“That’s two Strikes” said White House national security adviser James Jones.
Just two?
Really?
Archive for January, 2010
Ken Salazar has been given Obama’s blessing to run for governor here.
I know the right doesn’t like him, apparently Obama doesn’t realize the left doesn’t like him either. (the link is to a search of stories on Salazar at wolves.wordpress.com)
ht to Ken Cole on this story
In the comments by Jerri Blank:
Salazar quits the Attorney General job to become Senator. He quits his Senate job to become Interior Secretary. Now he wants to quit that to become governor. Dude, make up your mind.
Andrew Breitbart started another site, “Big Journalism”.
Today he talks about what happened in said journalism with the Honduras story. And how the MSM helped turn a reasoned action there into a caricature about Latin American militaries.
Wow - Apparently the dots WERE connected. Just a bit too slowly to stop Abdulmutallab from getting on board the plan. Instead border officials had plans to question him AFTER the plane landed in Detroit.
Reporting from Washington – U.S. border security officials learned of the alleged extremist links of the suspect in the Christmas Day jetliner bombing attempt as he was airborne from Amsterdam to Detroit and had decided to question him when he landed, officials disclosed Wednesday.
The new information shows that border enforcement officials discovered the suspected extremist ties involving the Nigerian, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, in a database despite intelligence failures that have been criticized by President Obama.
“The people in Detroit were prepared to look at him in secondary inspection,” a senior law enforcement official said. “The decision had been made. The [database] had picked up the State Department concern about this guy — that this guy may have been involved with extremist elements in Yemen.”
Back to you Amsterdam.
In other news, for your entertainment, read this interview from DerSpiegel with Bruce Hoffman, terrorism expert.
Bruce Hoffman is a professor at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., and is one of United States’ foremost experts on terrorism. He worked for years on counterterrorism issues at the RAND Corporation think tank and served as a scholar in residence at the Central Intelligence Agency. An updated version of his seminal book, “Inside Terrorism,” was published by the Columbia University Press in the US in 2006 and by S. Fischer Verlag in Germany.
After suggesting that a) al-Qaeda is getting stronger based on all the varieties of threats faced now (loners, sleeper cells, American sleepers) and b) that these small attacks are distractions from something bigger in the pipe he says……get this:
SPIEGEL ONLINE: What needs to be done now?
Hoffman: We finally have to take the terrorism threat seriously. We need a flexible response that looks at lone individuals but also larger organizations — and a system that looks more specifically at certain risks.
Yes, now might be a good time.
This other answer to a question gave me pause too:
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Obama said he would “not tolerate” intelligence failures. Will we see heads rolling in his staff?
Hoffman: No heads rolled after 9/11. Much more important than finger-pointing is an effort to figure out where the system broke down. For instance, the newly designed counter-terrorism center seemed to be working well but now it turns out the analysts there were not able to connect the dots after the warning about the Nigerian airline terrorist. These are issues we need to examine.
Even terrorist “experts” are going to deflect to Bush on every answer.
(a very rambling post)
Obama stated the obvious last night and then went on and did nothing:
“This was not a failure to collect intelligence,” Obama said after meeting with senior national security and intelligence officials, “it was a failure to integrate and understand the intelligence that we already had. . . . That’s not acceptable, and I will not tolerate it.”
By not tolerating it, does he mean he’ll remove the XTRA layer of bureaucracy created to “integrate and understand” intelligence given to it by the intelligence agencies? Nope.
How about firing anyone who didn’t do their job? Nope.
Will he work on finding where the system broke down? I don’t see how if “he will not tolerate” the fingerpointing.
Here’s what he’s going to do:
including expansion of the U.S. “no-fly” list to include people with Abdulmutallab’s profile; [Nigerian man with no luggage paying cash for a one way ticket to Detroit]
Frankly I would have thought this was already part of the screening.
……
enhanced screening for anyone flying to the United States from an expanded list of “countries of interest”;
………..
additional screening and security on all domestic or U.S.-bound international flights;
Because patting down my legs is going to let you know what I have in my crotch, right?
………..
an automatic check of terrorism suspects to determine whether they possess valid U.S. visas.
This one is my favorite. Read it again. An automatic check of terrorists suspects!! Yes, that will help.
I’m thinking maybe we ought to have an automatic check of any skinny passengers taller than 6feet who’s address is a cave in Pakistan too. Just to be on the safe side.
Obama included in his speech this brand new fact concerning Guantanamo and it’s affect on terrorism:
“In fact,” he added, “that [GITMO] was an explicit rationale for the formation of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.”
Wow – and here the old facts say that al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula existed by 2003.
Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula first came to prominence in Saudi Arabia in May 2003, when it claimed responsibility for simultaneous suicide bombing attacks on three Western housing compounds in Riyadh , which left 29 dead.
Two other things. I finally found a reasonable person quoted in the paper concerning this. Bob Ayers, former intelligence official.
Bob Ayers, a former US intelligence officer, said Obama’s announcement was an attempt to “correct the perception that he’s being soft on national security”.
“It provides him with an opportunity to demonstrate that he’s concerned and he’s tough and he’s going to do something about this problem,” Ayers told Al Jazeera.
But Ayers also warned against blaming the incident solely on the failure of the US intelligence process.
“The man still had to go through a security checkpoint. He was allowed on to an aircraft at his point of debarkation without even having a passport.
“That’s not an intelligence failure, that’s an airport security failure.”
That it is, that it is. And Mr. Obama, I don’t think you have a ton of control over airport security around the world.
You do however have control over your own agencies. That being the case, maybe you might want to rethink using them to spy for global warmist scientists. Maybe?
Here’s an article about how this administration is going to use the CIA.
The nation’s top scientists and spies are collaborating on an effort to use the federal government’s intelligence assets — including spy satellites and other classified sensors — to assess the hidden complexities of environmental change.
Read the story….it’s not that easy to follow. Yes, of course the spy images would be helpful to collect data on changes in climate. No shit. So? Send your own satellites up then. Instead 60 scientists will have secret clearance. So does that mean they can study the images, but not publish??
Another point the story makes is that this will cost the CIA $0. Yet somehow 500 agents will be useful to science.
Scientists, Dr. Untersteiner said, “have no way to send out 500 people” across the top of the world to match the intelligence gains, adding that the new understandings might one day result in ice forecasts.
If the information is available, then make it available to everyone.
If it’s secret, then keep the damn stuff secret.
How is having intelligence agencies working with a limited number of scientists going to be free, or even fair. It’s like the public option in health care. The government gets the upper hand. Scientists with access get to do the better science because they get the information. The rest of you clowns, nyet.
I feel like I’m in the twilight zone here.
ps – Jordan is having a hard time accepting that our bomber in Afghanistan was Jordanian.
Government officials on Tuesday said there was no proof that the suicide bomber who killed eight people at a US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) base in Afghanistan was a Jordanian.
However, a senior government official acknowledged yesterday that 32-year-old Humam Khalil Abu Mulal Al Balawi, whom international media reports pointed to as the perpetrator of the attack, was a Jordanian doctor who had supplied security agencies with information about terrorists targeting Jordan’s security.
And Thomas Friedman makes sense today. That’s nice. Someone needs to today!
Geriatric care has changed over my lifetime. Surely we’ve all heard the stories of nursing homes with all the residences strapped into wheel chairs sleeping in front of tvs in puddles or urine.
It’s also gotten more expensive. But don’t worry, with government run healthcare, surely money won’t be a problem concerning good care, right? Right??
Patients being tube-fed ‘to save time’
Patients are having their health put at risk by staff who feed them through tubes unnecessarily because they are too busy to help them eat normally, a report has warnedPutting a tube into the stomach to give nutrition artificially should be a last resort but busy hospital wards and care homes are using them inappropriately, the report from the Royal College of Physicians said.
Experts said that there could be a “hidden agenda” for fitting feeding tubes due to staffing issues and costs………………..
A survey found there was an 11 per cent increase in the number of people being fed artificially outside hospital in just one year to reach 39,000 people in Britain in 2008.
Every hospital or nutrition team will have experienced a care home refusing to take a patient unless a tube is fitted, Dr Burnham said.
Yes, we’re arrogant, we get to be.
But that doesn’t mean we don’t celebrate the independence of other democracies. Good on India/South Africa/Brazil and Turkey for looking out for their own interests in Copenhagen. (though it was very very rude to leave our President out of your little talks) [speaking of celebrating others, John Kranz blogged on this last decade the other day and the strides taken economically in the world]
A leader’s job is to nurture and support those under him/her until they become strong enough to stand on their own.
That doesn’t mean we’ve “lost the free world“.
I swear reporters need everything to be a sign of the end times. We just want the news. No wonder they’re going under.
ps We definitely will “lose” Great Britain if we keep treating her like an ugly little bratty sister.
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was named in a file of people based in Britain who had made contact with radical Muslim preachers. The file was sent to the US authorities in 2008.
The disclosure will embarrass President Barack Obama, who is already under pressure after failures by US intelligence to identify the bomber. …
………….
At first it was thought that MI5 gathered only limited information on Abdulmutallab and had therefore not alerted the US.
Yeah, right.
Instead of columnists deciding that “the terrorists have won”, I think they’ve only won when they get to crawl out of their caves, plan their next bit of “fun” in an office and live off of their own innovative ideas vs the benevolence of others.
Until then:
Sorry Mr. Peters, but yes, we are a trusting and open society. People who see that often want to join it. Others want to kill it. That doesn’t make them the winner. We can do better, of course.
Sorry Mr. Levine, just because terrorists and your whiney ass ways have caused us to spend a lot of money, you still haven’t won. And no it isn’t the poverty that causes jihadist to wage war. It’s that a) they want a total Muslim society and b) we are a whole lot easier to fight than their own corrupt, torturous, governments.
If the mainstream press, and with it no doubt the Obama administration, are unwilling to recognise the inextricable ties between oppression, poverty, corruption and violence by governments like Nigeria and Yemen, and the rise of religiously grounded extremism and violence there, then its increasing foot- or boot-print there will strengthen rather than weaken al-Qaeda and similar movements.
And I guess I need to say it again……until the TSA starts hiring for common sense and culling those without a sense of responsibility and just sense, I guess we DO need these “rules” for how to treat passengers. That is the shame of our educational system and big organizations with multiple people on the same line.
Either way – the terrorists haven’t “won”. We’re still standing. A lot of us are still flying. We can’t get lazy. And the terrorists haven’t “won” just because we need to remain aware.
Either that or Aralifestyle.com is delusional.
Get the title of this infomercial, or column or…..I don’t even know what it is…but:
Obama will give you $2,500 a year to go to school
That’s just the title.
If you are a low-income individual and want to get money to go back to school, visit ClassesandCareers.com, fill out their form, and indicate which schools you may be interested in. An education advisor will contact you and help you get your share of President Obama’s stimulus money to go back to school.
That’s right. Obama will give you $2500 a year to go to school. Where do you suppose that money comes from??
Let the pointing of fingers begin.
Looks like it was the National Counterterrorism Center — created after 9/11 for the explicit purpose of connecting the dots on terror data collected by different agencies — that failed to connect the dots.
Who’d a thunk it…..? You have a problem with agencies not communicating, and you determine via the 9/11 commission to …….. create another agency. And you expect that to work???? Puhlease.
The link to the hotair story has a ton of links. I’m going to spend my day with the horses, so go there and link through to the actual news stories pointing fingers here and there.
It looks to me though that everyone reported to the new agency as required. The new agency, didn’t do the connecting.
But even without connecting a single dot, a single byte of information on the underwear bomber, no one has yet to let us know how a young man from Nigeria buying a one way ticket to Detroit with cash on a major holiday with no luggage was able to get through without a second screening? No dots needed there – I would have thought!
But then, I’m no new government agency.
Charles Krauthammer had a great quote today too.
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.
Time for us to grow up. Maybe 2010 will be that start.
