California Conservative

Last weekend, Obama administration propagandist Robert Gibbs tried blaming the failed terrorist attack on the Bush administration. That isn’t surprising considering this administration’s we’re-never-at-fault mantra. Mr. Gibbs’ attempt to spin this as a Bush administration failure just got infinitely more difficult now that it’s been reported that the CIA knew about the terrorist:

A CIA official prepared a report on Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab after a meeting with the suspect’s father in November, who shared information about his son’s extremist views, CNN reported Tuesday. The report was sent to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, but it sat there for five weeks and was not disseminated, a “reliable source” said. “Had that information been shared…[he] might have been denied passage on the Northwest Airlines flight,” the source reportedly said.

Mr. President, You can’t blame this on the Bush administration. They didn’t have anything to do with YOUR CIA not getting this important information inot the right people’s hands. I’d further suggest that President Obama instruct Mr. Gibbs to apologize to the Bush administration after blaming them for this foiled terrorist attack.

President Obama can order all the reviews he wants but the problem won’t be solved by reshuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic. Until this administration gets serious about iterrogating terrorists instead of reading them their Miranda rights, we’ll be stuck in a defensive posture.

Tonight on O’Reilly, a criminal defense attorney actually tried making the case that this was a crime, not an act of war. This defense attorney then said that President Obama had “eliminated the word enemy combatant.” It was at that point that Gary Bertnsen, a retired CIA operative working now as a FNC miltary analyst, interjected a coherent thought. Mr. Berntsen rightly pointed out that (a) the term enemy combatant is part of the Geneva Convention and that (b) the term is in the Geneva Convention because terrorists aren’t afforded the same protections as uniformed soldiers because “they fight outside the laws of war.”

This Detroit News op-ed highlights something important that the Obama administration has rejected:

The State Department shouldn’t be giving visas to any of the 550,000 people worldwide identified as terror risks. Some people on that list certainly may be wrongfully named. But it’s better to offend an innocent few than to risk allowing a bona-fide terrorist access to the country.

Bush administration policy was that it was better to err on the side of fighting too aggressively against the terrorist rather than fighting too timidly, which seems to be the Obama administration’s policy.

HINT TO THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION: Al-Qa’ida hasn’t declared a cessation of hostilities with us, which means that we shouldn’t treat terrorists as criminals. (more…)