One of the most underappreciated aspects of the Scott Brown victory in deep blue Massachusetts was his vigorous, clear, no apologies defense of some of the most controversial aspects related to how we handle the war on terror, or whatever the Obama administration is calling it this week. War on man-made disasters is sooooo 2009!
Scott Brown said quite clearly, the Christmas Eve crotch bomber was funded and trained by Al Qaeda and therefore, he should be treated as an enemy combatant within the military justice system. His opponent, Martha Coakley, agreed with the Obama administration that he should be read his rights, lawyered-up and put into our civilian court system where he will enjoy the same constitutional protections as you or I would.
The choice for voters was crystal clear.
I have never read a book that made me as angry as Courting Disaster. The Obama administration approach to the war on terror is as naive as it is dangerous. The crotch bomber incident is the perfect example of how we are no longer able to effectively interrogate, or even question, terrorists with potentially critical information. In a war against small cells of people able to move freely around the world, human intelligence is more important than ever. The Obama administration has put a blindfold on the CIA.
Stephen F. Hayes at the Weekly Standard reviews the way the crotch bomber was dealt with and it just serves as validation for everything author Marc Thiessen covers in this book.
We learned that the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Michael Leiter, whose agency is responsible for pulling together pieces of intelligence to prevent attacks, went on vacation the day after the attack. We learned that the top White House counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan, told him to go. We learned that the White House’s initial view of the botched attack — from Janet Napolitano and Robert Gibbs — was that “the system worked.” We learned that President Obama still believed the attempted bombing was the work of “an isolated extremist” three days after the attack, despite a wealth of evidence that Abdulmutallab had been sent by al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). We learned that Brennan was surprised that AQAP was capable of attacking the United States. We learned that Napolitano was surprised by al Qaeda’s “determination” to hit the U.S. and stunned that they would send an individual — not a group — to conduct an attack. We learned that four top U.S. counterterrorism officials — Leiter, Napolitano, FBI Director Robert Mueller and Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair — were not consulted about whether to treat Abdulmutallab as an enemy combatant or a criminal. We learned that a proposed “high-value detainee interrogation unit,” or HIG, does not exist one year into the Obama administration. We learned that Blair, the nation’s top intelligence official, thought that it did. We learned that Abdulmutallab was read his Miranda rights less than twelve hours after he was captured. We learned that the FBI interrogated Abdulmutallab for just 50 minutes before he was told he had the right to remain silent and chose to exercise it.
That’s an impressive record of incompetence.
We had a bad connection initially, but we called Marc back and jumped right into this excellent book. We covered a lot of ground but it felt like we only had time to scratch the surface. I hope to have him back on soon. I recommend buying this book, and some Tums to go along with it.
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Authors, History | Kevin | 
March 8, 2010 5:22 am | 
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