appreciate how perilous a job they carry out in the most godforsaken places in the world.
Again, the climate at the top is essential in keeping us safe. If the commander in chief, through speeches and acts, treats the war on terror in terms of its superfluousness, its constitutional criminality, or past American culpability, rather than in terms of its essential role in keeping us all alive, then that message, in insidious ways, will filter down to various branches of the national-security community, whose members will begin to shift their attitudes and actions accordingly.Very dangerous, all this.
Instant Review [Cliff May]
Watching the White House briefing and my reaction: This is much too bureaucratic to be reassuring.
Also, what I think most Americans already grasp:
1) The father says his son may have joined al-Qaeda. One phone call should have been enough to cancel the kid's visa to the U.S. Why didn't that happen? I didn't hear an answer.
2) Abdulmutallab buys his one-way ticket with cash, has no luggage, and has been in Yemen for the past few months. So you pull him out of line, question him and screen him. Why didn't that happen? I didn't hear an answer.
And:
White House national security adviser James Jones says Americans will feel "a certain shock" when they read an account being released Thursday of the missed clues that could have prevented the alleged Christmas Day bomber from ever boarding the plane
So where's the shock? What was new? What did I miss?
Bolton: Obama Misses the Big Picture [Robert Costa]
John Bolton, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, tells National Review Online that President Obama’s remarks on recent American intelligence and security failures this afternoon “miss the big picture” and “ignore the problems we face in dealing with al-Qaeda.”
“I didn’t hear any hint of the president planning to deal with al-Qaeda’s growing capabilities,” says Bolton. “Now, maybe that’s still to come, but, for now, it seems like the president still thinks this is about one person and the intelligence agencies. He outlined a message of government management when he should have addressed the importance of destroying al-Qaeda’s base camps and eradicating its networks.”
Obama, Bolton adds, “needs to remember that classic formulation: the best defense is a good offense.”
“If we’re simply relying on the intelligence agencies to keep people off a plane, then we’ll have many more examples of near misses or, God forbid, a tragedy, in coming years,” says Bolton. “Pushing for a shift in the intelligence bureaucracy won’t stop al-Qaeda. I don’t think the president realizes the implications of what he’s doing with this kind of law-enforcement response.”
“The tone of the remarks is not what’s important,” says Bolton. “We’re not judging some rhetoric exercise. The metric of government is effective action and what he’s proposing addresses issues at the molecular level, not the molar level.”
After watching President Obama’s remarks on national security this afternoon, John Lehman, the secretary of the Navy in the Reagan administration and a member of the 9/11 Commission, tells National Review Online that, “frankly, I’m pissed off.”
“President Obama just doesn’t get it,” says Lehman. “I don’t think he has a clue. It’s all pure spin. He’s ignoring key issues and taking respectable professionals like John Brennan and turning them into hacks and shills. It’s beyond contempt.”
“The president has ignored the 9/11 Commission’s report,” says Lehman. “This whole idea that we can fix things by jumping higher and faster is ridiculous. The fact is that the system worked just like we said it would work if the president failed to give the Director of National Intelligence the tools he needs: it’s bloated, bureaucratic, layered, and stultified.”
“President Obama continues to totally ignore one of the important thrusts of our 9/11 recommendations, which is that you have to approach counterterrorism as a multiagency intelligence issue, and not as a law-enforcement issue. He’s made a lot of commission’s members angry for dismissing our report and ignoring key recommendations.” Obama, he adds, has taken a “lawyer-like, politically-correct approach” to national security issues like terrorist watchlists and no-fly lists. “You got to blame the president for enforcing the politically-correct and legalistic policies that led to these failures.”
The Christmas Attack Report summary here.
The Message Filters Down [Victor Davis Hanson]
The repeated signs of radical Islamic furor that were shown by Major Hasan and ignored by his colleagues vested with authority, the assassination of CIA agents in Afghanistan by a double-agent Islamic operative, and the numerous missed opportunities to stop the Christmas Day airline terrorist, all should make us concerned about the effectiveness of various branches of our anti-terrorism services.
None of these deadly lapses are the direct fault of the present administration, but they are ominous signals that it is past time to once again think about counterterrorism as a necessary war against murderous Islamists rather than a criminal-justice matter that can be defused through serial outreach to the Islamic world, renunciation of effective Bush policies, and the personal charm and unique heritage of the president.
As worrisome as the actual acts themselves have been the immediate and baffling responses to them — in the Hasan case, military worries that Hasan's murdering might imperil efforts at diversity enhancement and was proof of a new sort of secondary post-traumatic stress syndrome; in the Abdulmutallab matter, initial assurances that the system "worked" and legalisms what he had "allegedly" attempted to do (blow up 300 people). As for the CIA matter, last year we shifted our attention to the supposed culpability of past CIA acts and the need to investigate our own agents, failing to appreciate how perilous a job they carry out in the most godforsaken places in the world.
Again, the climate at the top is essential in keeping us safe. If the commander in chief, through speeches and acts, treats the war on terror in terms of its superfluousness, its constitutional criminality, or past American culpability, rather than in terms of its essential role in keeping us all alive, then that message, in insidious ways, will filter down to various branches of the national-security community, whose members will begin to shift their attitudes and actions accordingly.Very dangerous, all this.
Instant Review [Cliff May]
Watching the White House briefing and my reaction: This is much too bureaucratic to be reassuring.
Also, what I think most Americans already grasp:
1) The father says his son may have joined al-Qaeda. One phone call should have been enough to cancel the kid's visa to the U.S. Why didn't that happen? I didn't hear an answer.
2) Abdulmutallab buys his one-way ticket with cash, has no luggage, and has been in Yemen for the past few months. So you pull him out of line, question him and screen him. Why didn't that happen? I didn't hear an answer.
And:
White House national security adviser James Jones says Americans will feel "a certain shock" when they read an account being released Thursday of the missed clues that could have prevented the alleged Christmas Day bomber from ever boarding the plane
So where's the shock? What was new? What did I miss?
Bolton: Obama Misses the Big Picture [Robert Costa]
John Bolton, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, tells National Review Online that President Obama’s remarks on recent American intelligence and security failures this afternoon “miss the big picture” and “ignore the problems we face in dealing with al-Qaeda.”
“I didn’t hear any hint of the president planning to deal with al-Qaeda’s growing capabilities,” says Bolton. “Now, maybe that’s still to come, but, for now, it seems like the president still thinks this is about one person and the intelligence agencies. He outlined a message of government management when he should have addressed the importance of destroying al-Qaeda’s base camps and eradicating its networks.”
Obama, Bolton adds, “needs to remember that classic formulation: the best defense is a good offense.”
“If we’re simply relying on the intelligence agencies to keep people off a plane, then we’ll have many more examples of near misses or, God forbid, a tragedy, in coming years,” says Bolton. “Pushing for a shift in the intelligence bureaucracy won’t stop al-Qaeda. I don’t think the president realizes the implications of what he’s doing with this kind of law-enforcement response.”
“The tone of the remarks is not what’s important,” says Bolton. “We’re not judging some rhetoric exercise. The metric of government is effective action and what he’s proposing addresses issues at the molecular level, not the molar level.”
The Underwear Bomber Fiasco rolls on ...
Now the Feds claim they found out mid-flight that this was a guy they might want to check out, so they planned to grab him AFTER the plane landed. As in AFTER he BLEW UP THE PLANE.
Dolts.
As Mark Steyn put it:
Elsewhere in travel news, relax. Homeland-security officials were right on top of that
Pantybomber situation:
U.S. border security officials learned of the alleged extremist links of the suspect in the Christmas Day jetliner bombing attempt as he was airborne from Amsterdam to Detroit and had decided to question him when he landed, officials disclosed Wednesday.
Given that he was planning to land in 4 million pieces over the greater Detroit metropolitan area, that's a lot of manpower. I wonder if the Obama administration understands quite how stupid they sound to the rest of the world.
Mukasey on the Obama Administration's Handling of the Underwear Bomber [Andy McCarthy]
The former AG's critique is in the WSJ this morning and it's just devastating. Every word is worth reading, but the conclusion is especially good:
What the gaffes, the almost comically strained avoidance of such direct terms as "war" and "Islamist terrorism," and the failure to think of Abdulmutallab as a potential source of intelligence rather than simply as a criminal defendant seem to reflect is that some in the executive branch are focused more on not sounding like their predecessors than they are on finding and neutralizing people who believe it is their religious duty to kill us. That's too bad, because the Constitution vests "the executive power"—not some of it, all of it—in the president. He, and those acting at his direction, are responsible for protecting us.
There is much to worry about if they think that the principal challenge of the day is detecting bombs at the airport rather than actively searching out, finding and neutralizing terrorists before they get there.
Jen Rubin already has some excellent observations at Contentions, here.
It's a War. Where's the Strategy? [Chris Harnisch & Charlie Szrom]
The interagency report on the Christmas Day airplane bombing attempt issued by the White House today states that failing to “connect the dots” was the main reason for the failure to prevent the Christmas Day attack. Additionally, the report summary notes that intelligence community analysts spent December examining al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) threats against U.S. interests in Yemen and providing support to counterterrorism operations in Yemen, as opposed to focusing on AQAP threats against the American homeland. These analysis priorities apparently persisted despite an increasing shift in AQAP rhetoric during the fall suggesting that the organization was targeting the United States itself.
Al-Qaeda has an active strategy to fight America and its interests using its franchises and affiliates, who often follow through on threats of the type made by AQAP, in concert. The Christmas Day attack was carried out by the Yemen-based al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). AQAP is an al-Qaeda regional franchise — not a copycat cell and not a local proxy — that is in direct communication with al-Qaeda’s central leadership. The group’s efforts contribute to al-Qaeda’s long-term goal of establishing an Islamic Caliphate in the Middle East and, indeed, globally.
The global Islamist movement has franchises and affiliates all around the world — not just Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen — and the administration has not yet described a coherent and detailed strategy to combat them. Al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorist groups in Somalia and West Africa — particularly al Shabaab and al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) — may pose threats to the United States and its interests as large or larger as AQAP does. These groups appear to be flying under the radar just as AQAP had for most of 2009. Like AQAP, al Shabaab has shown an ability to follow through on threats: In December 2009, it killed, via a suicide bombing, the Somali ministers of education and higher education, as well as dozens of others, at a college-graduation ceremony. Just three months earlier, the group warned against the use of “un-Islamic” educational materials. Like AQAP, al Shabaab’s rhetoric has increasingly singled out the West, moving beyond threats confined to Somalia alone.
America cannot afford to fight terror only with x-ray machines and visas, as the President has suggested. The Obama administration needs to develop, articulate, and implement a comprehensive strategy for defeating those terrorists and denying them safe-havens.
— Chris Harnisch & Charlie Szrom write for AEI's "Critical Threats" website.
Dolts.
As Mark Steyn put it:
Elsewhere in travel news, relax. Homeland-security officials were right on top of that
Pantybomber situation:
U.S. border security officials learned of the alleged extremist links of the suspect in the Christmas Day jetliner bombing attempt as he was airborne from Amsterdam to Detroit and had decided to question him when he landed, officials disclosed Wednesday.
Given that he was planning to land in 4 million pieces over the greater Detroit metropolitan area, that's a lot of manpower. I wonder if the Obama administration understands quite how stupid they sound to the rest of the world.
Mukasey on the Obama Administration's Handling of the Underwear Bomber [Andy McCarthy]
The former AG's critique is in the WSJ this morning and it's just devastating. Every word is worth reading, but the conclusion is especially good:
What the gaffes, the almost comically strained avoidance of such direct terms as "war" and "Islamist terrorism," and the failure to think of Abdulmutallab as a potential source of intelligence rather than simply as a criminal defendant seem to reflect is that some in the executive branch are focused more on not sounding like their predecessors than they are on finding and neutralizing people who believe it is their religious duty to kill us. That's too bad, because the Constitution vests "the executive power"—not some of it, all of it—in the president. He, and those acting at his direction, are responsible for protecting us.
There is much to worry about if they think that the principal challenge of the day is detecting bombs at the airport rather than actively searching out, finding and neutralizing terrorists before they get there.
Jen Rubin already has some excellent observations at Contentions, here.
It's a War. Where's the Strategy? [Chris Harnisch & Charlie Szrom]
The interagency report on the Christmas Day airplane bombing attempt issued by the White House today states that failing to “connect the dots” was the main reason for the failure to prevent the Christmas Day attack. Additionally, the report summary notes that intelligence community analysts spent December examining al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) threats against U.S. interests in Yemen and providing support to counterterrorism operations in Yemen, as opposed to focusing on AQAP threats against the American homeland. These analysis priorities apparently persisted despite an increasing shift in AQAP rhetoric during the fall suggesting that the organization was targeting the United States itself.
Al-Qaeda has an active strategy to fight America and its interests using its franchises and affiliates, who often follow through on threats of the type made by AQAP, in concert. The Christmas Day attack was carried out by the Yemen-based al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). AQAP is an al-Qaeda regional franchise — not a copycat cell and not a local proxy — that is in direct communication with al-Qaeda’s central leadership. The group’s efforts contribute to al-Qaeda’s long-term goal of establishing an Islamic Caliphate in the Middle East and, indeed, globally.
The global Islamist movement has franchises and affiliates all around the world — not just Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen — and the administration has not yet described a coherent and detailed strategy to combat them. Al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorist groups in Somalia and West Africa — particularly al Shabaab and al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) — may pose threats to the United States and its interests as large or larger as AQAP does. These groups appear to be flying under the radar just as AQAP had for most of 2009. Like AQAP, al Shabaab has shown an ability to follow through on threats: In December 2009, it killed, via a suicide bombing, the Somali ministers of education and higher education, as well as dozens of others, at a college-graduation ceremony. Just three months earlier, the group warned against the use of “un-Islamic” educational materials. Like AQAP, al Shabaab’s rhetoric has increasingly singled out the West, moving beyond threats confined to Somalia alone.
America cannot afford to fight terror only with x-ray machines and visas, as the President has suggested. The Obama administration needs to develop, articulate, and implement a comprehensive strategy for defeating those terrorists and denying them safe-havens.
— Chris Harnisch & Charlie Szrom write for AEI's "Critical Threats" website.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Obama's Trust Me Transparency Moment(s) jeopardize ObamaCare
"And we'll have it all on C-SPAN !"
This is right up there with "Trust Me", "The Check is in the Mail", "I'm from the Government and I'm here to Help", etc.
Obama’s Broken Health-Care Promise [Victor Davis Hanson]
The tape circulating in the blogosphere of Obama in 2008 repeatedly and passionately promising to broadcast the upcoming health-care debate and vote on C-Span, combined with C-Span’s polite request to follow through on that promise, combined with the apparent unwillingness of the Obama administration to honor its pledge, combined with Speaker Pelosi’s cynical remark that the vow was just another Obamaism, is all quite damning. I don’t think I can recall in recent political history a serial public vow that was so flagrantly and cynically renounced.
Things like this, in and of themselves, are not fatal, but they bring the president’s approval ratings down another notch or two; and when one adds them all up, these deceits account for Obama’s 20-point drop in the polls, since they are confirming a picture of political expediency, duplicity, and cynicism quite intolerable for a messianic figure who hinged his presidency on a new ethics.
It didn’t help that, almost simultaneously, in response to the Christmas Day attack on an airliner, Obama blamed Bush for Guantanamo in the now Orwellian fashion of “Bush made me keep Guantanamo open, and it is a recruiting tool for al-Qaeda.” (If it really is, and serves no purpose other than to empower the enemy, why not close it immediately? Also: What was the recruiting tool on Sept. 10, 2001? And since when are the endless purported grievances of al-Qaeda or any other fascistic enemy to be believed?)
This is right up there with "Trust Me", "The Check is in the Mail", "I'm from the Government and I'm here to Help", etc.
Obama’s Broken Health-Care Promise [Victor Davis Hanson]
The tape circulating in the blogosphere of Obama in 2008 repeatedly and passionately promising to broadcast the upcoming health-care debate and vote on C-Span, combined with C-Span’s polite request to follow through on that promise, combined with the apparent unwillingness of the Obama administration to honor its pledge, combined with Speaker Pelosi’s cynical remark that the vow was just another Obamaism, is all quite damning. I don’t think I can recall in recent political history a serial public vow that was so flagrantly and cynically renounced.
Things like this, in and of themselves, are not fatal, but they bring the president’s approval ratings down another notch or two; and when one adds them all up, these deceits account for Obama’s 20-point drop in the polls, since they are confirming a picture of political expediency, duplicity, and cynicism quite intolerable for a messianic figure who hinged his presidency on a new ethics.
It didn’t help that, almost simultaneously, in response to the Christmas Day attack on an airliner, Obama blamed Bush for Guantanamo in the now Orwellian fashion of “Bush made me keep Guantanamo open, and it is a recruiting tool for al-Qaeda.” (If it really is, and serves no purpose other than to empower the enemy, why not close it immediately? Also: What was the recruiting tool on Sept. 10, 2001? And since when are the endless purported grievances of al-Qaeda or any other fascistic enemy to be believed?)
Today in ObamaNation: The Goresicle
FAIRBANKS - In what might become an annual tradition, an ice sculpture of former Vice President Al Gore has taken its place in front of Thrifty Liquor along Airport Way.
The two-ton “Frozen Gore” sculpture isn’t exactly a tribute. It’s a tongue-in-cheek critique of Gore’s vocal belief in man-made climate change, complete with hot air pouring out of his mouth.
Local businessmen Craig Compeau and Rudy Gavora contracted the piece from award-winning sculptor Steve Dean and say they’ll keep erecting one each winter until Gore accepts an invitation to discuss the global warming issue in Fairbanks.
Read more:
http://newsminer.com/pages/full_story/push?article-‘Frozen+Gore’+sculpture+returns+in+Fairbanks+to+fuel+climate+change+debate%20&id=5444000&instance=home_lead_story
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
For Obama, terrorism is a four-letter word: Bush
The title of Byron York's article says it all ... this is only part of what is wrong about Obama.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/For-Obama_-terrorism-is-a-four-letter-word_-Bush-8719090-80663422.html
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/For-Obama_-terrorism-is-a-four-letter-word_-Bush-8719090-80663422.html
Failing to Connect the Dots
Between the failures of the "intelligence community" (is that an oxymoron ?) and Obama's failure to take the war on terror seriously (at least until it damages his re-electibility) by denying our military; intelligence apparatus; and detention/interrogation/prosecution apparatus the proper tools and approach, is it no wonder that we have had, and will likely to continue to have, major failures.
Consider recent events:
Fort Hood massacre by army Jihadist
Underwear bomber
Suicide bomber double agent in Afghanistan
Closing of American Embassy in Yemen due to threats
These are all in the last month or so ... and these are only ones that we know about.
'Our intelligence community failed to connect the dots.' [Andy McCarthy]
As Cliff observes, the president's statement is a serious indictment of our intelligence community.
But is the solution, then, to deny them the dots in the first place by sending Abdul Mutallab to the civilian justice system, giving him a lawyer so that interrogation must cease, and setting up a situation where we incent him to hold back on telling us the most valuable information until we plea bargain and make other concessions in his criminal case?
Over the weekend, John Brennan, the president's counterterrorism adviser, contended on Fox News Sunday that that is a perfectly sensible way to do counterterrorism. (See Jen Rubin's post at Contentions.) If that's what he really thinks, we've got a lot bigger problem with the intelligence community than just its inability to connect dots. It doesn't want to know the dots.
And why should we think it would be otherwise? Attorney General Holder told the Senate Intelligence Committee that we wouldn't need to interrogate bin Laden if the al-Qaeda chief were captured because, after all, we already have an overwhelming criminal case against him. According to Brennan, "the Department of Justice makes these determinations about what's the best tool [military detention or civilian due process] to use." If Holder thinks we'd have no reasons other than strengthening the criminal case to interrogate the head of the terror network we're fighting a war against, and Holder is the guy in charge of deciding when we need to interrogate combatants, isn't that, like, a problem?
In any event, is it just the intelligence community that won't see, much less connect, the dots? When Obama first spoke about Abdul Mutallab, he tried to suggest the terrorist was a lone wolf — and that was after Abdul Mutallab told us he was sent by al-Qaeda in Yemen and after, according to Robert Gibbs today, we knew that Abdul Mutallab had "actionable intelligence" to provide.
Our intelligence agencies performed horribly here, and their statements since the news broke do not inspire confidence about their handle on the zillion threats we haven't heard about. But is Obama in any position to complain about that? He's spent the last year allowing intelligence officers to be investigated criminally, portraying them as rogues, accusing them of war crimes, removing them from the interrogation equation, and rebuffing calls to disclose to the public how effective their post-9/11 intelligence gathering was. If you create a climate in which pursuing and connecting dots is likely to get you in a heap of hurt, how surprised should you be that we've become lax in dot pursuit and connection?
If the president really wants dots connected, why doesn't he just declare Abdul Mutallab an unlawful enemy combatant and interrogate him like one? Doing so wouldn't stop Obama from having the terrorist indicted in the civilian justice system some time down the road. But if Abdul Mutallab has actionable intelligence, what's stopping the commander-in-chief from taking the obvious steps to get it? And why is the attorney general, rather than, say, the president or the secretary of defense, making these wartime decisions?
Consider recent events:
Fort Hood massacre by army Jihadist
Underwear bomber
Suicide bomber double agent in Afghanistan
Closing of American Embassy in Yemen due to threats
These are all in the last month or so ... and these are only ones that we know about.
'Our intelligence community failed to connect the dots.' [Andy McCarthy]
As Cliff observes, the president's statement is a serious indictment of our intelligence community.
But is the solution, then, to deny them the dots in the first place by sending Abdul Mutallab to the civilian justice system, giving him a lawyer so that interrogation must cease, and setting up a situation where we incent him to hold back on telling us the most valuable information until we plea bargain and make other concessions in his criminal case?
Over the weekend, John Brennan, the president's counterterrorism adviser, contended on Fox News Sunday that that is a perfectly sensible way to do counterterrorism. (See Jen Rubin's post at Contentions.) If that's what he really thinks, we've got a lot bigger problem with the intelligence community than just its inability to connect dots. It doesn't want to know the dots.
And why should we think it would be otherwise? Attorney General Holder told the Senate Intelligence Committee that we wouldn't need to interrogate bin Laden if the al-Qaeda chief were captured because, after all, we already have an overwhelming criminal case against him. According to Brennan, "the Department of Justice makes these determinations about what's the best tool [military detention or civilian due process] to use." If Holder thinks we'd have no reasons other than strengthening the criminal case to interrogate the head of the terror network we're fighting a war against, and Holder is the guy in charge of deciding when we need to interrogate combatants, isn't that, like, a problem?
In any event, is it just the intelligence community that won't see, much less connect, the dots? When Obama first spoke about Abdul Mutallab, he tried to suggest the terrorist was a lone wolf — and that was after Abdul Mutallab told us he was sent by al-Qaeda in Yemen and after, according to Robert Gibbs today, we knew that Abdul Mutallab had "actionable intelligence" to provide.
Our intelligence agencies performed horribly here, and their statements since the news broke do not inspire confidence about their handle on the zillion threats we haven't heard about. But is Obama in any position to complain about that? He's spent the last year allowing intelligence officers to be investigated criminally, portraying them as rogues, accusing them of war crimes, removing them from the interrogation equation, and rebuffing calls to disclose to the public how effective their post-9/11 intelligence gathering was. If you create a climate in which pursuing and connecting dots is likely to get you in a heap of hurt, how surprised should you be that we've become lax in dot pursuit and connection?
If the president really wants dots connected, why doesn't he just declare Abdul Mutallab an unlawful enemy combatant and interrogate him like one? Doing so wouldn't stop Obama from having the terrorist indicted in the civilian justice system some time down the road. But if Abdul Mutallab has actionable intelligence, what's stopping the commander-in-chief from taking the obvious steps to get it? And why is the attorney general, rather than, say, the president or the secretary of defense, making these wartime decisions?
Why Abdul Mutallab (underwear bomber) should be treated as enemy combatant
Re: Trying Abdul Mutallab [Andy McCarthy]
I commend Victoria's unpublished letter (by the Washington Post) and her excellent WSJ op-ed. I just want to add a couple of other responses to the new lefty talking point: How could you criticize Obama's reaction to Abdul Mutallab given how Bush handled Reid?
As Victoria notes, there was not yet a military commission system (though the executive order authorizing commissions had been issued) when Reid tried to destroy his flight and kill all the passengers. But it's also worth putting this in context: 9/11 had only just happened, and Bush had responded not only by authorizing military commissions but, more importantly, by taking the country to war against al-Qaeda — not just a few feckless cruise missiles, but a full-scale attack with boots on the ground. The president had also announced what became known as the "Bush Doctrine," the plan to attack al-Qaeda wherever it operated and to treat rogue nations that supported terrorists as the equivalent of terrorists.
Did Bush make errors here and there? Sure he did — just as every commander-in-chief reacting to a true emergency has. Reid, Moussaoui, and John Walker Lindh should all have been detained as enemy combatants then tried by commission. Still, there was no doubt whatsoever about where Bush was coming from on the need to wage the war as a war. And compared to what had just happened at the time (9/11, anthrax attacks, invasion of Afghanistan), Reid seemed almost tame.
By contrast, Obama sold himself as the anti-Bush, argued in favor of the Clinton law-enforcement approach of the nineties, has difficulty acknowledging that we are at war, believes we should engage rather than challenge pro-jihadist regimes, and staffed his administration with many people (especially lawyers) who virulently opposed Bush-style counterterrorism. The Christmas '09 attack did not happen in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, and its occurrence blows gigantic holes in Obama's delusional claims that we can be safer by turning away from a law-of-war paradigm and "changing the tone" with the Muslim world.
Americans are thus understandably concerned about this president's commitment to a counterterrorism model that truly seeks to prevent attacks rather than prosecute them after people get killed. It would take a Democratic strategist, an Obamedia apologist, or a detached egghead to fail to see the obvious point that, in the public mind, Abdul Mutallab was a much bigger deal for Obama than Reid was for Bush — or that "the system worked" was about the worst imaginable thing an Obama official could have said under the circumstances.
I'd also note that the appellate opinion affirming Moussaoui's convictions, which I posted about this morning, reinforces Victoria's assessment of the Moussaoui trial.
Finally, if we're going to dwell on Bush's inconsistencies in the hectic period right after 9/11, what are we to make of Obama's inconsistencies today, in a much calmer time when we've had nine years to think things over? He has handed the Cole bombers over to a military commission — despite the fact that there was already a pending indictment in the Cole case in the civilian justice system. When the Cole attack happened, there was no military commission system. What is the predicate for trying the Cole case by commission? Why, 9/11 of course . . . the incident Obama has moved from the military system to the civilian courts — thereby rewarding those who target civilians (i.e., those who most severely flout the civilizing underpinnings of international humanitarian law) with the greatest due process protections.
What is the sensible explanation for sending the Cole case — a decade-old incident with a pending civilian indictment — to the military commission system, but handing over to the criminal justice system Abdulmutallab — an alien enemy combatant sent by al-Qaeda to commit a 9/11-style war-crime and who, according to White House spokesman Robert Gibbs, had fresh, "actionable intelligence" to give us but who cut off interrogation when we let him lawyer up?
Charles Krauthammer: On Abdulmutallab being accorded the rights of a civilian defendant:
It is beyond disconcerting. It's insane. Here is a guy who . . . the administration has admitted was trained, armed in Yemen, recruited in London. We closed our embassy [in Yemen] this week, presumably because there are active threats emanating out of al-Qaeda, the same people involved in his [Abdulmutallab’s] mission.
Here is a guy who presumably knows stuff. At least he knows who trained him and who armed him and who was around him. He says there were other plots. The idea that you give him his rights is simply unbelievable.
I commend Victoria's unpublished letter (by the Washington Post) and her excellent WSJ op-ed. I just want to add a couple of other responses to the new lefty talking point: How could you criticize Obama's reaction to Abdul Mutallab given how Bush handled Reid?
As Victoria notes, there was not yet a military commission system (though the executive order authorizing commissions had been issued) when Reid tried to destroy his flight and kill all the passengers. But it's also worth putting this in context: 9/11 had only just happened, and Bush had responded not only by authorizing military commissions but, more importantly, by taking the country to war against al-Qaeda — not just a few feckless cruise missiles, but a full-scale attack with boots on the ground. The president had also announced what became known as the "Bush Doctrine," the plan to attack al-Qaeda wherever it operated and to treat rogue nations that supported terrorists as the equivalent of terrorists.
Did Bush make errors here and there? Sure he did — just as every commander-in-chief reacting to a true emergency has. Reid, Moussaoui, and John Walker Lindh should all have been detained as enemy combatants then tried by commission. Still, there was no doubt whatsoever about where Bush was coming from on the need to wage the war as a war. And compared to what had just happened at the time (9/11, anthrax attacks, invasion of Afghanistan), Reid seemed almost tame.
By contrast, Obama sold himself as the anti-Bush, argued in favor of the Clinton law-enforcement approach of the nineties, has difficulty acknowledging that we are at war, believes we should engage rather than challenge pro-jihadist regimes, and staffed his administration with many people (especially lawyers) who virulently opposed Bush-style counterterrorism. The Christmas '09 attack did not happen in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, and its occurrence blows gigantic holes in Obama's delusional claims that we can be safer by turning away from a law-of-war paradigm and "changing the tone" with the Muslim world.
Americans are thus understandably concerned about this president's commitment to a counterterrorism model that truly seeks to prevent attacks rather than prosecute them after people get killed. It would take a Democratic strategist, an Obamedia apologist, or a detached egghead to fail to see the obvious point that, in the public mind, Abdul Mutallab was a much bigger deal for Obama than Reid was for Bush — or that "the system worked" was about the worst imaginable thing an Obama official could have said under the circumstances.
I'd also note that the appellate opinion affirming Moussaoui's convictions, which I posted about this morning, reinforces Victoria's assessment of the Moussaoui trial.
Finally, if we're going to dwell on Bush's inconsistencies in the hectic period right after 9/11, what are we to make of Obama's inconsistencies today, in a much calmer time when we've had nine years to think things over? He has handed the Cole bombers over to a military commission — despite the fact that there was already a pending indictment in the Cole case in the civilian justice system. When the Cole attack happened, there was no military commission system. What is the predicate for trying the Cole case by commission? Why, 9/11 of course . . . the incident Obama has moved from the military system to the civilian courts — thereby rewarding those who target civilians (i.e., those who most severely flout the civilizing underpinnings of international humanitarian law) with the greatest due process protections.
What is the sensible explanation for sending the Cole case — a decade-old incident with a pending civilian indictment — to the military commission system, but handing over to the criminal justice system Abdulmutallab — an alien enemy combatant sent by al-Qaeda to commit a 9/11-style war-crime and who, according to White House spokesman Robert Gibbs, had fresh, "actionable intelligence" to give us but who cut off interrogation when we let him lawyer up?
Charles Krauthammer: On Abdulmutallab being accorded the rights of a civilian defendant:
It is beyond disconcerting. It's insane. Here is a guy who . . . the administration has admitted was trained, armed in Yemen, recruited in London. We closed our embassy [in Yemen] this week, presumably because there are active threats emanating out of al-Qaeda, the same people involved in his [Abdulmutallab’s] mission.
Here is a guy who presumably knows stuff. At least he knows who trained him and who armed him and who was around him. He says there were other plots. The idea that you give him his rights is simply unbelievable.
The Obama Record: Year 1
Year One of a President at War with Reality [Bill Bennett]
Just about a year ago, many people here and abroad had very high hopes for our new president and for us. He was going to take on our economic woes, improve our international reputation (as he defined it), and fight a smarter and better war on terrorism. How has the year unfolded?
Using Gallup numbers, President Obama began his administration with a 69 percent approval rating. Today he’s at 49 percent — a 20-point drop. Last January unemployment was at 7.2 percent; today it’s at 10 percent. President Obama came to office criticizing the public debt, and continues to speak of the debt he inherited, but let’s get it right: According to the Heritage Foundation’s Brian Riedl, "President Bush presided over a $2.5 trillion increase in the public debt through 2008. Setting aside 2009 (for which Bush and Obama share responsibility), President Obama’s budget would add $4.9 trillion in public debt from the beginning of this year through 2016." In addition, there is now talk of a second stimulus, and a nearly trillion-dollar health-care plan is in the works.
On the international front, Iran is more threatening and dangerous than ever. President Obama campaigned on a new kind of policy toward Iran, but the only thing new is that the Iranian government has become more aggressive, more brutal, and more contemptuous toward our desire to curb its nuclear ambitions. North Korea has test-fired banned missiles and broken off accords. Russia is as aggressive as ever. We have spurned the Dalai Lama. We have upset Eastern European allies from Poland to the Czech Republic. Israel is more nervous than ever — both about its existence and about the pressure the U.S. is putting on it. Sudan has been appeased further than it was by either of the last two administrations but is no less of a threat to Darfur, where things are getting worse. And in Latin America, the president has received praise from Hugo Chávez and Fidel Castro. Meanwhile, he’s twice gone to Copenhagen and come back empty-handed: once to bring the Olympics to Chicago, once to formulate a climate policy. In neither visit did he get what he set out for.
On Afghanistan, he has finally come out with a policy and committed to sending more troops. His administration’s spokesmen are unclear on what the exit or ramp-down procedures and timelines are, but for now, we can praise the ramp-up. But on the terrorism and war issue more generally, we have seen a backslide. Despite ringing statements that we will close Guantanamo, stop enhanced interrogation, and move detained terrorists like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed into our civil-justice system with a public trial, thus bestowing constitutional rights on those terrorists, an interesting statistic came out last week: More terrorist acts and attempts took place in the United States in 2009 than in any year since 2001. According to the Rand Corporation, there have been 33 terrorism-related events on these shores since 9/11, and 13 of them occurred in 2009.
Meanwhile, President Obama seems to want to take the focus off this threat by changing the language of what we are in — which is a war. He tries to narrow and crib the definition as much as possible: a) by not talking about any of it very much and b) when talking about it, by restricting the discussion to al-Qaeda. He has a genus problem, but really only mentions the species; you never hear him talk about Islam or Islamic terrorism, and he hardly ever uses the word “war."
Barack Obama is president. He asked to be. The complaining, the blaming, and the distracting are not presidential. We need a president who sees the world as it is and rises to the challenges.
Just about a year ago, many people here and abroad had very high hopes for our new president and for us. He was going to take on our economic woes, improve our international reputation (as he defined it), and fight a smarter and better war on terrorism. How has the year unfolded?
Using Gallup numbers, President Obama began his administration with a 69 percent approval rating. Today he’s at 49 percent — a 20-point drop. Last January unemployment was at 7.2 percent; today it’s at 10 percent. President Obama came to office criticizing the public debt, and continues to speak of the debt he inherited, but let’s get it right: According to the Heritage Foundation’s Brian Riedl, "President Bush presided over a $2.5 trillion increase in the public debt through 2008. Setting aside 2009 (for which Bush and Obama share responsibility), President Obama’s budget would add $4.9 trillion in public debt from the beginning of this year through 2016." In addition, there is now talk of a second stimulus, and a nearly trillion-dollar health-care plan is in the works.
On the international front, Iran is more threatening and dangerous than ever. President Obama campaigned on a new kind of policy toward Iran, but the only thing new is that the Iranian government has become more aggressive, more brutal, and more contemptuous toward our desire to curb its nuclear ambitions. North Korea has test-fired banned missiles and broken off accords. Russia is as aggressive as ever. We have spurned the Dalai Lama. We have upset Eastern European allies from Poland to the Czech Republic. Israel is more nervous than ever — both about its existence and about the pressure the U.S. is putting on it. Sudan has been appeased further than it was by either of the last two administrations but is no less of a threat to Darfur, where things are getting worse. And in Latin America, the president has received praise from Hugo Chávez and Fidel Castro. Meanwhile, he’s twice gone to Copenhagen and come back empty-handed: once to bring the Olympics to Chicago, once to formulate a climate policy. In neither visit did he get what he set out for.
On Afghanistan, he has finally come out with a policy and committed to sending more troops. His administration’s spokesmen are unclear on what the exit or ramp-down procedures and timelines are, but for now, we can praise the ramp-up. But on the terrorism and war issue more generally, we have seen a backslide. Despite ringing statements that we will close Guantanamo, stop enhanced interrogation, and move detained terrorists like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed into our civil-justice system with a public trial, thus bestowing constitutional rights on those terrorists, an interesting statistic came out last week: More terrorist acts and attempts took place in the United States in 2009 than in any year since 2001. According to the Rand Corporation, there have been 33 terrorism-related events on these shores since 9/11, and 13 of them occurred in 2009.
Meanwhile, President Obama seems to want to take the focus off this threat by changing the language of what we are in — which is a war. He tries to narrow and crib the definition as much as possible: a) by not talking about any of it very much and b) when talking about it, by restricting the discussion to al-Qaeda. He has a genus problem, but really only mentions the species; you never hear him talk about Islam or Islamic terrorism, and he hardly ever uses the word “war."
Barack Obama is president. He asked to be. The complaining, the blaming, and the distracting are not presidential. We need a president who sees the world as it is and rises to the challenges.
Monday, January 4, 2010
Obama Pretends to Get Tough on Yemen
after a year of neglect
Stephen Hayes:
http://weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/017/399juooq.asp
Dan Pfeiffer, White House Communications Director, took to the official White House blog Wednesday to post a response to critics of Barack Obama and his handling of counterterrorism. Pfeiffer believes that the intelligence failure that led to the failed bombing on Christmas day -- nearly a year into Obama's presidency -- can be blamed on a war launched almost seven years ago in Iraq.
The banality of his claim is surpassed only by its absurdity.
What's more interesting is Pfeiffer's claim that his boss has finally refocused U.S. counterterrorism on its proper targets in places like Afghanistan, Somalia and Yemen.
Pfeiffer mentions Yemen twice. That's not a surprise considering the rise to prominence of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and radical cleric Anwar al Awlaki, both based in Yemen. Awlaki, a senior al Qaeda cleric and recruiter, has offered guidance (at least) to Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the Fort Hood shooter, and Omar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the failed Flight 253 bomber. And Abdulmutallab reportedly had extensive training and support from AQAP. As a result, Yemen -- a nation unfamiliar to most Americans -- has been on our front pages and leading our broadcasts in the past few weeks. So Pfeiffer wants everyone to know that Obama, in his "war against al Qaeda," has been busy building "partnerships" to target terrorist safe-havens in, among other places, Yemen.
To coin a phrase: What a difference a year makes.
On January 22, 2009, Obama signed an executive order requiring the closure of the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay within twelve months. To near universal praise, Obama claimed his action would allow America once again to occupy the "moral high ground" and to "restore the standards of due process and the core constitutional values that have made this country great even in the midst of war, even in dealing with terrorism."
On the same day that Obama made his announcement, the State Department website http://www.america.gov/ published an interview with US Ambassador to Yemen Stephen Seche. No other country would be as important to closing Guantanamo Bay as Yemen. Some 100 of the 248 detainees there at the end of the Bush administration were Yemenis. And, with only a few exceptions, those that remained at the facility remained there for a reason. They were seasoned jihadists and they were extremely dangerous.
That fact made Seche's comments notable. He said that it was the goal of the new administration to repatriate a "majority" of the Yemenis at Gitmo. And not just send them to their native country to be detained, but so that they could "make a future for themselves here."
"Certainly we would like to be able to bring them back to Yemen and have them integrate themselves back into their own society with their families," said Seche. Although he acknowledged some "inherent risks" in returning the detainees to the general population, Seche suggested that only a few of the detainees present real problems. "Except in the case perhaps of some very hardcore elements, we believe that the majority of these detainees can be put productively into a reintegration program with the goal over time of enabling them to find a way back into Yemeni society without posing a security risk."
The statement was shocking. More than a dozen of the Yemenis held at Guantanamo Bay at the time were alleged by the US government to have been personal bodyguards for Osama bin Laden. Many of the other Yemenis at Gitmo had been trained at al Qaeda training camps (74 percent) or stayed at al Qaeda guesthouses (74 percent). Others had been captured fighting Americans or alongside senior al Qaeda figures -- 15 of them captured in raids that netted top al Qaeda operatives Abu Zubaydah and Ramzi Binalshibh. Still others had admitted their terrorist involvement without coercion and in open hearings -- sometimes accompanying their confessions with threats to one day kill again.
And yet the Obama administration believed that a "majority" of these detainees could be freed in Yemen -- a well-known hotbed of al Qaeda activity?
When we first read Seche's words nearly a year ago, we assumed he was off-message -- that he had been stricken with a severe case of "clientitis," in which the foreign service officer forgets that he represents the interests of the United States and not those of the country in which he is serving. So we sent his words to the spokesman for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, assuming, frankly, that we would get a reply distancing the new top diplomat from what seemed to be a radical policy.
That did not happen:
Ambassador Seche's comments that you referred to lay out very well the U.S. government position on the situation of the Yemeni detainees at Guantánamo. As he noted, the U.S. government has made clear its decision to close the Guantánamo Bay facility as soon as practicable but no later than one year from January 22, 2009.
Just last week, the Obama administration repatriated six Yemenis who had been held at Gitmo. Among them, Ayman Saeed Abdullah Batarfi, a graduate of al Qaeda's famous Khalden training camp. Batarfi has been waging jihad since the late 1980s, when he fought the Soviets. Batarfi, an orthopedic surgeon, also stayed at al Qaeda guesthouses, worked for an al Qaeda front group, met with a "Malaysian microbiologist" who was almost certainly the head of al Qaeda's anthrax program, and spent time with Osama bin Laden at Tora Bora. How do we know all of this? Batarfi told us -- he chose to volunteer it in his administrative review board hearing.
How can a White House spinmeister like Pfeiffer reconcile releases like this one--the result of the administration's stated goal for the past year--with Obama's new get-tough policy on Yemen?
He can't.
Stephen F. Hayes is senior writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
Stephen Hayes:
http://weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/017/399juooq.asp
Dan Pfeiffer, White House Communications Director, took to the official White House blog Wednesday to post a response to critics of Barack Obama and his handling of counterterrorism. Pfeiffer believes that the intelligence failure that led to the failed bombing on Christmas day -- nearly a year into Obama's presidency -- can be blamed on a war launched almost seven years ago in Iraq.
The banality of his claim is surpassed only by its absurdity.
What's more interesting is Pfeiffer's claim that his boss has finally refocused U.S. counterterrorism on its proper targets in places like Afghanistan, Somalia and Yemen.
Pfeiffer mentions Yemen twice. That's not a surprise considering the rise to prominence of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and radical cleric Anwar al Awlaki, both based in Yemen. Awlaki, a senior al Qaeda cleric and recruiter, has offered guidance (at least) to Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the Fort Hood shooter, and Omar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the failed Flight 253 bomber. And Abdulmutallab reportedly had extensive training and support from AQAP. As a result, Yemen -- a nation unfamiliar to most Americans -- has been on our front pages and leading our broadcasts in the past few weeks. So Pfeiffer wants everyone to know that Obama, in his "war against al Qaeda," has been busy building "partnerships" to target terrorist safe-havens in, among other places, Yemen.
To coin a phrase: What a difference a year makes.
On January 22, 2009, Obama signed an executive order requiring the closure of the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay within twelve months. To near universal praise, Obama claimed his action would allow America once again to occupy the "moral high ground" and to "restore the standards of due process and the core constitutional values that have made this country great even in the midst of war, even in dealing with terrorism."
On the same day that Obama made his announcement, the State Department website http://www.america.gov/ published an interview with US Ambassador to Yemen Stephen Seche. No other country would be as important to closing Guantanamo Bay as Yemen. Some 100 of the 248 detainees there at the end of the Bush administration were Yemenis. And, with only a few exceptions, those that remained at the facility remained there for a reason. They were seasoned jihadists and they were extremely dangerous.
That fact made Seche's comments notable. He said that it was the goal of the new administration to repatriate a "majority" of the Yemenis at Gitmo. And not just send them to their native country to be detained, but so that they could "make a future for themselves here."
"Certainly we would like to be able to bring them back to Yemen and have them integrate themselves back into their own society with their families," said Seche. Although he acknowledged some "inherent risks" in returning the detainees to the general population, Seche suggested that only a few of the detainees present real problems. "Except in the case perhaps of some very hardcore elements, we believe that the majority of these detainees can be put productively into a reintegration program with the goal over time of enabling them to find a way back into Yemeni society without posing a security risk."
The statement was shocking. More than a dozen of the Yemenis held at Guantanamo Bay at the time were alleged by the US government to have been personal bodyguards for Osama bin Laden. Many of the other Yemenis at Gitmo had been trained at al Qaeda training camps (74 percent) or stayed at al Qaeda guesthouses (74 percent). Others had been captured fighting Americans or alongside senior al Qaeda figures -- 15 of them captured in raids that netted top al Qaeda operatives Abu Zubaydah and Ramzi Binalshibh. Still others had admitted their terrorist involvement without coercion and in open hearings -- sometimes accompanying their confessions with threats to one day kill again.
And yet the Obama administration believed that a "majority" of these detainees could be freed in Yemen -- a well-known hotbed of al Qaeda activity?
When we first read Seche's words nearly a year ago, we assumed he was off-message -- that he had been stricken with a severe case of "clientitis," in which the foreign service officer forgets that he represents the interests of the United States and not those of the country in which he is serving. So we sent his words to the spokesman for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, assuming, frankly, that we would get a reply distancing the new top diplomat from what seemed to be a radical policy.
That did not happen:
Ambassador Seche's comments that you referred to lay out very well the U.S. government position on the situation of the Yemeni detainees at Guantánamo. As he noted, the U.S. government has made clear its decision to close the Guantánamo Bay facility as soon as practicable but no later than one year from January 22, 2009.
Just last week, the Obama administration repatriated six Yemenis who had been held at Gitmo. Among them, Ayman Saeed Abdullah Batarfi, a graduate of al Qaeda's famous Khalden training camp. Batarfi has been waging jihad since the late 1980s, when he fought the Soviets. Batarfi, an orthopedic surgeon, also stayed at al Qaeda guesthouses, worked for an al Qaeda front group, met with a "Malaysian microbiologist" who was almost certainly the head of al Qaeda's anthrax program, and spent time with Osama bin Laden at Tora Bora. How do we know all of this? Batarfi told us -- he chose to volunteer it in his administrative review board hearing.
How can a White House spinmeister like Pfeiffer reconcile releases like this one--the result of the administration's stated goal for the past year--with Obama's new get-tough policy on Yemen?
He can't.
Stephen F. Hayes is senior writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
ObamaNation: The first year
Porkulus, 10% unemployment, massive mulit-trillion $ deficits, radical appointments; socialized health care debacle; cap & tax/trade proposals; Bush did it; projecting weakness abroad; "the system worked" anti-terrorism systemic failures; civilian trials for KSM and other terrorists; terrorism as a criminal matter; Bush did it; Iran; dithering in Afghanistan; and, oh, yeah, all these problems I inherited from those other guys.
Charles Krauthammer: on 2009
It began with this wonderful festival of inauguration day, where I think the pride people felt across the country was near universal. Electing the first African-American was a transcendence of our history, a vindication really of the American experiment.
One other reason why the joy was universal — a more cynical one — was it wasn't until a month later, at his address to a joint session of Congress, that Obama revealed how much of a leftist he is. Remember, in the transition, his appointments were rather centrist — his economic advisors and his national security team. But he made a remarkable speech to Congress in February in which he basically said: I am here to do something. I want to remake American health care, education and energy, which meant turning America into more of a European social democracy than the America that we had known.
It was the most radical speech I think a president has given in our lifetime. It was a bold, courageous declaration. He's not hiding his intentions but that's why we have had such a clamorous year with so much discord and high, high decibel debate.
Charles Krauthammer: on 2009
It began with this wonderful festival of inauguration day, where I think the pride people felt across the country was near universal. Electing the first African-American was a transcendence of our history, a vindication really of the American experiment.
One other reason why the joy was universal — a more cynical one — was it wasn't until a month later, at his address to a joint session of Congress, that Obama revealed how much of a leftist he is. Remember, in the transition, his appointments were rather centrist — his economic advisors and his national security team. But he made a remarkable speech to Congress in February in which he basically said: I am here to do something. I want to remake American health care, education and energy, which meant turning America into more of a European social democracy than the America that we had known.
It was the most radical speech I think a president has given in our lifetime. It was a bold, courageous declaration. He's not hiding his intentions but that's why we have had such a clamorous year with so much discord and high, high decibel debate.
Obama: Flawed anti-terrorism policies
Obama's terrorism advisor John Brennan on Sunday TV talk shows: "there was no smoking gun". What an idiotic statement to try to explain away airline security failures. There was "no smoking gun" on Sept. 11 either. The idea is to catch them before they blow up an airplane.
Who Is the Enemy? [Victor Davis Hanson]
I don't think anyone knows quite what this administration's anti-terrorism policy is. Last August, Obama's counterterrorism chief, John Brennan, lambasted the Bush administration, citing "the inflammatory rhetoric, hyperbole and intellectual narrowness that has often characterized the debate over the president's national security policies" and criticizing the conduct of counterterrorism during the eight years following 9/11.
But more than one-third of all terrorist plots since 9/11 transpired in 2009 — despite loud chest-thumping about rejecting the idea of a war on terror, reaching out to the Muslim world, and apologizing for purported American sins. A non-impoverished Major Hasan or Mr. Mutallab (or Mr. Atta or KSM) does not fit with the notion that our enemies act out of poverty or oppression or want.
In fact, what we are witnessing is a strange mishmash. On the one hand, after repeatedly trashing the Bush protocols in 2007–08, Obama has quietly adopted most of them — keeping the Patriot Act, intercepts, wiretaps, renditions, the concept of tribunals, Predator attacks, forward offensive strategies in Afghanistan, and the Bush-Petraeus timetable in Iraq.
But on the other hand, the Obama administration has embraced largely empty symbolism — promising to "close Guantanamo within a year," mouthing euphemisms such as "overseas-contingency operations" ("this administration prefers to avoid using the term 'Long War' or 'Global War on Terror' [GWOT.] Please use 'Overseas Contingency Operation.'"), and "man-made disasters," while announcing showy new politically-correct moves (such as a public trial for KSM) and subjecting CIA operatives to legal hazard.
In both the Major Hasan and Abdul Mutallab cases, the administration has shown initial confusion about the nature of the danger and security breach. The simultaneous announcement of both more troops and a withdrawal date from Afghanistan did not correct the image of confusion and hesitancy.
What to make of all this?
Apparently, the Obama administration came into office in January 2009 thinking that the notion of a "war on terror" was archaic and largely had been an excuse for the Bush-Cheney nexus to scare the nation for partisan political purposes. Given the long period of calm after 9/11, the somnolent "good" war in Afghanistan, and the sudden quiet in the "bad" Iraq theater, Obama preferred to focus on Bush's constitution-shredding rather than on national security. What vestigial danger remained could be changed by the charisma of Barack Obama, the obvious appeal of his ancestry to the Muslim world, and the ritual demonization of George Bush.
But Obama has discovered that there really are radical Islamic threats; that Bush's record of seven years of security was no accident; and that the "good" war is heating up. Obama has been forced by events to quietly find ways of emulating Bush's successful anti-terrorism formula, while making loud but empty declarations to mollify his liberal base (which so far seems pacified that Guantanamo is "virtually" closed, and that KSM is "virtually" facing an ACLU dream trial).
Radical Islamists sense, fairly or not, that this administration is angrier at prior officials who kept us safe than it is at those who wish to destroy us for who we are. Given his adoption of the Bush protocols, Obama might show the same magnanimity toward his predecessor that he does toward the Muslim world.
Will We Set Abdulmutallab Free? [Bill Burck]
During his rounds on the morning news shows yesterday, John Brennan, President Obama's top counterterrorism expert, justified treating the underwear bomber as a criminal with all the rights of a U.S. citizen, rather than an enemy combatant with no right to remain silent or demand a lawyer or a civil trial, by arguing that the government can offer him a plea bargain in exchange for his cooperation. In other words, just like we give deals to drug smugglers or mobsters to give up information on bigger fish in their criminal enterprises, we can do the same with Abdulmutallab. But once again, the Obama administration doesn't seem to get it. Had Abdulmutallab been designated as an enemy combatant from the start, we would not have had to offer him anything at all in exchange for the information he possesses. He could have been interrogated immediately by professionals without Miranda warnings, without a lawyer, and against his will. Given that he appears to have been willing to talk for awhile before he demanded a lawyer, it is a fair assumption that he would have continued talking if he didn't have the option of lawyering up.
Implicit in Brennan's justification is the notion that the government can give Abdulmutallab something every criminal defendant wants — the opportunity for early release. And in most cases, cooperating defendants get just that, and judges reward them by reducing their sentences in exchange for their cooperation against other criminals. Presumably, then, the White House has authorized the Department of Justice to begin negotiating with Abdulmutallab's lawyer to find out what kind of deal he wants. This means that the Obama administration may be contemplating recommending to a judge that Abdulmutallab get a reduced sentence, or perhaps no sentence at all. Yes, folks, they may actually be thinking about setting this terrorist free at some point.
So, here are the perverse incentives for terrorists who come to this country to kill us — assuming you don't succeed in blowing yourself up and are captured, you will have a right to a lawyer, a right to remain silent, a right to trial by a jury of your "peers," and the possibility of early release if you cooperate with authorities. We are a generous nation indeed.
— Bill Burck is a former federal prosecutor and deputy counsel to President Bush.
Who Is the Enemy? [Victor Davis Hanson]
I don't think anyone knows quite what this administration's anti-terrorism policy is. Last August, Obama's counterterrorism chief, John Brennan, lambasted the Bush administration, citing "the inflammatory rhetoric, hyperbole and intellectual narrowness that has often characterized the debate over the president's national security policies" and criticizing the conduct of counterterrorism during the eight years following 9/11.
But more than one-third of all terrorist plots since 9/11 transpired in 2009 — despite loud chest-thumping about rejecting the idea of a war on terror, reaching out to the Muslim world, and apologizing for purported American sins. A non-impoverished Major Hasan or Mr. Mutallab (or Mr. Atta or KSM) does not fit with the notion that our enemies act out of poverty or oppression or want.
In fact, what we are witnessing is a strange mishmash. On the one hand, after repeatedly trashing the Bush protocols in 2007–08, Obama has quietly adopted most of them — keeping the Patriot Act, intercepts, wiretaps, renditions, the concept of tribunals, Predator attacks, forward offensive strategies in Afghanistan, and the Bush-Petraeus timetable in Iraq.
But on the other hand, the Obama administration has embraced largely empty symbolism — promising to "close Guantanamo within a year," mouthing euphemisms such as "overseas-contingency operations" ("this administration prefers to avoid using the term 'Long War' or 'Global War on Terror' [GWOT.] Please use 'Overseas Contingency Operation.'"), and "man-made disasters," while announcing showy new politically-correct moves (such as a public trial for KSM) and subjecting CIA operatives to legal hazard.
In both the Major Hasan and Abdul Mutallab cases, the administration has shown initial confusion about the nature of the danger and security breach. The simultaneous announcement of both more troops and a withdrawal date from Afghanistan did not correct the image of confusion and hesitancy.
What to make of all this?
Apparently, the Obama administration came into office in January 2009 thinking that the notion of a "war on terror" was archaic and largely had been an excuse for the Bush-Cheney nexus to scare the nation for partisan political purposes. Given the long period of calm after 9/11, the somnolent "good" war in Afghanistan, and the sudden quiet in the "bad" Iraq theater, Obama preferred to focus on Bush's constitution-shredding rather than on national security. What vestigial danger remained could be changed by the charisma of Barack Obama, the obvious appeal of his ancestry to the Muslim world, and the ritual demonization of George Bush.
But Obama has discovered that there really are radical Islamic threats; that Bush's record of seven years of security was no accident; and that the "good" war is heating up. Obama has been forced by events to quietly find ways of emulating Bush's successful anti-terrorism formula, while making loud but empty declarations to mollify his liberal base (which so far seems pacified that Guantanamo is "virtually" closed, and that KSM is "virtually" facing an ACLU dream trial).
Radical Islamists sense, fairly or not, that this administration is angrier at prior officials who kept us safe than it is at those who wish to destroy us for who we are. Given his adoption of the Bush protocols, Obama might show the same magnanimity toward his predecessor that he does toward the Muslim world.
Will We Set Abdulmutallab Free? [Bill Burck]
During his rounds on the morning news shows yesterday, John Brennan, President Obama's top counterterrorism expert, justified treating the underwear bomber as a criminal with all the rights of a U.S. citizen, rather than an enemy combatant with no right to remain silent or demand a lawyer or a civil trial, by arguing that the government can offer him a plea bargain in exchange for his cooperation. In other words, just like we give deals to drug smugglers or mobsters to give up information on bigger fish in their criminal enterprises, we can do the same with Abdulmutallab. But once again, the Obama administration doesn't seem to get it. Had Abdulmutallab been designated as an enemy combatant from the start, we would not have had to offer him anything at all in exchange for the information he possesses. He could have been interrogated immediately by professionals without Miranda warnings, without a lawyer, and against his will. Given that he appears to have been willing to talk for awhile before he demanded a lawyer, it is a fair assumption that he would have continued talking if he didn't have the option of lawyering up.
Implicit in Brennan's justification is the notion that the government can give Abdulmutallab something every criminal defendant wants — the opportunity for early release. And in most cases, cooperating defendants get just that, and judges reward them by reducing their sentences in exchange for their cooperation against other criminals. Presumably, then, the White House has authorized the Department of Justice to begin negotiating with Abdulmutallab's lawyer to find out what kind of deal he wants. This means that the Obama administration may be contemplating recommending to a judge that Abdulmutallab get a reduced sentence, or perhaps no sentence at all. Yes, folks, they may actually be thinking about setting this terrorist free at some point.
So, here are the perverse incentives for terrorists who come to this country to kill us — assuming you don't succeed in blowing yourself up and are captured, you will have a right to a lawyer, a right to remain silent, a right to trial by a jury of your "peers," and the possibility of early release if you cooperate with authorities. We are a generous nation indeed.
— Bill Burck is a former federal prosecutor and deputy counsel to President Bush.
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