Terrorist on Board

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.

Stating the Obvious

(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!

Columnists – unclear on the concept

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.

Hindsight is 20/20

There were a ton of failings with the Detroit underwear bomber. But I don’t believe these particular failings should be leading to this quote by Dick Cheney:

“[W]e are at war and when President Obama pretends we aren’t, it makes us less safe,” Cheney said in a statement to POLITICO. “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.”

All the failings leading to this bomber would have happened under a Republican unless you believe that al-Qaeda had not been working on this little underwear scheme under Bush because Bush was such a tough guy.

The one thing that gets me is how can a young man with a Muslim name flying from Lagos to Detroit without luggage not be given a once over??

That has little to do with this President and everything to do with political correctness that has been running rampant for years.

So yes, fix the “system” that clearly failed. But until and unless that system includes some serious profiling, we’ll know that no administration, left or right is taking this was on extremist Muslim terrorists seriously.

And until people in the administration who never want to be identified quit leaking stories to the press for reasons I’d have to say that it’s the media that seems to think this really isn’t war.

UPDATE: We will only ever hear about the failures of intelligence systems and not the successes which happen every day. We need to realize that.

The Required Underpants Terrorist Post

Brought to you by “The Stupid Agency”. (a great title of a must read post by Professor Bainbridge)

A couple of things to note here.
No matter what list a person is on or not on,
young Muslim men buying tickets to the US
with cash and
without luggage
should get a second screening. Hello??

The main thing the 9/11 report noticed is that bits of information were never connected. What in this incident shows that things have changed?
A young Muslim man, who was given a multi-entrance VISA, who has been to Yemen, who’s own connected and reasonable dad suggests he could be a problem, maybe should be looked into before said VISA expires.

If “the system” in place is actually, “assume someone else will take care of this problem”, is the system, then yes, “the system worked”. Sadly, it didn’t work with Hasan. Napolitano needs to be part of the unemployment numbers.

The new fix is not a fix.

The underpants dude didn’t use anything out of his carry on bag.

The underpants dude didn’t do anything in the bathroom other than get ready to die.

The underpants dude didn’t have a paperback in his lap. It won’t help now that you won’t either.

The passengers around the underpants dude did as they were told which is to say, they stayed in their seats. A man 3 rows behind the underpants dude decided that maybe saving the plane would be worth getting into trouble with the stewardess for disconnecting his seat belt. How will making a rule that everyone must remain in their seat help?

It doesn’t help to expand a watch list that is not actually watched.

And finally, by immediately treating this as a criminal thing vs an act of war – in spite of the confession by the underpants dude – we now do not get to question said dude without his lawyer present. Maybe this “new” way will help us win the hearts and minds of jihadists, but I’m pretty sure they mean what they say when they suggest that jihad is about killing the infidel and not about Abu Graib or civil liberties at Gitmo.

Back to the first link…..feeling helpless is horrible. Being made uncomfortable and even more inconvenienced does not make us less helpless. We have actual tools at our disposal including psychology. TSA has about 15 people you walk through at those screening areas. Each of those minimally paid people knows that they will not actually be responsible for anything because there are 14 others that surely ‘would have caught it’ if it was a problem. Reduce that number, pay them better, train them more, allow them to profile, use technology, and did I mention fire Napolitano.

Attention Drug Users

You are the people financing war in Mexico and Colombia.

And yes, it’s war.

Links

Global Warming:
In this NYTimes article on the hacked emails of scientists concerning global warming data you get this quote:

In one e-mail exchange, a scientist writes of using a statistical “trick” in a chart illustrating a recent sharp warming trend. In another, a scientist refers to climate skeptics as “idiots.”

Some skeptics asserted Friday that the correspondence revealed an effort to withhold scientific information. “This is not a smoking gun; this is a mushroom cloud,” said Patrick J. Michaels, a climatologist who has long faulted evidence pointing to human-driven warming and is criticized in the documents.

Some of the correspondence portrays the scientists as feeling under siege by the skeptics’ camp and worried that any stray comment or data glitch could be turned against them.

The evidence pointing to a growing human contribution to global warming is so widely accepted that the hacked material is unlikely to erode the overall argument. However, the documents will undoubtedly raise questions about the quality of research on some specific questions and the actions of some scientists.

In several e-mail exchanges, Kevin Trenberth, a climatologist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, and other scientists discuss gaps in understanding of recent variations in temperature. Skeptic Web sites pointed out one line in particular: “The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t,” Dr. Trenberth wrote.

That’s right, its so “widely accepted” – except that more people believe in haunted houses than in human caused global warming……Newspapers – telling you what to believe for years now.
………………………..
KSM
The DOJ does not have the right to tell the DOD to hand over KSM. Only Obama can do that so he’s going to have to step up to the plate…..unless he can convince Gates to go ahead and do the handover without his official stamp.

The attorney general has no constitutional or statutory authority to unilaterally order the Defense Department to hand over military detainees so they can stand trial in civilian court. He can no more order the military to transfer such prisoners than he can order the Air Force to bomb a particular target. (Similarly, the defense secretary has no authority to order the Justice Department to do anything.)………..

For this to be done legally, it can’t be Holder’s decision alone. Either Obama must step up to the plate and personally order the transfer of the detainees or Defense Secretary Robert Gates must jointly agree with Holder to transfer custody of the detainees.

……………………..

Taxes
50% seems to be the cutoff for what people will put up with. Great Britain is losing their own rich with this attitude: From Will Hunton – Journalist and think tank member:

“Nobody wants a 50p tax rate. We are having it only because the public finances are in a serious state and we need to restore balance. People may mock this, but I would say we are in it together and people who earn more than others should pay more into the pot.”

This from Sir Michael Cain:

“I will not pay the government more than I get. No way, ever. So they’ve reached their limit with me. That’s the lot.”

KSM and NYC

If you didn’t read this piece by William McGurn in the WSJ the other day, I recommend it.

It’s titled “Holder’s Al-Qaeda Incentive Plan” and notes that apparently the worse the terrorist, the better the treatment.
In other words, KSM, killer of civilians, is going to get a nice civilian trial with the presumption of innocence, while those picked up on the battlefield fighting solders will be left behind in GITMO or transferred to Illinois will get no such trial. Why is that?

For the first time in a long time someone mentions Geneva.

We don’t often speak of incentives in war. That’s a loss, because the whole idea of, say, Geneva rights is based on the idea of providing combatants with incentives to do things that help limit the bloodiness of battle. These include wearing a uniform, carrying arms openly, not targeting civilians, and so on.

You give Geneva rights to those who signed on. (and I don’t believe a civilian trial is a right of Geneva). You don’t give extra rights to those who explicitly endorse nothing concerning Geneva. Yet that’s what we’re doing.

Why fight the Marines and risk getting killed yourself or locked up in Bagram forever when you can blow up American citizens on their own streets and gain the legal protections that give you a chance to go free? With this one step, Mr. Holder is giving al Qaeda a ghastly incentive: to focus more of their attacks on American civilians on American home soil.

What is wrong with this administration?

UPDATE: Based on the video in this post from Ace (from the Corner) it’s full of blathering idiots. Lindsay Graham knocks Eric Holder out of the park.

KSM

“What in the hell is wrong with these people”, is pretty much the question of the year.

It’s impossible, really, to caricature this White House; even Josiah Bartlett didn’t run through this many liberal stereotypes in his first season. Obama needs new writers. Blow up the World Trade Center and kill 3,000 Americans? Jail! Don’t buy health insurance? Jail! Win the Nobel Prize for doing jack squat. Travel to Copenhagen to beg and grovel unsuccessfully for the Olympics, and pledge to go visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but blow off traveling to Berlin to commemorate the victory of freedom over Communism (then give a tepid speech on the subject that refuses to acknowledge Ronald Reagan). Commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland by unilaterally abandoning missile defense installations in Poland. Insult and disdain one faithful ally after another – Britain, India, Israel, Poland, Colombia, you name it – and cozy up to our enemies, with nothing to show for it – nothing to show for anything he’s done in foreign affairs. All but ignore democratic protests in Iran while supporting an illegal effort by Honduras’ president to stay on beyond the end of his term. Suddenly complain about corruption and electoral fraud in Afghanistan, while seeking the favor of Hugo Chavez and Mahmoud Ahmadenijad and Vladimir Putin – heck, Obama endorsed half a dozen people in Chicago more corrupt than Hamid Karzai.

(ht my sister)

Fighting Terrorists

The farmers daughter took one down with his own weapon.

As they say in some parts “You go girl!”