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January 29, 2010
Krauthammer: Scandal growing on handling of Christmas day bomber
Topics: Political News and commentaries, War on TerrorCharles Krauthammer writes in his editorial at the WaPo today (emphasis mine):
The real scandal surrounding the failed Christmas Day airline bombing was not the fact that a terrorist got on a plane -- that can happen to any administration, as it surely did to the Bush administration -- but what happened afterward when Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was captured and came under the full control of the U.S. government.Krauthammer goes on to point out that as bad as this sounds, it actually gets worse: "Blair later had to explain that the HIG was not deployed because it does not yet exist."After 50 minutes of questioning him, the Obama administration chose, reflexively and mindlessly, to give the chatty terrorist the right to remain silent. Which he immediately did, undoubtedly denying us crucial information about al-Qaeda in Yemen, which had trained, armed and dispatched him.
We have since learned that the decision to Mirandize Abdulmutallab had been made without the knowledge of or consultation with (1) the secretary of defense, (2) the secretary of homeland security, (3) the director of the FBI, (4) the director of the National Counterterrorism Center or (5) the director of national intelligence (DNI).
The Justice Department acted not just unilaterally but unaccountably. Obama's own DNI said that Abdulmutallab should have been interrogated by the HIG, the administration's new High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group.
Perhaps you hadn't heard the term. Well, in the very first week of his presidency, Obama abolished by executive order the Bush-Cheney interrogation procedures and pledged to study a substitute mechanism. In August, the administration announced the establishment of the HIG, housed in the FBI but overseen by the National Security Council.
Where was it during the Abdulmutallab case? Not available, admitted National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair, because it had been conceived for use only abroad. Had not one person in this vast administration of highly nuanced sophisticates considered the possibility of a terror attack on American soil?
After a year! I suppose this administration was so busy deploying scores of the country's best lawyerly minds on finding the most rapid way to release Gitmo miscreants that it could not be bothered to establish a single operational HIG team to interrogate at-large miscreants with actionable intelligence that might save American lives.Take the time to read it all.
Americans have no reason to be surprised about this, after all, this is what should be expected from an administration that insists on treating Islamist terrorism as a law-enforcement issue and can't even utter the terms "war on terror" and Islamic terrorism." Clearly, Barack Obama's far-left ideology, his inexperience, and his naivity, and perhaps also his affinity for and background in the Muslim faith, continues to endanger America.
Related:
An About-Face?
Obama's leftist ideology, inexperience and naiveté endangering Americans
Posted by Richard at January 29, 2010 9:38 AM
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