Obama Failures on National Security and Terrorism

Do you feel safer today from terrorists then you did in 2008? Any person who answers 'yes' to that question is not facing reality.

It should be abundently clear by now that Obama and his Administration do not want to deal with terrorists and prefer to call them 'enemy combatants' as well as trying them in Federal Court instead of by a military tribunal. What is an 'enemy combatant' compared to a terrorist? Nicer name for 'Islamic terrorists' is one answer. Getting more obvious that Obama does not want to admit that the terrorism threat against Americans in this Country is real and increasing.

We would have lost over 300 people on Christmas Day if the bomber had been able to activate his bomb, but would the Obama administration have called it a fuel tank catastrophic event that brought down the plane instead of terrorism? It was an act of terrorism which Obama couldn't hide but the DOJ rushed in to shut down questioning after ONLY 50 minutes and read Farouk Abdulmutallab his Miranda Rights. He was treated like an American citizen who broke criminal laws not as a terrorist who was set on killing over 300 people in an airplane bombing.

There is something wrong with this picture and other events in this Country that make no sense when dealing with obvious terrorist. What are Obama and Attorney General Holder trying to cover up? Is there a connection they don't want uncovered? These kind of questions would not be asked if this Administration was the least bit open and above board.

Trying the mastermind of 9/11 in the United States in Federal Court makes just as little sense and glad to see the new Governor of Virginia, Bob McDonnell, saying to the Obama Administration that they are not having the trials in Virginia.

Why won't Obama connect terror dots? Today's Washington Times Editorial wants to know the answer the same as most Americans.

Monday, February 1, 2010
EDITORIAL: Obama won't connect terror dots
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

When a man is apprehended with a cache of weapons, body armor, a map of a military installation and jihadist personal effects, the natural response of most Americans is to assume the situation is terrorist-related. The Obama administration says otherwise.

Lloyd R. Woodson was arrested Jan. 25 in rural New Jersey. He had been observed behaving strangely, wearing military-style fatigues and a bulletproof vest. He had a weapon modified to fire .50-caliber rounds from beneath his jacket. He had a hotel room full of weapons and ammunition. Despite all these warning signs, the immediate response from the government was that this was "not a terrorism thing."
Bureaucratic lack of concern raises a critical question: If this is not the behavior of a terrorist, what is?

It's not clear what the Obama administration thinks terrorism is, if it thinks it exists at all. The administration doggedly maintains that political, especially jihadist, violence by individuals with no international linkage is not terrorism. This definition might come as a surprise to the Unabomber, who for years was the most sought-after terrorist in America.

President Obama's knee-jerk response that the Christmas Day bombing plot was not terror-related was probably one of the factors that led Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to be Mirandized quickly and treated as a criminal suspect. It shouldn't matter that this was a domestic incident; he is a jihadist warrior, and the aircraft was his battlefield.

The same was the case with Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, charged with killing 14 persons and wounding 31 in the Fort Hood massacre. America was assured that Maj. Hasan had no foreign terrorist links, and he was not charged with committing an act of terrorism. The Obama administration's report on the shooting, released three weeks ago, avoids mentioning radical Islam as a motivating factor in his rampage. However, both Maj. Hasan and Mr. Abdulmutallab had relationships with Yemeni-American cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who is a leading member of al Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula ...

Excerpt: Read More at Washington Times

Will someone explain to us why Obama refuses to acknowledge terrorists exist in this Country. Since he doesn't believe in domestic terrorist, what does he call the people who bombed the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City and killed all those people. Even Clinton tabbed McVeigh and Nichols as domestic terrorists.

Why won't Obama use the word 'terrorist' to describe obvious terrorists acts against Americans? Something is wrong, very wrong and we are guessing it has to do with Obama's hidden background. Was it the way he was raised? Was he raised Muslim as he can site their prayer in their dialect with no problem? All questions that deserve answers. The man is a closed book and even his biographies have turned out to be ghost written with some facts that don't exist.

The hearings in the Senate did not go well for the Obama Administration on the Christmas Day bomber as questions were not answered to any one's satisfaction as to why Farouk was read his Miranda Rights 50 minutes after he was captured.

Yesterday Axelrod, White House aide from Chicago stated "We Have Not Lost Anything" by Giving Abdulmutallab Miranda Rights. What? That is a stupid statement to make and with no facts to back him up.

Interrogators were getting further terrorist information out of Farouk but were stopped in their tracks when the DOJ comes running in to Mirandize him. Excuse us, but we believe the information the Intelligence community was getting outweighed anything else. Farouk is a terrorist who tried to bomb a Northwest plane enroute to Detroit and kill over 300 people on board, but he is treated like a common criminal by Obama and his Administration. We ask once again "WHY?"

Axelrod: "We Have Not Lost Anything" by Giving Abdulmutallab Miranda Rights
Another White House official says a 50-minute interrogation of the Christmas Day bomber was good enough.

BY Stephen F. Hayes
January 31, 2010 11:33 AM

Top White House adviser David Axelrod believes the U.S. government properly handled the Christmas Day bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, despite the fact that Abdulmutallab stopped talking to interrogators after having had Miranda rights read to him. In an appearance on NBC's Meet the Press, Axelrod was asked about the decision to read Abdulmutallab his rights after just 50 minutes of interrogation. "We have not lost anything as a result of how this case has been handled," Axelrod said. It was an updated version of the claim that Robert Gibbs made last week, when he said that FBI interrogators had gotten "all they could get" from Abdulmutallab in their brief session.

If the White House political and spin teams believe this is true, the actions of the FBI officers themselves suggest that the claim is not true. After a five-hour break following the first interrogation session, the FBI sent a second team to interrogate Abdulmutallab on Christmas Day -- something that would have been unnecessary if the FBI had, in fact, gotten everything it could from him.

And on Friday the Washington Post reported that Justice Department officials are still trying to get more from Abdulmutallab. The Post reported that U.S. government officials are now working on a plea bargain with Abdulmutallab's lawyers -- a deal that would allow interrogators access once again to Abdulmutallab. That wouldn't be necessary if we had gotten everything we could have gotten from him.Intelligence collection is an ongoing process.

It doesn't stop after just one interview with a terrorist. The best information often comes after a series of back-and-forth sessions with the subject that last days, even weeks. Interrogators take bits of information provided by the subject and test it against information collected from other sources -- intercepts, human collection, open source material, and other detainees -- to learn more and to fill in the intelligence picture on a particular subject or group or operation.

By allowing Abdulmutallab to remain silent, the Obama administration has chosen -- and it is a choice -- to collect less information and ultimately to know less about the al Qaeda operatives trying to kill Americans.

We have yet another example of this short-sighted approach today. According to the Associated Press, Malaysian authorities detained 10 suspected terrorists who are believed to have ties to Abdulmutallab.

Excerpt: Read More at Weekly Standard

None of us should be shocked at the lack of insight into how Islamic terrorists want to kill us by this Administration after the way they started going after the CIA immediately upon taking office.

We also believe the 9/11 Commission was wrong to suggest all these agencies like the CIA be put under control of Homeland Security. The CIA should have remained a separate entity reporting directly to the White House. The Department of Homeland Security is too large and diverse to be handled effectively. It would be hard when you have qualified people in charge of Homeland Security but the Obama appointee Napolitono doesn't fit the word qualified. When she was the Arizona Governor, she promised a lot on border security but NEVER delivered. That seems to be a qualification for this Administration -- little to no accomplishments.

How the mainstream media can continue to support and spin for the Obama Administration on national security is beyond comprehension. It is right before your eyes that this Administration from Day One and even on the campaign trail refused to acknowledge that Islamic terrorist want to kill Americans. Bad enough that Obama and his appointees don't want to acknowledge terrorists exist in this Country or come from overseas to kill us, but the media has abdicated their role in providing the facts not spin as they continue to cover for Obama on national security. Why do some members of the White House Press Corp continue to allow themselves to be spun by Press Secretary Gibbs?

Obama admnistration takes several wrong paths in dealing with terrorism
By Michael V. Hayden
Sunday, January 31, 2010

In the war on terrorism, this country faces an enemy whose theory of warfare ends the hard-won distinction in modern thought between combatant and noncombatant.


In doing that for which we have created government -- ensuring life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness -- how can we be adequately aggressive to ensure the first value, without unduly threatening the other two? This is hard. And people don't have to be lazy or stupid to get it wrong.

We got it wrong in Detroit on Christmas Day. We allowed an enemy combatant the protections of our Constitution before we had adequately interrogated him. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab is not "an isolated extremist." He is the tip of the spear of a complex al-Qaeda plot to kill Americans in our homeland.

In the 50 minutes the FBI had to question him, agents reportedly got actionable intelligence. Good. But were there any experts on al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in the room (other than Abdulmutallab)? Was there anyone intimately familiar with any National Security Agency raw traffic to, from or about the captured terrorist? Did they have a list or photos of suspected recruits?

When questioning its detainees, the CIA routinely turns the information provided over to its experts for verification and recommendations for follow-up. The responses of these experts -- "Press him more on this, he knows the details" or "First time we've heard that" -- helps set up more detailed questioning.

None of that happened in Detroit. In fact, we ensured that it wouldn't. After the first session, the FBI Mirandized Abdulmutallab and -- to preserve a potential prosecution -- sent in a "clean team" of agents who could have no knowledge of what Abdulmutallab had provided before he was given his constitutional warnings. As has been widely reported, Abdulmutallab then exercised his right to remain silent.

In retrospect, the inadvisability of this approach seems self-evident. Perhaps it didn't appear that way on Dec. 25 because we have, over the past year, become acclimated to certain patterns of thought.

Two days after his inauguration, President Obama issued an executive order that limited all interrogations by the U.S. government to the techniques authorized in the Army Field Manual. The CIA had not seen the final draft of the order, let alone been allowed to comment, before it was issued. I thought that odd since the order was less a legal document -- there was no claim that the manual exhausted the universe of lawful techniques -- than a policy one: These particular lawful techniques would be all that the country would need, at least for now.

A similar drama unfolded in April over the release of Justice Department memos that had authorized the CIA interrogation program. CIA Director Leon Panetta and several of his predecessors opposed public release of the memos in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit on the only legitimate grounds for such a stand: that the documents were legitimately still classified and their release would gravely harm national security. On this policy -- not legal -- question, the president sided with his attorney general rather than his CIA chief.

(snip)

In November, Justice announced that it intended to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and several others in civilian courts for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The White House made clear that this was a Justice Department decision, which is odd because the decision was not legally compelled (other detainees are to be tried by military commissions) and the reasons given for making it (military trials could serve as a recruitment tool for al-Qaeda, harm relations with allies, etc.) were not legal but political.

Even tough government organizations, such as those in the intelligence community, figure out pretty quickly what their political masters think is not acceptable behavior.

(snip)

Some may celebrate that the current Justice Department's perspective on the war on terrorism has become markedly more dominant in the past year. We should probably understand the implications of that before we break out the champagne. That apparently no one recommended on Christmas Day that Abdulmutallab be handled, at least for a time, as an enemy combatant should be concerning. That our director of national intelligence, Denny Blair, bravely said as much during congressional testimony this month is cause for hope.

Actually, Blair suggested that the High Value Detainee Interrogation Group (HIG), announced by the administration in August, should have been called in. A government spokesman later pointed out that the group does not yet exist.

There's a final oddity. In August, the government unveiled the HIG for questioning al-Qaeda and announced that the FBI would begin questioning CIA officers about the alleged abuses in the 2004 inspector general's report. They are apparently still getting organized for the al-Qaeda interrogations. But the interrogations of CIA personnel are well underway.

The writer was director of the CIA from 2006 to 2009.

Excerpt: Read More at Washington Post

What can you say when an Obama appointee briefing the Senate says the HIG should have been called when that group does not exist? The word 'incompetence' for this Administration on national security and terrorism comes to mind.

Wish there was an answer as to why Obama and his Administration do not want to acknowledge Islamic Terrorist want to kill Americans. If we had the answer, the dots could be put together to make sense, but then some people in this Country might have to admit that we have the weakest President ever when it comes to National Security.

Seems Obama would rather intefer with the College football BCS then handle National Security. Frightening!