"Just Shoot the Bastard"

I'm slow to this story from The Washington Post but I did want to just make note of it here. The story, of course, is about the Obama strategy to just kill terrorists now instead of capture them. Marc Theissen sums it up perfectly at The Corner:

The Post tells the story of a senior leader of al-Qaeda in East Africa named Saleh Ali Nabhan who was located last September. The White House was given the choice of either killing him or capturing him alive for interrogation. The military wanted to take him alive. But the White House chose instead to take him out. A senior military officer is quoted as saying: "We wanted to take a prisoner. . . . It was not a decision that we made." The Post adds: "The opportunity to interrogate one of the most wanted U.S. terrorism targets was gone forever."

You can read the entire Post article here.

Theissen's analogy to a jigsaw puzzle is spot on. Actually, I guess it's Michael Hayden's analogy, but Theissen reports it in Courting Disaster:

In the book, former CIA director Mike Hayden explains that intelligence is having to put together a puzzle without being allowed to see the picture on the cover of the box. You can't see how the pieces are supposed to fit together. There are lots of ways to get more pieces. But the only way to find out how they fit together is to capture the senior leaders who know what the picture on the cover of the box looks like.

So these days we are left with little random pieces of stuff and no way of knowing how to put it together. Case in point - Abdulmutallab. We never even attempted to put him together with the other pieces because no other agencies were called in for information when we questioned him.

Theissen explains the interrogation process at Gitmo, for example, in his book. Under questioning, you might obtain a bit of information from a detainee. He gives up a name, for example, or a part of a story you heard from another detainee under questioning, also at Gitmo. You go back and forth between the two, or three, or however many you are talking to, and work the pieces around until they fit into the right places. Then you have the bigger picture. Quite possibly a big picture than none of them actually had in its entirely, but one that you now hold because you have all the pieces.

That will no longer be the case. Under Obama's plan we will have no prison in which to take them and no way to question them because they'll likely get Mirandized.

And now, we just shoot them. Much easier than dealing with the lawyers, the human rights issues, the prisons, and the bad publicity. Never mind obtaining information that could stop future attacks and save lives.

Is it their intention to just kill them all? Their heads will continue to grow back like a Hydra. Have they not considered the better plan might be to find out what they know?

As Ed Morrissey sums it up:

We could restore the ability to get that kind of intel if we just admitted we need Gitmo to remain open. The goal in the war on terror is to dismantle the al-Qaeda network and stamp out the ability of radical Islamists to conduct major terrorist operations against the US and our allies, not to kill terrorists one at a time and then try to go after their replacements.

(More at Memeorandum)

English Speaking Terrorists Only, Please

Eli Lake reports this morning that the U.S. is now on a manhunt for English-speaking terrorists:

U.S. and allied counterterrorism authorities have launched a global manhunt for English-speaking terrorists trained in Yemen who are planning attacks on the United States, based on intelligence provided by the suspect in the attempted Christmas Day bombing after he began cooperating.

Do you just love how these leaks are filtering out now about how cooperative Abdulmutallab has become? He's told us now, in the spirit of cooperation, that "he met with other English speakers at a terrorist training camp in Yemen" and they are coming for us. Is this news, really? Did we not already know this?

Coincidentally, Team Obama is now "retooling the administration's communications strategy to produce faster responses to political adversaries" because the White House believes "the president's communications team had not taken the initiative often enough and had allowed drawn-out debates in Congress, and relentless criticism by Republicans, to drown out his message." Forget national security - it's all about the politics!

Is part of that strategy - "leaks" to the press? I guess that's always been a "strategy" of sorts.

In the case of Abdulmutallab, and national security in general, this administration is taking a lot of hits that they aren't responding to very well, specifically, their bungling of this case. As Jennifer Rubin said today,

So the question comes down to this: what if in the five weeks of the Christmas Day bomber’s Mirandized silence other terrorists got away? And if the unimaginable happens and one of these should strike, what then? Even the potential for such a calamity should convince all but the most hardened Obama sycophants that we are in danger now, greater danger than we would otherwise be, had the search for mass-murders-in-training begun weeks earlier.

Seriously, even "the most hardened" Obamabots would have to admit that the handling of Abdulmutuallab has been a disaster. The man was certainly in possession of actionable intelligence when captured. That intelligence has most certainly gone cold, for the most part. I suspect the information that there are English-speaking terrorists out there who might be planning attacks is news to some, but not to most.

We are supposed to believe that the warm-fuzzy-method-of-interrogation has resulted in this fabulous actionable intelligence that there are others like Abdulmutallab and they speak English! We'd have never learned such things had we followed Dick Cheney's methods!

The more interesting part of it all at this point, to me, is that the administration is so intent on being "not like Bush" in terms of what they call torturing terrorists, that they questioned this guy for only fifty minutes without benefit of any other intelligence agencies getting in and sharing information which could have led to actually obtaining MORE information from him. As has been stated before, the High Value Interrogation Group (HIG), which was supposed to be the "humane" way to interrogate folks like this, was never even an option for use because it was never set up.

This is incompetence at the highest level.

Update: Hot Air echos my feeling that this isn't really news but does offer a suggestion for our counterterrorism folks:

The US is “certain” that more attacks will come over the next three to six months, using these new “bullet[s] in the chamber.” Maybe that means it’s time to ensure that all of our CT organizations are talking to each other now — or to start dismantling AQ’s network in Yemen with targeted missions and some captures rather than kills.

(H/T: Memeorandum)

The New Yorker Joins the Abdulmutallab Cacophony

The conflicting stories about the handling of the Abudulmutallab affair are getting monotonous.

Tuesday I posted on the conflicting tales between Eric Holder and the testimony before the Senate Homeland Security Committee: Holder said at least four agencies were involved in the decision to charge Abdulmutallab as a common criminal rather than an enemy combatant, but the heads of those security divisions said they were never consulted. Who to believe?

NRO's The Corner also picked up on this same distortion today:

But in testimony before the Senate Homeland Security Committee, Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III, National Counterterrorism Center Director Michael E. Leiter and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said they were not consulted about the charging decision.

Blair, Mueller, Leiter, and Napolitano all fall under one or both of the descriptions "partners in the intelligence community" and "senior members of [Obama's] national security team," and all four claim they were not consulted. Could they all be mistaken?

So who is correct? Holder? Or all four security honchos?

Now we can add The New Yorker to the distortion machine. In an article from their February 15 issue, Jane Mayer highlights Eric Holder and the KSM trial. She says of the Abdulmutallab affair (emphasis mine):

After the Christmas Day incident, conservative pundits lambasted the Justice Department’s handling of Abdulmutallab, who had concealed in his underwear a bomb that ignited but failed to explode. When the plane landed, Abdulmutallab was taken to a hospital for treatment; at Holder’s directive, he was arrested as a criminal suspect. (The F.B.I., the C.I.A., and the Pentagon signed off on Holder’s decision.)

Mayer goes further to say that we actually gained "time-sensitive information" from Abdulmutallab:

He divulged time-sensitive intelligence: he had been trained in Yemen, by affiliates of Al Qaeda, and had obtained explosives from them.

I'm no security expert but is that really time-sensitive? I don't think so. Didn't we already gather some of that from his father?

The bottom line is this. It does not matter if Abdulmutallab is cooperating now or not. It's good if he is but certainly genuine "time-sensitive" information has been lost. One of the first things Abdulmutallab reportedly said was that there were others like him that are coming. WHO? WHEN? HOW? That would be actionable, time-sensitive intelligence.

Meanwhile, is to too much to ask that everyone get on the same page?

Andy McCarthy's Scathing Scolding of Obama

To no one's surprise, Obama seems to have reversed himself through the years regarding Miranda rights for terrorists. Allahpundit over at Hot Air reminds us of Obama's March 2009 statement in which is said that terrorists don't deserve Miranda rights:

“Well, there is no doubt that we have not done a particularly effective job in sorting through who are truly dangerous individuals that we’ve got to make sure are not a threat to us, who are folks that we just swept up. The whole premise of Guantanamo promoted by Vice President Cheney was that somehow the American system of justice was not up to the task of dealing with these terrorists. I fundamentally disagree with that. Now, do these folks deserve Miranda rights? Do they deserve to be treated like a shoplifter down the block? Of course not,” Obama said.

Yet now we have terrorists being given Miranda rights. So is Obama now just deferring to Holder?

Be sure to check out Andy McCarthy's scathing scolding of Obama at NRO's The Corner:

"...the main problem with Obama's above-it-all, government-by-speeches approach, is that the job of a president is not to vote present, observe, and provide us with running commentary."

....

"If you're going to use our criminal justice system because you think, as is, it is capable of safeguarding the country from terrorists, then, as the Attorney General argues, you have to give the terrorists Miranda warnings and be accountable for the fact that you will lose at least five weeks of actionable intel against people who are tying to kill us. If you think the justice system doesn't work for this class of offenders, then you have to try another approach, as VP Cheney urges, and be prepared for the inevitability of caterwauling from the Left (knowing it will be considerably milder than what Cheney had to deal with). But one way or the other, you've got to decide. And if you choose to stay on the golf course while the Attorney General handles it, that is a decision to do it the Attorney General's way. Obama's decision, not Holder's."

Read the rest here.

The spin yesterday and today that Abdulmutallab is cooperating and apparently singing like a canary is just spin. And whether he is or he isn't isn't misses the point that the entire arrest was mishandled. If he's talking, great, but there was never any reason to expect he would given his new right to remain silent. He should never have been treated like a common shoplifter.

The administration is merely "leaking" this kind of information to take the sting out of the criticism of their bungling the arrest.

Most of us can still see it for what it is.

Stop Talking Now

It seems the administration is attempting to reframe is abominable response to Mirandizing Abdulmutallab after a fifty minute interview. According to the LA Times at least four government agencies were involved in the decision:

The decision to advise the accused Christmas Day attacker of his right to remain silent was made after teleconferences involving at least four government agencies -- and only after Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab had stopped talking to authorities, according to knowledgeable law enforcement officials.

Among those involved in the hastily called teleconferences were representatives from the Justice Department and the FBI, along with officials from the State Department and the CIA.

I'm wondering who they actually spoke to in those agencies because just last week the testimony before the Senate Homeland Security Committee was a little different:

Four top counterterrorism officials testified before a congressional committee that they were not consulted about how to handle the interrogation of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab...That group included all three senior Obama administration officials who testified before the Senate Homeland Security Committee on Wednesday: Janet Napolitano, Secretary of Homeland Security; Michael Leiter, chairman of the National Counterterrorism Center; and Dennis Blair, the Director of National Intelligence. It also included FBI Director Robert Mueller.

A decision this big, an al-Qaeda attack on the United States, and the top dogs weren't consulted. Apparently it was left to underlings.

They just need to quit talking now. Every time someone in the administration tries to make this better, it gets worse.

(H/T: Memeorandum)

A Look Back at Candidate Obama's Approach to National Security

In light of the new message from Osama bin Laden taking credit for the Christmas Day terror attack, it's worth taking a moment to look back at the vow of Obama to catch him and Obama's own approach to national security.

In August 2007, candidate Obama chastised the Bush administration for taking their eye off the ball with regard to bin Laden:

We did not finish the job against al Qaeda in Afghanistan. We did not develop new capabilities to defeat a new enemy, or launch a comprehensive strategy to dry up the terrorists' base of support. We did not reaffirm our basic values, or secure our homeland. Instead, we got a color-coded politics of fear. Patriotism as the possession of one political party. The diplomacy of refusing to talk to other countries. A rigid 20th century ideology that insisted that the 21st century's stateless terrorism could be defeated through the invasion and occupation of a state. A deliberate strategy to misrepresent 9/11 to sell a war against a country that had nothing to do with 9/11.

Interesting. So in the one year that Obama has been in charge, what has he done to achieve this goal? He says we "did not develop new capabilities to defeat a new enemy...". What new capabilities has he developed? Talking to them? Extending the open hand? That's worked out really well so far.

He says the Bush administration did not "launch a comprehensive strategy to dry up the terrorists' base of support...". And Obama has? How's that new strategy working out, Mr. Obama? Drying up the terrorists' base of support? It doesn't seem that way when he continues to ignore the mistakes of the Bush administration and repeat them by releasing terrorists from Guantanamo to places like Somaliland, Algeria, Afghanistan and Yemen. With a recidivism rate of about 10%, I'd say that is NOT doing much to dry up the terrorists' base of support.

And what about that "color coded politics of fear"? Raising awareness of terror threat levels is not, or should not be, a political move. The terror threat levels were raised or lowered based on intelligence, not poll numbers. In Obama's case however, the lack of obvious concern about active terror threats, as evidenced by the criminalization of Abdulmutallab, or the failure to fully enact the HIG, does seem to work against Obama in the polls. His numbers are plummeting and his national security response, or lack thereof, is only one factor.

I wonder if Obama still believes that statement that we have misrepresented "9/11 to sell a war against a country that had nothing to do with 9/11." Given that terrorists from all over the world have us in their sights, I wonder if he still really believes that Iraq was no threat.

Obama lambasted Bush in that speech, saying that al Qaeda in Iraq "didn't exist before our invasion," but what about Yemen now?

Obama said, "When I am President, we will wage the war that has to be won, with a comprehensive strategy with five elements: getting out of Iraq and on to the right battlefield in Afghanistan and Pakistan; developing the capabilities and partnerships we need to take out the terrorists and the world's most deadly weapons; engaging the world to dry up support for terror and extremism; restoring our values; and securing a more resilient homeland."

Yet bin Laden is still sending terrorists to attack us. What went wrong? Really, I don't think al-Qaeda cares a damn about "our values." And "securing a more resilient homeland" didn't seem to be anywhere on the radar of this administration when Eric Holder single-handed made the decision to treat Abdulmutallab as a common criminal without consulting anyone in the national security chain of command.

Amazingly, Obama vowed to strengthen our intelligence yet he has taken steps to practically decimate our intelligence community. His castration of the CIA has not served to "strengthen our intelligence."

He said:

I will also strengthen our intelligence. This is about more than an organizational chart. We need leadership that forces our agencies to share information, and leadership that never -- ever -- twists the facts to support bad policies. But we must also build our capacity to better collect and analyze information, and to carry out operations to disrupt terrorist plots and break up terrorist networks.

Has his administration twisted the facts to support bad policies? I'd say there are several bad policies in play here besides his war on the CIA beginning with the very decision to close Gitmo. Bad policy. Releasing dangerous detainees all around the world? Bad policy. Returning to a criminal justice approach to terrorism? Bad policy. Bringing terrorists to American soil for purposes of detention and/or trial? Bad policy.

What a difference it makes when you are actually president, I suppose. Obama spoke of eliminating illegal wire taps yet he supported the renewal of the Patriot Act.

All in all, I suppose things look somewhat different to him now that he's actually in office and has access to intelligence that he may not have had as a candidate. Given that, however, it seems he certainly should be tougher on national security than he currently is. Bin Laden released six messages in 2009. I don't think he's scared of us.

With bin Laden's promise that "God willing our attacks will continue" it is well past time for Obama to toughen up on national security and defense of our homeland. The handling of the Abdulmutallab affair was an embarrassment and a clear signal that the administration is not doing its job.

In Which Dennis Blair Slaps His Head and Exclaims "Duh!"

So caught up was I in the remarkable Scott Brown victory in Massachusetts that it took until today for me to read the Stephen F. Hayes piece about the testimony before the Homeland Security Committee yesterday.

One of the findings of the 9/11 commission report was that the criminal justice approach to terrorism was a failure. Yet here we are again. After the Christmas Day terror attack attempt by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab many of us asked, "Why isn't this man being held as an enemy combatant?" Incredibly, he was arrested, interviewed, Mirandized, and then he shut up.

Dennis Blair issued a statement after his testimony yesterday in which he insisted that the FBI obtained "important intelligence" in their questioning of Abdulmutallab. Really? I bet.

Stephen F. Hayes points out some absolutely incredible revelations from the testimony yesterday.

It appears as if Attorney General Eric Holder made the decision to treat this case in criminal court on his own. That's not really shocking. What's shocking is that he didn't seem to consult anyone else.

Our four top counterterrorism officials were not consulted: Janet Napolitano, Michael Leitner (chairman of the National Counterterrorism Center), Dennis Blair, and FBI Director Robert Muellar. It's incredible to me that Holder would make such a decision without even making the pretense of talking to these people.

Astonishing as that information is, it is only the tip of the iceberg. When the executive order was issued to close Gitmo, it also established a "high-value interrogation unit" (HIG) which was to make these decisions - that is, the HIG was to decide if a person is to be tried in criminal court or by some other means.

But the unit isn't functional yet. One year after the order to close Gitmo, the unit isn't up and running. What amateurs would make a decision to close Guantanamo without a plan or place to move those detained there, and no plan to process any that might need to be detained in the future? That unit should have been fully functional as soon as the decision was announced.

In the absence of such a unit, Holder makes the decision himself. This is the same attorney, mind you, who worked previously at a firm that represented several Gitmo detainees pro bono.

There's more.

Blair's testimony yesterday included this mind-numbing statement (emphasis mine):

"Frankly, we were thinking more of overseas people and, duh!, we didn't put it then. That's what we will do now. And so we need to make those decisions more carefully. I was not consulted and the decision was made on the scene. It seemed logical to the people there but it should have been taken using this HIG format at a higher level."

Got that? Nobody anticipated having to deal with a terrorist in the United States, just ones overseas. Are you kidding me?!

Muellar believes that the decision made at the time was perfectly proper (emphasis mine):

"The decision to arrest [Abdulmutallab] and put him in criminal courts, the decision was made by the agents on the ground, the ones that took him from the plane and then followed up on the arrest in the hospital," Mueller told the committee. He also said: "In this particular case, in fast-moving events, decisions were made—appropriately, I believe, very appropriately—given the situation."

Given the situation? "The situation" is that this guy was on an airplane with nearly 300 people on board and tried to blow it up. How much more evidence do you need that he's a terrorist, or an enemy combatant? Did anybody really have to pause and think too hard that he might be associated with al-Qaeda? That this might be connected with the overall War on Terror? Oh wait - I forget. That doesn't exist anymore. Or, as Blair would say, "Duh!"

Mueller also testified that the FBI agents "interviewed" Adbudlmutallab. Shall we parse the difference between "interview" and "interrogate"?

If you go back to the etymology of the two words, interview comes from the French entrevue or the reflexive s'entrevoir, which means to see each other, or visit briefly. Interrogate, on the other hand, comes from the Latin interrogatus, which means to question, or examine.

To interrogate someone is a bit less friendly, in our context.

Nobody thought it necessary to interrogate Abdulmutallab, but we did interview him. Probably got him a cup of coffee, and sandwich, maybe. Definitely a lawyer.

It's clear that this administration learned nothing from the 9/11 commission or from 9/11 itself. This administration seems to be under the impression that the War on Terror is really over and that just because Obama was elected the terrorists don't have any interest in killing us anymore. Certainly they won't come to the United States; if anybody really thought they would then they would have been darned sure the HIG was in place for situations just like this one.

Instead, we have our heads in the sand.

Quick Links for Today

A couple of quick links - what I'm reading today:

System Failure (Stephen F. Hayes)

Andy McCarthy's comments on yesterday's hearing before the Homeland Security Committee.

Bill Burck's thoughts on same meeting.

I wonder if this is one of those decisions Obama was referring to when he explained that Americans just don't understand. Because maybe he's right. I sure don't understand the decision to treat this guy as a common criminal rather than an enemy combatant in possession of valuable knowledge important to our national security.

Charging Abdulmutallab

Michael Mukasey's OpEd in the Wall Street Journal is top notch reading today. Mukasey, a former Attorney General, laments the knowledge we let slip through our fingers by not designating Abdulmutallab an enemy combatant right out of the gate. What kind of intelligence has been lost, he wonders.

Certainly, Mukasey contends, he "was certainly aware of who had prepared the potentially deadly mix that was sewn in his underwear, who had trained him, where the training had taken place, whether there was in fact a South Asian man described by two other passengers who helped him talk his way on to the plane, and a good deal more. Such facts are valuable but evanescent intelligence. The location of people—and with it our ability to find and neutralize them—is subject to rapid change."

So, designating him an enemy combatant now, should Team Obama choose to do so, and they've given no indication that they will, wouldn't really matter all that much. Much of what he could tell us is already compromised. But, there is plenty he could still reveal and, as noted before, he has lawyered up. Despite Team Obama's assertion that we have "obtained actionable intelligence" from Abdulmutallab, there is still much more we could have learned.

In assessing the actions of the executive branch, Mukasey concludes with this damning statement:

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.

But that's what you get when you approach the war on terror with a civilian criminal justice approach.

Abdulmutallab should have been charged as an enemy combatant for attempting to blow up nearly 300 American citizens on an airplane on American soil. No doubt about it.

Update: Via Memeorandum, Jennifer Rubin offers these thoughts:

There is a bizarre quality to the flurry of reviews and reports underway, as administration advisors scurry to figure out how to connect dots and not miss the next bomber. Might they start by getting the maximum information out of the terrorist that chatted for a bit to the FBI and then (with lawyer in hand) decided that discretion was the better course?

*****

If Mukasey is right, and I think he is, don’t expect the administration to revisit its own flawed decision making. If a shift in the disposition of terrorists is going to happen (at least so long as Obama occupies the Oval Office) it will likely need to come at the behest of Congress, which can, of course, pass legislation, deny or grant funding, and assert its authority to control the jurisdiction of the federal courts. If Obama won’t do his job, it is time then for lawmakers to do theirs.

Does anybody have much hope that Congress will actually step up?

Have Some More Coffee and Read These Links

Here are some quick links for you this morning:

A must-read is this post at The Foundry regarding the unconstitutionality of the Nebraska Compromise. The Attorneys General of 13 states have written a letter to Nancy Pelosi in protest:

The deal is said to involve an agreement that the Federal Government’s taxpayers will assume indefinitely the full share of the costs that Nebraska will incur as the result of the expansion of Medicaid that is one of the Act’s effects. The result is not only preferential treatment for Nebraska but it also hurts the rest of us because the other States will have to make up the difference. Such preferential treatment is constitutionally suspect; it cannot be reconciled with several important principles incorporated in the Constitution. The Founders would not have dreamed of taking a burden that all of the States should share and allocating it to only some of them. Likewise, they would not have seen the spending of taxpayer money for the benefit of only one State to be in the general interest.


Professor Jacobson reports that Scott Brown is shaking things up in MA:

Rasmussen is the first major polling organization to poll the Massachusetts Senate special election, and the "pre-released" poll numbers show Martha Coakley (D) with just a 9% lead over Scott Brown (R), which would be consistent with other polls. This post will be updated with further analysis once the official numbers are released. [See Update No. 2 below - official results released - Brown within 2% among people who definitely will vote and has a large lead among indepenents.]


William Murchison questions whether or not Obama really understands the war on terror:

Why is the government decanting Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab into the civilian justice system after he tried to destroy an airliner filled with innocent passengers? Why are we affording this enemy agent the legal protections that obtain in a land he wants to destroy? The administration is going to answer for this one, with volume turned up.

Andy McCarthy exercises some caution on the decision to uphold the conviction of Moussaoui:

The Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals has affirmed the conviction and sentence of 9/11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui. Enthusiasts of the law-enforcement approach to terrorism will undoubtedly claim this development as more evidence that their strategy works. To the contrary, I have argued several times (see, e.g., here and here) that we dodged a bullet with Moussaoui — i.e., if he had not surprised everyone by pleading guilty, if he had instead insisted on proceeding with his trial (not just the penalty phase but the guilt phase), the case might well have ended disastrously.

And finally, Michelle Malkin is all over the upcoming health care debate, including C-SPAN's request that they be allowed to televise deliberations.

A Deal on the Table for Captain Underpants

I'm hesitant to get too worked up over this until more is known, assuming it ever is, but I will say that on the face of it, it doesn't sound good. Politico reports this from John Brennan's round on the Sunday shows this morning:

The U.S. Government is offering the suspect charged with attempting to bomb an aircraft on Christmas Day, Omar Abdulmutallab, some kind of incentives to share what he knows about Al Qaeda, White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan said Sunday.

Asked why Abdulmutallab should cooperate given his right, as criminal defendant, to remain silent, Brennan replied: "He doesn't have to but he knows there are certain things that are on the table... if he wants to engage with us in a productive manner, there are ways he can do that."

Ed Morrissey succinctly sums it up:

Now Brennan suggests they’ll cut a deal with the terrorist to get what they may have gotten for free otherwise.

It's true that he does suggest that a deal is on the table. I'm not sure what other read you could put on the statement "certain things that are on the table...". It sure sounds like a deal.

Frugal Cafe dares to speculate:

What does this terrorist deal involve? Guaranteed immunity, a new identity, a sweet relocation package so that Abdulmutallab can move to Massachusetts or Illinois, hook up with his bloodthirsty al Qaeda buddies, and start planning a bigger, better jihad attack on Americans?

Who knows? But this jihadi monster has lawyered up to the gills, so you know the deal must be fabulous.

The bottom line for me is that this was botched from the beginning as soon as Abdulmutallab was charged with a criminal offense. He should have been turned over to the military and interrogated as an enemy combatant. Lord knows Team Obama has made that kind of interrogation much less terrifying that it would have been in years past. As soon as he announced to the world that we would only go by the Army Field Manual, every terrorist on the planet began training for it.

We could have obtained valuable information from Abdulmutallab. As it is now, he is exercising his right to remain silent, a right that was bestowed on him when he came HERE to blow us up.

I don't know what kind of "things are on the table" but I do know if this guy gets sent back to Yemen or Nigeria, or if he gets any kind of special treatment at all, it is political suicide for the Democrats. I just don't think Americans will stand for it.

Via: Memeorandum

It's Been A Good Week for the Terrorists

It's been an amazing week in the war on terror, and a mixed bag; from the Christmas Day Panty bomber to the decision to release Qais Qazali in a prisoner swap for British citizen Peter Moore, we're decidedly less safe going into 2010 than we were at the beginning of 2009. The Obama approach to terrorism has been basically to pretend it doesn't exist.

Charles Krauthammer sums it up pretty well in his column today:

The reason the country is uneasy about the Obama administration’s response to this attack is a distinct sense of not just incompetence but incomprehension. From the very beginning, President Obama has relentlessly tried to downplay and deny the nature of the terrorist threat we continue to face. Napolitano renames terrorism “man-caused disasters.” Obama goes abroad and pledges to cleanse America of its post-9/11 counterterrorist sins. Hence, Guantanamo will close, CIA interrogators will face a special prosecutor, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will bask in a civilian trial in New York — a trifecta of political correctness and image management.

Incomprehension, indeed. It's incomprehensible to me how anyone thinks that a criminal justice approach to terrorism is the right path given the mistakes made in the past with that approach.

More Krauthammer:

This is all quite mad even in Obama’s terms. He sends 30,000 troops to fight terror overseas, yet if any terrorists come to attack us here, they are magically transformed from enemy into defendant.

The logic is perverse. If we find Abdulmutallab in an al-Qaeda training camp in Yemen, where he is merely preparing for a terror attack, we snuff him out with a Predator — no judge, no jury, no qualms. But if we catch him in the United States in the very act of mass murder, he instantly acquires protection not just from execution by drone but even from interrogation.

So this week alone, we've forfeited the opportunity to obtain information from an active terrorist about planned attacks, co-conspirators, etc., and we've released other known terrorists back into the jihadi fold.

Tell me again how this administration makes me safer?

(H/T: Memeorandum)

"President Obama is trying to pretend we are not at war ..."

Scroll down for updates.

Bill Burck and Dana Perino have a must-read article over at NRO today regarding the decision to treat the Undy-Bomber as a common criminal rather than as an enemy combatant (a term this administration no longer uses.)

The problem, of course, with this decision is that we won't be able to gather any intelligence from him:

The decision to charge Mutallab as a criminal, rather than designate him as an enemy combatant, was a momentous one that in all likelihood guarantees we will gain less intelligence about how the attack was planned, who planned it, and whether others are on the way.

Burck and Perino point out that what is truly frightening is how quickly this administration moved to make that decision; Mutallab was charged within 24 hours - hardly enough time to negotiate between agencies to determine the best course of action. And why is so much of what Mutallab has said so far even being released to the public:

Indeed, the fact that so much is becoming public about what he has told investigators is itself disturbing. Intelligence derived from interrogations of al-Qaeda detainees was previously so highly classified that even government officials with the highest levels of security clearance were not permitted to see the information without being granted special access.

It's as if Team Obama wants to make it clear to the world that we aren't extracting any significant intelligence from this guy and they are free to continue with their merry plans of jihad without interference from us.

Treating terrorism as a criminal justice matter has been proven to be a dangerous path, yet one this administration is determined to travel:

The risks of trying the 9/11 plotters in civilian court, including possible revelation of classified information and security threats to downtown Manhattan, where the trial will be held, have been well documented and debated elsewhere. But they pale next to the risks of treating newly captured terrorists as mere criminals with all the rights of U.S. citizens. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has been locked up for nearly seven years with no access to his free compatriots around the world. Whatever information he may not have divulged under interrogation is most likely stale. Not so Mutallab and all the other Mutallabs out there whom we have not yet encountered. These are the next wave of terrorists, and our security depends on having the right tools to obtain the fresh intelligence they may have.

Burck and Perino contend that it isn't too late for the administration to dismiss criminal charges and have him charged as an enemy combatant. This won't happen because Obama is determined to empty Gitmo, not add to it.

Dick Cheney lambasted Obama's decision to treat this as a civilian matter, coming out with a harsh statement against Obama:

"As I’ve watched the events of the last few days it is clear once again that President Obama is trying to pretend we are not at war. He seems to think if he has a low key response to an attempt to blow up an airliner and kill hundreds of people, we won’t be at war. He seems to think if he gives terrorists the rights of Americans, lets them lawyer up and reads them their Miranda rights, we won’t be at war. He seems to think if we bring the mastermind of 9/11 to New York, give him a lawyer and trial in civilian court, we won’t be at war.

“He seems to think if he closes Guantanamo and releases the hard-core al Qaeda trained terrorists still there, we won’t be at war. He seems to think if he gets rid of the words, ‘war on terror,’ we won’t be at war. But we are at war and when President Obama pretends we aren’t, it makes us less safe. Why doesn’t he want to admit we’re at war? It doesn’t fit with the view of the world he brought with him to the Oval Office. It doesn’t fit with what seems to be the goal of his presidency – social transformation—the restructuring of American society. President Obama’s first object and his highest responsibility must be to defend us against an enemy that knows we are at war."

There won't be any pretending for long. If we are to believe what Mutallab says, there are more like him in Yemen, and other locations, planning attacks on the U.S.

What are we to make of this mindset? Of the fact that our president seems so hellbent on lowering our defenses and endangering the country?

All the finger pointing that it was the Bush administration who freed some of the participants in this act does not change the fact that it exists. Obama should learn from the mistakes of his predecessors and make the right decision here, which is to treat this terrorist as an enemy combatant and gather all the intelligence he can from him.

That is not likely to happen.

Update: Ed Morrissey comments on the failure of the terrorists-are-common-criminals approach:

We tried this before, however, in the 1990s. It didn’t work out so well. Oddly enough, Osama bin Laden never appeared in federal court to answer his indictment, and the Clinton administration declined to have him delivered to US custody because we weren’t sure we could get a conviction in court. This approach resulted in an escalating series of attacks on US assets around the world during the 1990s, with hundreds of lives lost, and it culminated in 9/11.

Update 2: Michael Goldfarb reports Mutallab has lawyered-up:

Buried three paragraphs from the end of the report in today's Washington Post comes what ought to be the lede:

Abdulmutallab remains in a Detroit area prison and, after initial debriefings by the FBI, has restricted his cooperation since securing a defense attorney, according to federal officials.

It sounds like he was singing when they first got him, and of course we now know that the government already had enough information on him to justify sending a Blackwater hit team after him, but now that the people with all that information are finally in a position to ask the questions -- LAWYER.

Update 3: Add Gordon Cucullu, to the voices of the outraged:

Yet we respond to those who boast about American blood on their hands by expanding their venue and showering them with Constitutional rights previously afforded only to citizens, earned in blood by other citizens. With plans still under way to close Guantanamo and relocate the detainees to a prison here, the question has to be asked: Are we really that nuts?

Update 4: And John Boehner has a few words:

“The Administration’s response following this attempted attack is consistent with its dangerous decision to close the terrorist prison at Guantanamo Bay and bring Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other 9/11 terrorists to trial in the United States through civilian courts, rather than the military commissions already in place. We know the decision to close this prison has not stopped al Qaeda from plotting attacks on Americans, turning these terrorists over to other countries is not working, and we shouldn’t import them into the United States. It’s time for the President to halt terrorist transfers to other countries, including Yemen, and to reevaluate his decision to close the prison at Guantanamo.”