is coming to your TV. Transparency and BiPartisanship, it won't be.
Tear it up and start over ... O won't do it; the rest is all show and politics.
Jonah Goldberg: It's A Trap - Jump In
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/it_trap_jump_in_d74xjrMgczgr1b3vRIKIVM
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Promises, Promises
Promises made; promises broken.
Rich Lowry: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/the_president_reality_problem_WMuCZTkNKv10LAtLG9DLqK
Tea Partiers:
"What I Saw at the Tea Party" [Jonah Goldberg]
Glenn Reynolds reports from the convention.
There were promises of transparency and of a new kind of collaborative politics where establishment figures listened to ordinary Americans. We were going to see net spending cuts, tax cuts for nearly all Americans, an end to earmarks, legislation posted online for the public to review before it is signed into law, and a line-by-line review of the federal budget to remove wasteful programs.
These weren't the tea-party platforms I heard discussed in Nashville last weekend. They were the campaign promises of Barack Obama in 2008.
Mr. Obama made those promises because the ideas they represented were popular with average Americans. So popular, it turns out, that average Americans are organizing themselves in pursuit of the kind of good government Mr. Obama promised, but has not delivered. And that, in a nutshell, was the feel of the National Tea Party Convention. The political elites have failed, and citizens are stepping in to pick up the slack.
Rich Lowry: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/the_president_reality_problem_WMuCZTkNKv10LAtLG9DLqK
Tea Partiers:
"What I Saw at the Tea Party" [Jonah Goldberg]
Glenn Reynolds reports from the convention.
There were promises of transparency and of a new kind of collaborative politics where establishment figures listened to ordinary Americans. We were going to see net spending cuts, tax cuts for nearly all Americans, an end to earmarks, legislation posted online for the public to review before it is signed into law, and a line-by-line review of the federal budget to remove wasteful programs.
These weren't the tea-party platforms I heard discussed in Nashville last weekend. They were the campaign promises of Barack Obama in 2008.
Mr. Obama made those promises because the ideas they represented were popular with average Americans. So popular, it turns out, that average Americans are organizing themselves in pursuit of the kind of good government Mr. Obama promised, but has not delivered. And that, in a nutshell, was the feel of the National Tea Party Convention. The political elites have failed, and citizens are stepping in to pick up the slack.
Iran updates - fighting in the streets, nukes & A Regime on the Brink ?
Amir Taheri: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/regime_on_the_brink_xhGnMOyqyk9vQOl4aWpGfO
Ralph Peters: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/iran_birthday_bash_uKhVIH9EYsgzlY3j99mVMN
Andy Soltis:
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/international/iran_atomic_hot_air_E5pMWj5QbFuGiakoIe6FKJ
John Bolton: The Case for Striking Iran Grows
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703382904575059270257639534.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion
William Kristol:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/11/AR2010021102723.html
Charles Krauthammer: On the demonstrations in Iran on the anniversary of the Islamic Revolution:
In terms of demonstrations, the regime had a good day. Sometimes repression works. It certainly worked today.
You can repress a revolution. Tiananmen Square worked. The Chinese communists got 20 years out of it and more.
Sometimes it doesn't [and] you have a crack in the regime. This happened with the Shah, with the Soviet Union, with Ceausescu.
What was impressive in terms of the regime today was how disciplined were the forces of repression. The Revolutionary Guards were in the street, the paramilitary Basiji were out there. They cracked heads, they used tear gas, and they successfully prevented any mass demonstration.
And among the demonstrators, there has to be something of a loss of confidence. The repression is working. Their leadership is rather weak. The two presidential candidates who called for the mass demonstrations are rather moderate. They are not in tune with the ones in the street who want to change the regime.
And they never outlined a program, any kind of manifesto or direction. [They] said go out in the streets and essentially get beaten up. And that's a tall proposition if you are a demonstrator out there on your own. . . .
When President [Obama] spoke earlier in the week about [uranium] enrichment, he made a point of calling the regime "the Islamic Republic of Iran." There were demonstrators in the streets today shouting "Republic of Iran," leaving out "Islamic" as a way of saying: We don't want clerical rule.
Why the president insists on this gratuitous giving of legitimacy by using the preferred term of the mullahs is beyond me
Ralph Peters: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/iran_birthday_bash_uKhVIH9EYsgzlY3j99mVMN
Andy Soltis:
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/international/iran_atomic_hot_air_E5pMWj5QbFuGiakoIe6FKJ
John Bolton: The Case for Striking Iran Grows
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703382904575059270257639534.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion
William Kristol:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/11/AR2010021102723.html
Charles Krauthammer: On the demonstrations in Iran on the anniversary of the Islamic Revolution:
In terms of demonstrations, the regime had a good day. Sometimes repression works. It certainly worked today.
You can repress a revolution. Tiananmen Square worked. The Chinese communists got 20 years out of it and more.
Sometimes it doesn't [and] you have a crack in the regime. This happened with the Shah, with the Soviet Union, with Ceausescu.
What was impressive in terms of the regime today was how disciplined were the forces of repression. The Revolutionary Guards were in the street, the paramilitary Basiji were out there. They cracked heads, they used tear gas, and they successfully prevented any mass demonstration.
And among the demonstrators, there has to be something of a loss of confidence. The repression is working. Their leadership is rather weak. The two presidential candidates who called for the mass demonstrations are rather moderate. They are not in tune with the ones in the street who want to change the regime.
And they never outlined a program, any kind of manifesto or direction. [They] said go out in the streets and essentially get beaten up. And that's a tall proposition if you are a demonstrator out there on your own. . . .
When President [Obama] spoke earlier in the week about [uranium] enrichment, he made a point of calling the regime "the Islamic Republic of Iran." There were demonstrators in the streets today shouting "Republic of Iran," leaving out "Islamic" as a way of saying: We don't want clerical rule.
Why the president insists on this gratuitous giving of legitimacy by using the preferred term of the mullahs is beyond me
Friday, February 12, 2010
Mukasey Destroys Holders Nonsense re: Christmas Day airline underwear bomber
Mukasey Shreds Obama Administration's Legal Claims on Christmas Bomber [Andy McCarthy]
Every word of former AG Michael Mukasey's op-ed in the Washington Post this morning is required reading. But the direct comments on the Obama administration's legal claims are especially worthy:
Contrary to what some in government have suggested, that Abdulmutallab was taken into custody by the FBI did not mean, legally or as a matter of policy, that he had to be treated as a criminal defendant at any point. Consider: In 1942, German saboteurs landed on Long Island and in Florida. That they were eventually captured by the FBI did not stop President Franklin Roosevelt from directing that they be treated as unlawful enemy combatants. They were ultimately tried before a military commission in Washington and executed. Their status had nothing to do with who held them, and their treatment was upheld in all respects by the Supreme Court. . . .
Contrary to what the White House homeland security adviser and the attorney general have suggested, if not said outright, not only was there no authority or policy in place under the Bush administration requiring that all those detained in the United States be treated as criminal defendants, but relevant authority was and is the opposite. The Supreme Court held in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld that "indefinite detention for the purpose of interrogation is not authorized" but also said in the same case that detention for the purpose of neutralizing an unlawful enemy combatant is permissible and that the only right of such a combatant — even if he is a citizen, and Abdulmutallab is not — is to challenge his classification as such a combatant in a habeas corpus proceeding. This does not include the right to remain silent or the right to a lawyer, but only such legal assistance as may be necessary to file a habeas corpus petition within a reasonable time. That was the basis for my ruling in Padilla v. Rumsfeld that, as a convenience to the court and not for any constitutionally based reason, he had to consult with a lawyer for the limited purpose of filing a habeas petition, but that interrogation need not stop.
What of Richard Reid, the "shoe bomber," who was warned of his Miranda rights and prosecuted in a civilian court? He was arrested in December 2001, before procedures were put in place that would have allowed for an outcome that might have included not only conviction but also exploitation of his intelligence value, if possible. His case does not recommend the same procedure in Abdulmutallab's.
As I explained in a column last week, Attorney General Holder badly misstated the Padillacase in his letter to Senator McConnell. I discussed the Obama administration's misplaced reliance on the Reid case in a column yesterday — and had more thoughts on Padilla, here. Bill Burck and Dana Perino have a course in Bush counterterrorism, here. The former AG's observations should put the legal controversy to rest, though . . . not that it will.
Taylor's Knockout Punch on Miranda Idiocy [Bill Burck & Dana Perino]
The Obama administration's claim that criticism of its handling of Abdulmutallab is pure partisanship takes another big hit today. Stuart Taylor — formerly of the New York Timesand currently with the National Journal, neither of which is particularly noted for its right-wing zealotry — delivers a knockout punch in his column today. And Taylor himself is far from a Republican partisan. Here are some excerpts, but the whole thing is very much worth reading.
Reasonable people disagree about how much coercion interrogators should use to extract potentially lifesaving information from terrorists. (None at all, President Obama unwisely ordered soon after taking office.)
But no reasonable person could doubt that starting out with "you have the right to remain silent" is not the way to save lives.
Yet this is essentially the policy into which the Obama administration has locked itself by insisting that it did the right thing when it read Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the would-be Christmas Day bomber, his Miranda rights after only 50 minutes of questioning and a hospital visit. . . .
This is not to deny that bypassing Miranda would leave unresolved how much evidence about a suspect should be required to justify incommunicado detention and interrogation; how harshly he should be interrogated; and for how long.
Those are hard questions. The easy one is whether Obama's policy of Mirandizing terrorist suspects can be squared with Obama's exhortation in his State of the Union address: "Let's try common sense." It cannot be.
And, on a related topic -- military commissions vs. civilian trials:
Obama Takes Over 9/11 Trials, Commissions Back on Table [Daniel Foster]
President Obama has trumped Attorney General Eric Holder and taken control of the decision on where to try 9/11 terrorists, according to the Washington Post. The move signals "a recognition that the administration had mishandled the process and triggered a political backlash."
The president seems to have realized that Holder, who was initially given wide latitude on the trials, has been politically tone-deaf in his handling of the case so far. Moreover, the attorney general, previously adamant about the need for a civilian trial, is now suggesting that military commissions are back on the table:
Administration officials acknowledge that Holder and Obama advisers were unable to build political support for the trial. And Holder, in an interview Thursday, left open the possibility that Mohammed's trial could be switched to a military commission, although he said that is not his personal and legal preference.
"At the end of the day, wherever this case is tried, in whatever forum, what we have to ensure is that it's done as transparently as possible and with adherence to all the rules," Holder said. "If we do that, I'm not sure the location or even the forum is as important as what the world sees in that proceeding."
Obama's entry into the decision-making process was spurred, as well, by bipartisan support in Congress for efforts to cut off funding for the trials unless a safe venue could be found. Sources in the White House said they are working on a potential deal with Congress that would include fixes on both the 9/11 trial and broader questions of detainee policy. They said the decision will be made soon.
Re: Obama Takes Over 9/11 Trials, Commissions Back on Table [Shannen Coffin]
The Post story that Daniel discusses below is gabberflasting. It is now "breaking news" in this town when the president of the United States inserts himself into the "process" of deciding one of the more important national-security issues that his administration faces — how to deal with the mastermind of September 11. The harmonizing of intelligence, national-security, and law-enforcement interests within his administration should have called on the president's ultimate executive decisionmaking authority from day one. The notion that an "independent" (where it's convenient) attorney general should be making these decisions without any guidance from the chief executive raises all the more questions about who is running the asylum.
One particular sentence in the report just tickled me: "Obama gave little clue about how the administration will proceed when he was asked Sunday about the trial." Shouldn't that read "had little clue"?
The President Takes Charge [Bill Burck & Dana Perino]
Well, well, well. What do we have here?
When Attorney General Eric Holder announced the Justice Department’s plans to try KSM in civilian court in Manhattan last November, we were skeptical — both that the trial would really take place in Manhattan, and that Holder had really made the decision, as the administration claimed, with no input from the White House. As we recommended he do back then (but were pessimistic would happen), the president has overruled the attorney general and taken over the process. According to the Washington Post, Obama is now going to get personally involved in finding a new venue for the KSM trial.
The ham-handed announcement of the trial’s coming to NYC was met with enthusiastic rejection across the board (even politicians who initially supported the idea, such as New York State senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand and New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, wisely flip-flopped). Plus, as we have discussed before, the administration has made, and the president’s chief spokesperson continues to make, extremely prejudicial comments about KSM’s guilt and supposedly inevitable execution, which undermine KSM’s right to a fair trial in civilian court.
Senate GOP: White House Misleading On Abdulmutallab [Daniel Foster]
Senate Republicans issued a memo today cataloging apparent contradictions between administration officials' accounts of the events leading up to the decision to Mirandize Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.
The memo suggests that White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, in an MSNBC interview Thursday morning, contradicted the sworn Congressional testimony of national-security officials when he suggested that intelligence agencies "came to an agreement" with the Justice Department on the decision to process Abdulmutallab as a civilian criminal.
As I noted yesterday, Gibbs backed off that characterization as the interview progressed, and said only that the FBI "disseminated intelligence" to sister agencies. That was language consistent with Attorney General Eric Holder, who told Senate Republicans only that top national-security officials were "informed" of the decision to Mirandize the Christmas Day bomber.
Taylor's Knockout Punch on Miranda Idiocy [Bill Burck & Dana Perino]
The Obama administration's claim that criticism of its handling of Abdulmutallab is pure partisanship takes another big hit today. Stuart Taylor — formerly of the New York Timesand currently with the National Journal, neither of which is particularly noted for its right-wing zealotry — delivers a knockout punch in his column today. And Taylor himself is far from a Republican partisan. Here are some excerpts, but the whole thing is very much worth reading.
Reasonable people disagree about how much coercion interrogators should use to extract potentially lifesaving information from terrorists. (None at all, President Obama unwisely ordered soon after taking office.)
But no reasonable person could doubt that starting out with "you have the right to remain silent" is not the way to save lives.
Yet this is essentially the policy into which the Obama administration has locked itself by insisting that it did the right thing when it read Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the would-be Christmas Day bomber, his Miranda rights after only 50 minutes of questioning and a hospital visit. . . .
This is not to deny that bypassing Miranda would leave unresolved how much evidence about a suspect should be required to justify incommunicado detention and interrogation; how harshly he should be interrogated; and for how long.
Those are hard questions. The easy one is whether Obama's policy of Mirandizing terrorist suspects can be squared with Obama's exhortation in his State of the Union address: "Let's try common sense." It cannot be.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
I Just Don't Trust Anything This Guy Says ...
The Truth Is a Precious Commodity [Victor Davis Hanson]
The problem with Obama’s new hedging on taxing those who make below $250,000, or his administration’s taking credit for victory in the Iraq war that they so once fervently tried to abort, or the flip-flop on renditions and tribunals, or the embarrassments over closing Guantanamo and trying KSM in New York or Mirandizing the Christmas Day bomber,or trashing/praising Wall Street grandees, is not that presidents cannot change their minds as circumstances warrant, or even that all politicians are at times hypocritical. No, the rub is that Obama is not merely flipping and triangulating on issues in a desperate attempt to shadow the polls, but he is doing so on matters that he once swore were absolutely central to his entire candidacy and his signature hope-and-change agenda, critical to the future of the U.S., and proof of his opponents’ either ignorance or disingenuousness.
Serially he once screamed about taxing only the wealthy and airing health care on C-SPAN. He advocated taking out all combat troops from Iraq by March 2008 and asserted the surge was failing — at a critical time when our soldiers were in a life-and-death struggle to make it work. Obama built an entire narrative about Bush the Constitution Shredder who presided over Guantanamo and renditions. There was no place in his promised new politics for lobbyists and Chicago tactics. After a single year of governance, there is now scarcely a single issue that Obama & Co. have not backtracked on, flip-flopped, redefined, or quietly dropped — mostly matters that were once demagogued to score political points. At some point — I think it was around mid-January — the public collectively shrugged and concluded of Obama, “I don’t trust anything that this guy says.” And when that happens in American politics, it is almost impossible to restore any modicum of credibility. All we are left with now is three more years of the president’s “Bush did it” mantra and a buffoonish Robert Gibbs, like some strutting carnival barker, showing off ink on his palm to a bored press corps.
The problem with Obama’s new hedging on taxing those who make below $250,000, or his administration’s taking credit for victory in the Iraq war that they so once fervently tried to abort, or the flip-flop on renditions and tribunals, or the embarrassments over closing Guantanamo and trying KSM in New York or Mirandizing the Christmas Day bomber,or trashing/praising Wall Street grandees, is not that presidents cannot change their minds as circumstances warrant, or even that all politicians are at times hypocritical. No, the rub is that Obama is not merely flipping and triangulating on issues in a desperate attempt to shadow the polls, but he is doing so on matters that he once swore were absolutely central to his entire candidacy and his signature hope-and-change agenda, critical to the future of the U.S., and proof of his opponents’ either ignorance or disingenuousness.
Serially he once screamed about taxing only the wealthy and airing health care on C-SPAN. He advocated taking out all combat troops from Iraq by March 2008 and asserted the surge was failing — at a critical time when our soldiers were in a life-and-death struggle to make it work. Obama built an entire narrative about Bush the Constitution Shredder who presided over Guantanamo and renditions. There was no place in his promised new politics for lobbyists and Chicago tactics. After a single year of governance, there is now scarcely a single issue that Obama & Co. have not backtracked on, flip-flopped, redefined, or quietly dropped — mostly matters that were once demagogued to score political points. At some point — I think it was around mid-January — the public collectively shrugged and concluded of Obama, “I don’t trust anything that this guy says.” And when that happens in American politics, it is almost impossible to restore any modicum of credibility. All we are left with now is three more years of the president’s “Bush did it” mantra and a buffoonish Robert Gibbs, like some strutting carnival barker, showing off ink on his palm to a bored press corps.
Why Civilian Trials for Terrorists / Enemy Combatants are wrongheaded
Andy McCarthy nails it again ....
Padilla Proves the WEAKNESSES of the Civilian Justice System [Andy McCarthy]
The Left's latest effort to attempt to defend the Obama administration's mishandling of Christmas bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab is the "Bush did it" canard. Obama apologists are highlighting cases the Bush administration sent to the criminal justice system in order to claim that Obama is simply following Bush precedents. Therefore, the argument goes, criticism of Obama is just political gotcha.
I deal with this claim in the context of the comparison of Abdulmutallab to "Shoe-bomber" Richard Reid in my column this afternoon. Bill Burck and Dana Perino also have a very comprehensive post today, discussing Reid and "Dirty Bomber" Jose Padilla. I don't want to belabor the points that have already been made. I do, however, want to address an under-appreciated aspect of the Padilla case.
Padilla is actually the case that best shows the limitations and inadequacies of the civilian justice system as applied to enemy combatants. This fact is obscured because, as the Left keeps repeating, he was eventually transferred from military custody to the civilian justice system, where he was convicted.
Here's what they never tell you: He was not convicted of the most important plot we had against him — the conspiracy with KSM, Binyam Mohammed, and others to carry out a second wave of post-9/11 attacks inside the United States. He was never indicted on that plot because he could not be convicted applying civilian due process standards.
Padilla refused to give information to the FBI, using its regular protocols. It was only when he was designated as an enemy combatant and transferred to military custody (no lawyer involved in interrogations, no Miranda, no case to plea bargain) that he began to give up valuable information. None of those confessions could be admitted under the standards applicable in civilian courts.
Moreover, we knew a lot of other information about him from the interrogations of other Qaeda detainees, like KSM, by the CIA. But that information, too, could not be admitted under civilian court rules unless we were willing to give the sources immunity from prosecution. Since we were never going to immunize the likes of KSM, that was never going to happen.
So how was Padilla prosecuted? By luck, we had another, unrelated case on him. It had nothing to do with his plots against the United States. He was found to be a tangential but complicit member of a conspiracy to support terrorist operations outside the U.S. He was indicted for that plot and eventually convicted. But he received a comparatively minor sentence (17 years) rather than the life-sentence he should have and would have gotten if his major activity could have been proved in a civilian court. Alas, it could not. Thus, he stands to be released from prison in a few years — and, because he is a U.S. citizen, he will be released into our country.
Padilla stands for the proposition that someone can be very dangerous to the American people, we can be in a position to know he is very dangerous based on reliable intelligence, and yet, we can be unable to convict him because of the burdensome due process standards that apply to civilian criminal prosecutions. Padilla is not proof that the system works. He is proof that, sometimes, it cannot work — and that we therefore must have other means besides civilian prosecution to detain and interrogate some of the worst terrorists.
Padilla Proves the WEAKNESSES of the Civilian Justice System [Andy McCarthy]
The Left's latest effort to attempt to defend the Obama administration's mishandling of Christmas bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab is the "Bush did it" canard. Obama apologists are highlighting cases the Bush administration sent to the criminal justice system in order to claim that Obama is simply following Bush precedents. Therefore, the argument goes, criticism of Obama is just political gotcha.
I deal with this claim in the context of the comparison of Abdulmutallab to "Shoe-bomber" Richard Reid in my column this afternoon. Bill Burck and Dana Perino also have a very comprehensive post today, discussing Reid and "Dirty Bomber" Jose Padilla. I don't want to belabor the points that have already been made. I do, however, want to address an under-appreciated aspect of the Padilla case.
Padilla is actually the case that best shows the limitations and inadequacies of the civilian justice system as applied to enemy combatants. This fact is obscured because, as the Left keeps repeating, he was eventually transferred from military custody to the civilian justice system, where he was convicted.
Here's what they never tell you: He was not convicted of the most important plot we had against him — the conspiracy with KSM, Binyam Mohammed, and others to carry out a second wave of post-9/11 attacks inside the United States. He was never indicted on that plot because he could not be convicted applying civilian due process standards.
Padilla refused to give information to the FBI, using its regular protocols. It was only when he was designated as an enemy combatant and transferred to military custody (no lawyer involved in interrogations, no Miranda, no case to plea bargain) that he began to give up valuable information. None of those confessions could be admitted under the standards applicable in civilian courts.
Moreover, we knew a lot of other information about him from the interrogations of other Qaeda detainees, like KSM, by the CIA. But that information, too, could not be admitted under civilian court rules unless we were willing to give the sources immunity from prosecution. Since we were never going to immunize the likes of KSM, that was never going to happen.
So how was Padilla prosecuted? By luck, we had another, unrelated case on him. It had nothing to do with his plots against the United States. He was found to be a tangential but complicit member of a conspiracy to support terrorist operations outside the U.S. He was indicted for that plot and eventually convicted. But he received a comparatively minor sentence (17 years) rather than the life-sentence he should have and would have gotten if his major activity could have been proved in a civilian court. Alas, it could not. Thus, he stands to be released from prison in a few years — and, because he is a U.S. citizen, he will be released into our country.
Padilla stands for the proposition that someone can be very dangerous to the American people, we can be in a position to know he is very dangerous based on reliable intelligence, and yet, we can be unable to convict him because of the burdensome due process standards that apply to civilian criminal prosecutions. Padilla is not proof that the system works. He is proof that, sometimes, it cannot work — and that we therefore must have other means besides civilian prosecution to detain and interrogate some of the worst terrorists.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
"Obama is a Man of the Left. That's Who He Is. " Charles Krauthammer
On President Obama’s health-care rhetoric:
I think the president is at sea. He has just had his entire agenda of Year One rejected, and I think he has talked himself into believing that it's because of process and not substance.
As we heard in that clip, he thinks that on health care it was the way it was presented — all the backroom deals. [They] certainly contributed to people's unhappiness about it, but it was the substance. The dogs don't like the dog food. He thinks it's the bowl or the advertising, or perhaps he didn't speak slowly enough in dog-ese in explaining it. But it's the substance — [an idea] which he won't accept.
So he doubles down on substance. He's staying with health care. He talked about trying again on cap-and-trade. He is going to have the meeting at the end of the month with Republicans on health care. But he thinks it's about openness and process, transparency, and bipartisanship, and that's why he is attempting all of this.
In fact, the way that the White House trumpeted the meeting today is, again, he is showing he reaches across the aisle.
I think he is missing the point. With unemployment at 10 percent and with an agenda — a whole year's rejected agenda — which Americans in general think was beside the point, Americans aren't troubled about process here. It's substance. I think he is — if I can use another analogy — barking up the wrong tree. . . .
I think they really are at sea on this. Obama is not like a Clinton, who could pivot, change his agenda, change the substance, and become a centrist because he always was a centrist originally, even before he reached the presidency. . . .
Obama is a man of the left. That's who he is. This is an agenda he believes in. I grant him utter sincerity on this. He is not ready to abandon it. He thinks it's a matter of process, and he thinks he can recover politically if he shows how, in process, he is like the Obama he promised in 2008 and 2007 — open, transcendent, and reaching across to the other side. I think he is wrong, but I think that's his analysis.
I think the president is at sea. He has just had his entire agenda of Year One rejected, and I think he has talked himself into believing that it's because of process and not substance.
As we heard in that clip, he thinks that on health care it was the way it was presented — all the backroom deals. [They] certainly contributed to people's unhappiness about it, but it was the substance. The dogs don't like the dog food. He thinks it's the bowl or the advertising, or perhaps he didn't speak slowly enough in dog-ese in explaining it. But it's the substance — [an idea] which he won't accept.
So he doubles down on substance. He's staying with health care. He talked about trying again on cap-and-trade. He is going to have the meeting at the end of the month with Republicans on health care. But he thinks it's about openness and process, transparency, and bipartisanship, and that's why he is attempting all of this.
In fact, the way that the White House trumpeted the meeting today is, again, he is showing he reaches across the aisle.
I think he is missing the point. With unemployment at 10 percent and with an agenda — a whole year's rejected agenda — which Americans in general think was beside the point, Americans aren't troubled about process here. It's substance. I think he is — if I can use another analogy — barking up the wrong tree. . . .
I think they really are at sea on this. Obama is not like a Clinton, who could pivot, change his agenda, change the substance, and become a centrist because he always was a centrist originally, even before he reached the presidency. . . .
Obama is a man of the left. That's who he is. This is an agenda he believes in. I grant him utter sincerity on this. He is not ready to abandon it. He thinks it's a matter of process, and he thinks he can recover politically if he shows how, in process, he is like the Obama he promised in 2008 and 2007 — open, transcendent, and reaching across to the other side. I think he is wrong, but I think that's his analysis.
Today in National Insecurity: Who is Binyam Mohammed ?
Who Is Binyam Mohammed? [Marc Thiessen]
As always, Andy McCarthy hits the ball out of the park with his post on the “disclosures” ordered by a British court about the CIA’s treatment of al-Qaeda terrorist Binyam Mohammed. This has been a non-story in the United States, but it is front-page news in the U.K. These classified paragraphs were supposed to show incontrovertible evidence that the CIA brutally tortured Binyam Mohammed. In fact, they show no such thing.
There seems to be a pattern here, where the Left hypes some top-secret document that will finally prove their case, once and for all, that the CIA committed egregious abuses. The anticipation builds, the press hypes the story, there are leaks about what the document supposedly says, but when the document finally comes out . . . it completely deflates their case. This was what happened with the CIA Inspector General’s report, which was supposed to prove a) a pattern of systemic CIA abuse and b) that the CIA program did not work. Instead, it proved the opposite. Now history repeats itself with these disclosures from the U.K. (Here are the graphs from the U.K. Foreign Office. Judge for yourselves.)
For the record, let’s review who Binyam Mohammed really is. He is painted in the British press as a poor victim, but as I detail in Courting Disaster, he is in fact a committed terrorist who was deployed on a plot to kill hundreds, possibly thousands, of innocent people here in the United States.
Binyam Mohammed was Jose Padilla’s partner in a KSM plot to blow up apartment buildings in a major American city using natural gas. He and Padilla met with KSM in Pakistan after the 9/11 attacks to discuss the plot and receive instructions from al-Qaeda’s operational commander. They were trained in how to seal an apartment to trap the natural gas and to prepare an explosion using that gas that would destroy the building. KSM specifically instructed them to ensure that the explosives went off at a point high enough to prevent the people trapped in the floors above from escaping out the windows. KSM’s right-hand man, Ammar al-Baluchi, gave them cash and travel documents. And the night before their departure from Pakistan to carry out the mission, KSM, Ammar, and Ramzi Bin al-Shibh hosted a farewell dinner for the two terrorists — a send-off to America from the men responsible for the destruction of Sept. 11, 2001.
Both men were subsequently captured. But instead of prosecuting Binyam Mohammed — either by military commission or in federal court — the Obama administration released him to the U.K., where he has become a cause célèbre of the Left.
Given what he planned to do, and the intelligence he possessed, the techniques detailed in these paragraphs are quite mild. Remember that these techniques were employed by the CIA in an escalating fashion, beginning with the least coercive first and culminating in waterboarding. Based on what the U.K. released, Mohammed clearly didn’t get very far. He basically gave in with very limited EITs — as most detainees did.This is a man who should be in a prison cell in Guantanamo today. Thanks to the Obama administration, he’s a British celebrity.
Binyam Mohammed: Is That All There Is? [Andy McCarthy]
Binyam Mohammed is an al Qaeda terrorist who planned, with his would-be partner Jose Padilla (the "Dirty Bomber") to carry out mass-murder attacks in U.S. cities as part of a 9/11 "second wave." (More here.) Unlike Padilla, who was prosecuted on (tangentially related) terrorism charges and is now serving a lengthy (albeit not lengthy enough) sentence, Mohammed was released by the Obama administration, under great pressure from British authorities.
Mohammed is a cause celebre in the U.K. — where he is living free and clear — because he made "torture" allegations against the CIA. Our military prosecutors wanted to try him for war crimes, but the Brits did not want a public trial — and neither, I imagine, did parts of our intelligence community — for fear that they'd be branded "torturers" in the press (which, naturally, happened anyway). So we released him, and of course he has had the vigorous support of the ususal suspects in pursuing civil suits demanding that details of his "torture" be revealed.
The lower British court tried to force the release of seven redacted paragraphs in an internal British memo, describing what that government learned about his treatment in 2002. The Foreign Office rebuked the court for not respecting the assurances of secrecy that are the foundation of vital intelligence sharing between nations. Finally, the appellate court directed that the seven paragraphs be disclosed — but only because the information had already come out in American court cases. So the Foreign Office has now made disclosure. Here are the paragraphs that caused this whole mess:
It was reported that a new series of interviews was conducted by the United States authorities prior to 17 May 2001 as part of a new strategy designed by an expert interviewer. [SEE UPDATE BELOW — Andy]
It was reported that at some stage during that further interview process by the United States authorities, BM had been intentionally subjected to continuous sleep deprivation. The effects of the sleep deprivation were carefully observed.
It was reported that combined with the sleep deprivation, threats and inducements were made to him. His fears of being removed from United States custody and “disappearing” were played upon.
It was reported that the stress brought about by these deliberate tactics was increased by him being shackled in his interviews
It was clear not only from the reports of the content of the interviews but also from the report that he was being kept under self-harm observation, that the inter views were having a marked effect upon him and causing him significant mental stress and suffering.
We regret to have to conclude that the reports provide to the SyS made clear to anyone reading them that BM was being subjected to the treatment that we have described and the effect upon him of that intentional treatment.
The treatment reported, if had been administered on behalf of the United Kingdom, would clearly have been in breach of the undertakings given by the United Kingdom in 1972. Although it is not necessary for us to categorise the treatment reported, it could readily be contended to be at the very least cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment by the United States authorities."
That's it. No water-boarding, no beating, no slapping around. Mohammed was not even stuck in a box with a caterpillar. Just sleep-deprivation (carefully monitored to avoid doing real damage), shackling (not in a stress position), and playing on his fear that he would be taken out of the custody of the U.S. (you know, the torturers) and handed over to some less solicitous country.
To the Brits, the Eurocrats, the American Left, and transnational progressives everywhere, this is somehow "tantamount to torture" because it amounts to "cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment." Of course, it's not anywhere close to being torture. I'm sure Marc Thiessen will have strong views on this, but I've talked to a lot of groups around the country on this topic, and I would say that easily two-thirds of Americans would not be offended in the slightest by the sort of treatment to which Binyam Mohammed was subjected if the reason were to induce him to tell us what he knew about al Qaeda and its ongoing plots.
We can't deprive a would-be mass-murderer of sleep? He was trying to deprive us of a lot more than sleep. Over this nonsense — which we had to know would come out anyway — we've let him free to go back to the jihad? A guy who tried to kill hundreds, if not thousands, of Americans? That's how we uphold our "values"? Whose values?
UPDATE: The eagle eye of Tom Joscelyn alerts us that this date cannot be right — it must be 17 May 2002. I got the excerpt from the 2001 date from the paragraphs as they are posted on the Foreign Office website. The BBC gets this aspect of the story right: "The key details are contained in a seven-paragraph summary of what the CIA told their British intelligence officials about Mr Mohamed's treatment in 2002." (Emphasis added.)
3 Years Ago in the Space Time Continuum
Three Years Ago Today [Jonah Goldberg]
From First Read:
*** Three Years Ago: Exactly three years ago today, Barack Obama officially launched his presidential bid in a speech he gave in Springfield, IL. On that bone-chillingly cold day — though there was no snow like we're seeing this Wednesday on the East Coast — Obama unveiled the themes of his ultimately successful campaign: 1) change Washington, 2) reduce the level of partisanship, 3) bring U.S. soldiers home from Iraq, 4) improve America’s image around the world, and 5) pass universal health care by the end of the president’s first term. And it’s easy to see what he has accomplished (or begun to), and what he hasn’t. Here's where Obama appears to have made the most progress: “Let us also understand that ultimate victory against our enemies will come only by rebuilding our alliances and exporting those ideals that bring hope and opportunity to millions around the globe.” (Though these rebuilt alliances, particularly with Russia and China, will be put to the test in the coming days, as the U.S. pushes for tougher sanctions against Iran.) And: “America, it's time to start bringing our troops home [from Iraq].”
*** Where He’s Made Progress — And Where He Hasn’t: And here’s where he hasn’t made progress: “I know I haven't spent a lot of time learning the ways of Washington. But I've been there long enough to know that the ways of Washington must change.” Or: “Let's be the generation that says right here, right now, that we will have universal health care in America by the end of the next president's first term.” And: “Most of all, let's be the generation that never forgets what happened on that September day and confront the terrorists with everything we've got. Politics doesn't have to divide us on this anymore - we can work together to keep our country safe.”
I would like to choose an alternate timeline please ... can anyone arrange that ?
From First Read:
*** Three Years Ago: Exactly three years ago today, Barack Obama officially launched his presidential bid in a speech he gave in Springfield, IL. On that bone-chillingly cold day — though there was no snow like we're seeing this Wednesday on the East Coast — Obama unveiled the themes of his ultimately successful campaign: 1) change Washington, 2) reduce the level of partisanship, 3) bring U.S. soldiers home from Iraq, 4) improve America’s image around the world, and 5) pass universal health care by the end of the president’s first term. And it’s easy to see what he has accomplished (or begun to), and what he hasn’t. Here's where Obama appears to have made the most progress: “Let us also understand that ultimate victory against our enemies will come only by rebuilding our alliances and exporting those ideals that bring hope and opportunity to millions around the globe.” (Though these rebuilt alliances, particularly with Russia and China, will be put to the test in the coming days, as the U.S. pushes for tougher sanctions against Iran.) And: “America, it's time to start bringing our troops home [from Iraq].”
*** Where He’s Made Progress — And Where He Hasn’t: And here’s where he hasn’t made progress: “I know I haven't spent a lot of time learning the ways of Washington. But I've been there long enough to know that the ways of Washington must change.” Or: “Let's be the generation that says right here, right now, that we will have universal health care in America by the end of the next president's first term.” And: “Most of all, let's be the generation that never forgets what happened on that September day and confront the terrorists with everything we've got. Politics doesn't have to divide us on this anymore - we can work together to keep our country safe.”
I would like to choose an alternate timeline please ... can anyone arrange that ?
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Homeland Insecurity Advisor John Brennan
Getting pummelled for his incompetence and partisanship ... when you can't argue the facts, attack the messenger, which is what the White House and its lackeys do ...
Brennan Embarrasses Himself [Rory Cooper]
Earlier this weekend, former Alaska governor Sarah Palin told Chris Wallace in a Fox News interview that the Obama administration’s position on dissent is that detractors should “sit down and shut up.” The Huffington Post crowd immediately jumped on the statement, saying it couldn’t be supported.
Well, 24 hours later, White House homeland-security adviser John Brennan put this argument to rest by publishing a blog in USA Today that not only tells Americans to sit down and shut up but also accuses them of “serv[ing] the goals of al-Qaeda” if they question the president’s national-security strategy — as if two-sided political discourse is al-Qaeda’s ultimate goal.
In fewer than 400 words, Brennan embarrasses himself with half-truths, selective omissions, and name-calling hysteria. But more importantly, he identifies one of the major problems facing the Obama White House: They lack a credible leader on homeland security that the American people fully trust. This problem clearly began when DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano came out days after Christmas saying “the system worked.”
Keep reading this post . . .
Brennan Must Go [Victor Davis Hanson]
I wrote my Corner posting on John Brennan, Richard Clarke, et al. and the Obama's Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde attitude about criticizing government anti-terrorism protocols before Brennan's surreal op-ed in today's USA Today. If one were to take his highly partisan August 6 speech lambasting the Bush war on terror (replete with a rambling, obsequious paean to his new boss) with his present attack on those he thinks are too partisan in their criticism of this president, one could only conclude that Brennan has gone beyond hypocrisy and is seriously confused — and probably has no business serving as the country's top anti-terrorism adviser.
Here's Brennan in August 2009: "The fight against terrorists and violent extremists has been returned to its right and proper place: no longer defining — indeed, distorting — our entire national security and foreign policy, but rather serving as a vital part of those larger policies." And here's Brennan in February 2010: "Politically motivated criticism and unfounded fear-mongering only serve the goals of al-Qaeda."
I think characterizing seven years of successful anti-terrorism policy as "distorting . . . our entire national security and foreign policy" qualifies as "politically motivated criticism and unfounded fear-mongering." It is time for Brennan to gracefully bow out and let federal counterterrorism be conducted by people who don't alternately and mercurially damn and praise presidents for careerist and partisan purposes or suggest that legitimate worries about Mirandizing the Christmas Day bomber and trying in civilian court the architect of 9/11 a few thousand yards from the scene of his mass-murdering somehow "serve the goals of al-Qaeda."
The brighter minds in the Obama administration will soon grasp that whatever transient gratification the attack-dog Brennan brings them in the debate over civilian/military trials is far outweighed by the damage he does to the necessary sense of nonpartisan vigilance (which he more or less cast off in his very first speech on the job).
100-Foot-Tall Terrorists [Shannen Coffin]
One of the more foolish observations made by John Brennan in his USA Today piece is that "terrorists are not 100-feet tall." He suggests that policies that pre-dated the Obama administration were grounded in little more than "fear-mongering." Omar Abdulmuttalab was a slight 23-year-old Nigerian. He intended to kill more than 100 innocents and nearly got away with it. He was backed by a network that has declared its intention to send dozens if not hundreds more slight, little Abdulmuttalabs into the United States to kill innocents. And the administration's response made it more difficult to understand that network.
Terrorists don't need to be 100-feet tall to inflict significant damage on our country. Perhaps they don't "deserve the abject fear they seek to instill," but they do deserve a fully committed response from the federal government. John Brennan has become more a part of the political messaging response team at the White House, rather than a 24/7 protector of the homeland. His remarkably thin-skinned response to serious, principled criticisms of Obama's anti-terrorism policies show him unfit for his current position.
Besides, if terrrorists were 100-feet tall, this administration would only tell the world not to jump to any conclusions about giants.
Sen. Bond: Brennan 'Needs to Go' [Robert Costa]
After a long career of straight-faced service, John Brennan, President Obama’s deputy national-security adviser, has started to snarl. In a USA Today op-ed, he rants about how “politically-motivated criticism” of the administration’s handling of the failed Christmas Day bombing serves “the goals of al-Qaeda.” You don’t get it, he fumes: My critics are “naïve,” “fear-mongering,” and “absurd.” Sen. Kit Bond (R., Mo.), vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, tells National Review Online that Brennan’s op-ed is “baffling” and part of a “political mess at the White House” that “puts our country at risk.”
Bond says that Brennan “needs to go,” and is no longer “credible.” Brennan’s recent “troubling decisions,” he adds, “have destroyed my confidence in him.” Firing Brennan, he says, “would be part” of fixing Obama’s national-security woes, though not enough. “A drastic change in policy is needed,” he says. “Our problem now is that we have to wonder whether we can trust [Brennan] after he has been a mouthpiece for the political arm that I thought only came out of the White House press office.”
“It is hard to trust anyone in the White House right now,” Bond says. “The national-security team has become a bench of political spokespeople. It doesn’t speak well of the individuals, but let’s remember that these continued attacks must be coming from the top, from the president himself, to try and deflect the mistakes they made in giving Miranda rights to the Christmas Day bomber.”
Re: Brennan Must Go [Marc Thiessen]
Lost in the debate over Brennan’s comments is that he’s not just lashing out at critics on the right. As I point out here, his column today was written in response to criticism from the editorial board of USA Today, which declared the Obama administration’s handling of the Abdulmutallab case “amateur hour.” Also criticizing the administration is the editorial page of the Washington Post, which declared the handling of Abdulmutallab’s interrogation “myopic, irresponsible and potentially dangerous.”
Are these two liberal newspapers engaged in “fear-mongering” in service to the “goals of al-Qaeda”?
When Dick Cheney, the Washington Post, and USA Today all agree, that’s about as close as you get to consensus here in Washington, D.C.
The (False) Gospel According to John [Dana M. Perino and Bill Burck]
In response to today’s excoriating editorial by the usually Obama-friendly USA Today editorial board about the administration’s bungled handling of Christmas Day bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, President Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan, haughtily writes that “we need no lectures” from critics in the media, the Congress, and the public. We were among the first to call out the administration on treating Abdulmutallab like a criminal rather than an enemy combatant, so we assume some of Brennan’s anger may be directed at us.
Let us respond to some of his points:
Immediately after the failed Christmas Day attack, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was thoroughly interrogated and provided important information.
The administration has spent the past two weeks telling anyone who will listen, including our enemies overseas (whom Abdulmutallab apparently is flipping on), that Abdulmutallab’s family convinced him to start cooperating six weeks after he was Mirandized. Indeed, this is when Brennan himself writes that “[t]he most important breakthrough occurred.” How, then, could Abdulmutallab have been “thoroughly interrogated” immediately after he was arrested if “the most important breakthrough” came six weeks later, and only after his family intervened? This glaring contradiction goes unaddressed.
Senior counterterrorism officials from the White House, the intelligence community and the military were all actively discussing this case before he was Mirandized and supported the decision to charge him in criminal court.
Well, someone isn’t telling the American public the truth. Either the heads of the intelligence community lied to Congress several weeks ago when they all testified, under oath, they were not consulted, or Brennan is fibbing now. We hope it’s the latter, because the former is a potentially criminal offense. No one is going to jail for lying to the public.
The most important breakthrough occurred after Abdulmutallab was read his rights, a long-standing FBI policy that was reaffirmed under Michael Mukasey, President Bush's attorney general.
This is only the policy if the FBI is placed in charge of the arrest and interrogation. This is circular reasoning at its best — we Mirandized Abdulmutallab because we had to under FBI policy because we called in the FBI. Hmm. We would hope for better from the White House’s top expert on counterterrorism.
Keep reading this post . . .
Rep. Peter King: Brennan the ‘Egomaniac’ [Robert Costa]
“An egomaniac” — that’s how Rep. Peter King of New York, the ranking Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee, describes John Brennan, President Obama’s deputy national-security adviser, after reading Brennan’s op-ed in USA Today that says criticism of the administration’s handling of the failed Christmas Day bombing serves the “goals of al-Qaeda.” It is “the most mindless, self-serving, and irresponsible statement that a homeland-security adviser can make,” King says.
“This is another case of John Brennan not knowing what he is talking about,” King tells National Review Online. “Brennan is trying to be cute by saying that on Christmas Day he briefed Republicans and Democrats. Leave aside the fact that he didn’t brief me, but he didn’t tell anybody anything that day other than the bare facts that were pretty much known to the public. He said that [Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab] was in FBI custody. Now he’s claiming that that means he told people that [Abdulmutallab] was receiving Miranda rights and no one objected. If that’s what Brennan considers being honest and forthright, then we know that John Brennan is not being honest and forthright.”
King adds that on Christmas night, Brennan built an “iron curtain of secrecy” around the handling of Abdulmutallab and “kept information” from members of Congress. President Obama, he notes, is “encouraging Brennan” and giving him “much leeway” to make political statements
Brennan Embarrasses Himself [Rory Cooper]
Earlier this weekend, former Alaska governor Sarah Palin told Chris Wallace in a Fox News interview that the Obama administration’s position on dissent is that detractors should “sit down and shut up.” The Huffington Post crowd immediately jumped on the statement, saying it couldn’t be supported.
Well, 24 hours later, White House homeland-security adviser John Brennan put this argument to rest by publishing a blog in USA Today that not only tells Americans to sit down and shut up but also accuses them of “serv[ing] the goals of al-Qaeda” if they question the president’s national-security strategy — as if two-sided political discourse is al-Qaeda’s ultimate goal.
In fewer than 400 words, Brennan embarrasses himself with half-truths, selective omissions, and name-calling hysteria. But more importantly, he identifies one of the major problems facing the Obama White House: They lack a credible leader on homeland security that the American people fully trust. This problem clearly began when DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano came out days after Christmas saying “the system worked.”
Keep reading this post . . .
Brennan Must Go [Victor Davis Hanson]
I wrote my Corner posting on John Brennan, Richard Clarke, et al. and the Obama's Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde attitude about criticizing government anti-terrorism protocols before Brennan's surreal op-ed in today's USA Today. If one were to take his highly partisan August 6 speech lambasting the Bush war on terror (replete with a rambling, obsequious paean to his new boss) with his present attack on those he thinks are too partisan in their criticism of this president, one could only conclude that Brennan has gone beyond hypocrisy and is seriously confused — and probably has no business serving as the country's top anti-terrorism adviser.
Here's Brennan in August 2009: "The fight against terrorists and violent extremists has been returned to its right and proper place: no longer defining — indeed, distorting — our entire national security and foreign policy, but rather serving as a vital part of those larger policies." And here's Brennan in February 2010: "Politically motivated criticism and unfounded fear-mongering only serve the goals of al-Qaeda."
I think characterizing seven years of successful anti-terrorism policy as "distorting . . . our entire national security and foreign policy" qualifies as "politically motivated criticism and unfounded fear-mongering." It is time for Brennan to gracefully bow out and let federal counterterrorism be conducted by people who don't alternately and mercurially damn and praise presidents for careerist and partisan purposes or suggest that legitimate worries about Mirandizing the Christmas Day bomber and trying in civilian court the architect of 9/11 a few thousand yards from the scene of his mass-murdering somehow "serve the goals of al-Qaeda."
The brighter minds in the Obama administration will soon grasp that whatever transient gratification the attack-dog Brennan brings them in the debate over civilian/military trials is far outweighed by the damage he does to the necessary sense of nonpartisan vigilance (which he more or less cast off in his very first speech on the job).
100-Foot-Tall Terrorists [Shannen Coffin]
One of the more foolish observations made by John Brennan in his USA Today piece is that "terrorists are not 100-feet tall." He suggests that policies that pre-dated the Obama administration were grounded in little more than "fear-mongering." Omar Abdulmuttalab was a slight 23-year-old Nigerian. He intended to kill more than 100 innocents and nearly got away with it. He was backed by a network that has declared its intention to send dozens if not hundreds more slight, little Abdulmuttalabs into the United States to kill innocents. And the administration's response made it more difficult to understand that network.
Terrorists don't need to be 100-feet tall to inflict significant damage on our country. Perhaps they don't "deserve the abject fear they seek to instill," but they do deserve a fully committed response from the federal government. John Brennan has become more a part of the political messaging response team at the White House, rather than a 24/7 protector of the homeland. His remarkably thin-skinned response to serious, principled criticisms of Obama's anti-terrorism policies show him unfit for his current position.
Besides, if terrrorists were 100-feet tall, this administration would only tell the world not to jump to any conclusions about giants.
Sen. Bond: Brennan 'Needs to Go' [Robert Costa]
After a long career of straight-faced service, John Brennan, President Obama’s deputy national-security adviser, has started to snarl. In a USA Today op-ed, he rants about how “politically-motivated criticism” of the administration’s handling of the failed Christmas Day bombing serves “the goals of al-Qaeda.” You don’t get it, he fumes: My critics are “naïve,” “fear-mongering,” and “absurd.” Sen. Kit Bond (R., Mo.), vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, tells National Review Online that Brennan’s op-ed is “baffling” and part of a “political mess at the White House” that “puts our country at risk.”
Bond says that Brennan “needs to go,” and is no longer “credible.” Brennan’s recent “troubling decisions,” he adds, “have destroyed my confidence in him.” Firing Brennan, he says, “would be part” of fixing Obama’s national-security woes, though not enough. “A drastic change in policy is needed,” he says. “Our problem now is that we have to wonder whether we can trust [Brennan] after he has been a mouthpiece for the political arm that I thought only came out of the White House press office.”
“It is hard to trust anyone in the White House right now,” Bond says. “The national-security team has become a bench of political spokespeople. It doesn’t speak well of the individuals, but let’s remember that these continued attacks must be coming from the top, from the president himself, to try and deflect the mistakes they made in giving Miranda rights to the Christmas Day bomber.”
Re: Brennan Must Go [Marc Thiessen]
Lost in the debate over Brennan’s comments is that he’s not just lashing out at critics on the right. As I point out here, his column today was written in response to criticism from the editorial board of USA Today, which declared the Obama administration’s handling of the Abdulmutallab case “amateur hour.” Also criticizing the administration is the editorial page of the Washington Post, which declared the handling of Abdulmutallab’s interrogation “myopic, irresponsible and potentially dangerous.”
Are these two liberal newspapers engaged in “fear-mongering” in service to the “goals of al-Qaeda”?
When Dick Cheney, the Washington Post, and USA Today all agree, that’s about as close as you get to consensus here in Washington, D.C.
The (False) Gospel According to John [Dana M. Perino and Bill Burck]
In response to today’s excoriating editorial by the usually Obama-friendly USA Today editorial board about the administration’s bungled handling of Christmas Day bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, President Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan, haughtily writes that “we need no lectures” from critics in the media, the Congress, and the public. We were among the first to call out the administration on treating Abdulmutallab like a criminal rather than an enemy combatant, so we assume some of Brennan’s anger may be directed at us.
Let us respond to some of his points:
Immediately after the failed Christmas Day attack, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was thoroughly interrogated and provided important information.
The administration has spent the past two weeks telling anyone who will listen, including our enemies overseas (whom Abdulmutallab apparently is flipping on), that Abdulmutallab’s family convinced him to start cooperating six weeks after he was Mirandized. Indeed, this is when Brennan himself writes that “[t]he most important breakthrough occurred.” How, then, could Abdulmutallab have been “thoroughly interrogated” immediately after he was arrested if “the most important breakthrough” came six weeks later, and only after his family intervened? This glaring contradiction goes unaddressed.
Senior counterterrorism officials from the White House, the intelligence community and the military were all actively discussing this case before he was Mirandized and supported the decision to charge him in criminal court.
Well, someone isn’t telling the American public the truth. Either the heads of the intelligence community lied to Congress several weeks ago when they all testified, under oath, they were not consulted, or Brennan is fibbing now. We hope it’s the latter, because the former is a potentially criminal offense. No one is going to jail for lying to the public.
The most important breakthrough occurred after Abdulmutallab was read his rights, a long-standing FBI policy that was reaffirmed under Michael Mukasey, President Bush's attorney general.
This is only the policy if the FBI is placed in charge of the arrest and interrogation. This is circular reasoning at its best — we Mirandized Abdulmutallab because we had to under FBI policy because we called in the FBI. Hmm. We would hope for better from the White House’s top expert on counterterrorism.
Keep reading this post . . .
Rep. Peter King: Brennan the ‘Egomaniac’ [Robert Costa]
“An egomaniac” — that’s how Rep. Peter King of New York, the ranking Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee, describes John Brennan, President Obama’s deputy national-security adviser, after reading Brennan’s op-ed in USA Today that says criticism of the administration’s handling of the failed Christmas Day bombing serves the “goals of al-Qaeda.” It is “the most mindless, self-serving, and irresponsible statement that a homeland-security adviser can make,” King says.
“This is another case of John Brennan not knowing what he is talking about,” King tells National Review Online. “Brennan is trying to be cute by saying that on Christmas Day he briefed Republicans and Democrats. Leave aside the fact that he didn’t brief me, but he didn’t tell anybody anything that day other than the bare facts that were pretty much known to the public. He said that [Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab] was in FBI custody. Now he’s claiming that that means he told people that [Abdulmutallab] was receiving Miranda rights and no one objected. If that’s what Brennan considers being honest and forthright, then we know that John Brennan is not being honest and forthright.”
King adds that on Christmas night, Brennan built an “iron curtain of secrecy” around the handling of Abdulmutallab and “kept information” from members of Congress. President Obama, he notes, is “encouraging Brennan” and giving him “much leeway” to make political statements
Monday, February 8, 2010
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Obama's latest Health Care Shenanigans
He just does not know how to lose gracefully ...
(btw, O gets a freebie commercial from CBS during the Super Bowl pre-game ... a sitdown w/ Katie Couric. To her credit, she asked a couple of tough questions about O, but let him slither away with a lack of follow up -- her questions simply skated the surface of more complex issues).
Also to Katie's credit, she asked whatever happened to Change You Can Believe In ?
Obama's response: Well, we have a website that shows every person that visited the White House.
Such an accomplishment ! Yay, O ! All Hail Transparent Hopium !
Obama Invites GOP to "Bipartisan Health-Care Summit" [Daniel Foster]
President Obama has invited Congressional Republicans to a half-day health-care summit, to be broadcast live from the Blair House later this month.
The president chose an interview with Katie Couric, aired just hours before the Super Bowl, to extend the offer:
Obama challenged Republicans to come to the discussion armed with their best ideas for how to cover more Americans and fix the health insurance system.
"I want to consult closely with our Republican colleagues," Obama told Couric. "What I want to do is to ask them to put their ideas on the table... I want to come back and have a large meeting, Republicans and Democrats to go through, systematically, all the best ideas that are out there and move it forward."
The invitation to join him later this month follows comments he made on Thursday during a speech at a Democratic fundraiser in which he said he wanted to sit with Republicans and "walk through the [health care plans] in a methodical way so that the American people can see and compare what makes the most sense."
It also comes just weeks after the president received high marks for engaging the House Republicans in a televised, 90-minute discussion at their retreat in Baltimore. The president has been hammered by critics who said his year-long push to revamp the health care system did not live up to his campaign promise to conduct the debate in the open.
On Friday, I told ya so:
Obama is pegging the hopes for health-care reform on a big, televised victory over Republicans on the merits. It's a desperate but admittedly novel gambit. I just don't think it will materialize. For one thing, Obama has been explaining and explaining his bill for over a year now, over which time the polls have shown support fade in inverse proportion to the rhetoric. At the State of the Union, armed with the national stage, Obama waited 50 paragraphs to broach the subject of health care, and when he did he offered nothing new or game-changing.
For another, the Republicans would be foolish to let Democrats stake the fate of this zombie of a bill on a televised publicity stunt. For a year, Democrats have built this trillion-dollar entitlement — every sweetheart deals, every kickback, and every carve-out — in the cloakrooms of Washington. Now, at the moment when transparency is at its most valuable as politics and its least valuable as policy, the administration has found religion, complete with much public wailing and teeth-gnashing about how openness was sacrificed at the altar of efficacy.
Republicans shouldn't let Obama get away with this. The time for Republicans to demonstrate the superiority of a conservative approach for lowering health-care costs and expanding coverage is after Obamacare is defeated, once and for all.
While I don't see a way the Republicans can effectively boycott this meeting, there are probably a number of things they can do to reveal it as the dog-and-pony show it truly is — just another whistle-stop on the permanent campaign. But as I said, for the past year, all the veto-players in this debate — Senate Republicans and moderates, House Blue Dogs, and the American people most of all — have had grave concerns with this bill, even as the Democrats have negotiated its most outrageous features far from the sunlight of public scrutiny. So I doubt even the most masterful of rhetorical performances from President Obama will change the prognosis of the bill — reconciliation or bust — but the very fact the White House is resorting to this strategem is a sign of just how few options they have left.
(btw, O gets a freebie commercial from CBS during the Super Bowl pre-game ... a sitdown w/ Katie Couric. To her credit, she asked a couple of tough questions about O, but let him slither away with a lack of follow up -- her questions simply skated the surface of more complex issues).
Also to Katie's credit, she asked whatever happened to Change You Can Believe In ?
Obama's response: Well, we have a website that shows every person that visited the White House.
Such an accomplishment ! Yay, O ! All Hail Transparent Hopium !
Obama Invites GOP to "Bipartisan Health-Care Summit" [Daniel Foster]
President Obama has invited Congressional Republicans to a half-day health-care summit, to be broadcast live from the Blair House later this month.
The president chose an interview with Katie Couric, aired just hours before the Super Bowl, to extend the offer:
Obama challenged Republicans to come to the discussion armed with their best ideas for how to cover more Americans and fix the health insurance system.
"I want to consult closely with our Republican colleagues," Obama told Couric. "What I want to do is to ask them to put their ideas on the table... I want to come back and have a large meeting, Republicans and Democrats to go through, systematically, all the best ideas that are out there and move it forward."
The invitation to join him later this month follows comments he made on Thursday during a speech at a Democratic fundraiser in which he said he wanted to sit with Republicans and "walk through the [health care plans] in a methodical way so that the American people can see and compare what makes the most sense."
It also comes just weeks after the president received high marks for engaging the House Republicans in a televised, 90-minute discussion at their retreat in Baltimore. The president has been hammered by critics who said his year-long push to revamp the health care system did not live up to his campaign promise to conduct the debate in the open.
On Friday, I told ya so:
Obama is pegging the hopes for health-care reform on a big, televised victory over Republicans on the merits. It's a desperate but admittedly novel gambit. I just don't think it will materialize. For one thing, Obama has been explaining and explaining his bill for over a year now, over which time the polls have shown support fade in inverse proportion to the rhetoric. At the State of the Union, armed with the national stage, Obama waited 50 paragraphs to broach the subject of health care, and when he did he offered nothing new or game-changing.
For another, the Republicans would be foolish to let Democrats stake the fate of this zombie of a bill on a televised publicity stunt. For a year, Democrats have built this trillion-dollar entitlement — every sweetheart deals, every kickback, and every carve-out — in the cloakrooms of Washington. Now, at the moment when transparency is at its most valuable as politics and its least valuable as policy, the administration has found religion, complete with much public wailing and teeth-gnashing about how openness was sacrificed at the altar of efficacy.
Republicans shouldn't let Obama get away with this. The time for Republicans to demonstrate the superiority of a conservative approach for lowering health-care costs and expanding coverage is after Obamacare is defeated, once and for all.
While I don't see a way the Republicans can effectively boycott this meeting, there are probably a number of things they can do to reveal it as the dog-and-pony show it truly is — just another whistle-stop on the permanent campaign. But as I said, for the past year, all the veto-players in this debate — Senate Republicans and moderates, House Blue Dogs, and the American people most of all — have had grave concerns with this bill, even as the Democrats have negotiated its most outrageous features far from the sunlight of public scrutiny. So I doubt even the most masterful of rhetorical performances from President Obama will change the prognosis of the bill — reconciliation or bust — but the very fact the White House is resorting to this strategem is a sign of just how few options they have left.
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