Debra Burlingame of Keep America Safe Discusses Obama’s Statement on Terror Attack
To the Democrats Living Outside History (On the comparison between Bush/ShoeBomber and Obama/UnderwearBomber)
Back then, everyone was on the same page….we all knew what had happened…we all knew we were at war…we had moral clarity… Imagine, on December 22, 2001, when Richard Reid tried to bring down that plane, the attorney general emerging to call this an “isolated incident” of “extremism”…. Everyone KNEW that this was part of the same Al Qaeda design.
In fact, I remember one of the flight attendants who jumped on Reid saying she was only able to do what she did because of those who went before her…her ability to see and stop the attack was because of the experience of her dead colleagues. No one called Reid, the “alleged bomber.” No one said, wait, we can’t jump to conclusions or comment because of a “pending criminal investigation.” When Reid tried to bring down that plane, ground zero was still smoldering. We buried my brother ten days earlier, on Dec. 12th. And we were one of the lucky families who received something to bury. The wound was still raw as can be.
To compare Richard Reid, three months after 9/11, to Abulmatallub, eight years after 9 /11, is to live outside history. — Debra Burlingame via Michael Goldfarb
Former Gitmo detainee killed in Yemen while plotting attack on British embassy
A former detainee at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility was killed by Yemeni forces during a raid in Arhab, which is north of the capital Sanaa, on Dec. 17. The former detainee, Hani Abdo Shaalan, was preparing attacks along with other al Qaeda terrorists against the British embassy and other Western targets at the time. … A statement by the Yemeni government released on the 26Sep.net web site, which is affiliated with Yemen’s defense ministry, said that the impending terrorist attack against the British embassy and other targets was “in its final phase” of planning. “A group of eight suicide bombers were to carry out the operation using explosive belts and two car bombs,” Agence France Presse, quoting from the statement, reported. The plot against the British embassy “was to be modeled on the operation that was carried out against the American embassy” in September 2008, the statement added. That attack killed 19 people, including one American. Another former Gitmo detainee, Said al Shihri, a Saudi who is currently the number two deputy of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, reportedly helped plan the September 2008 attack.
Airline plot exposes pitfalls in US intelligence
James Jay Carafano, an expert on national security at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said it was too easy to blame systemic problems and that the key was simply to follow leads. “This blame-the-system thing is a bit of a cop-out. It makes it sound like it’s some kind of mechanical process and if we just make some policy changes, this will all go away,” he said. “It’s really a leadership issue,” he said. “People don’t want to do things. Information gets pumped into the National Counterterrorism Center and they say, ‘Okay, this doesn’t mean much to us,’ and they shove it.”
State panel could vote on Thomson in a week
A state panel could vote Jan. 6 on the closure of a northwestern Illinois prison the Obama administration wants to buy to detain some of the terrorist suspects now held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The Illinois Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability today announced that a second public hearing will be held at 1 p.m. next Wednesday at the James R. Thompson Center in Chicago. The news release indicated a vote could be taken that day. The second hearing comes after one last week near the Thomson Correctional Center that drew hundreds and was marked by boos and jeers from opponents in the crowd and harsh questions from Republicans.
Feinstein: Halt transfers to Yemen
“Guantanamo detainees should not be released to Yemen at this time,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said in a statement. “It is too unstable.” Feinstein’s warning comes just nine days after the Department of Justice announced the most recent transfer of 12 detainees from Guantanamo Bay to Afghanistan, Yemen and Somaliland. Six of the 12 were transferred to the government of Yemen. An al Qaeda wing in Yemen claimed responsibility for last week’s attempted bombing of the Northwest Airlines flight headed to Detroit.
The “Fire Napolitano” Debate
When DHS came into being, a good friend of mine put it perfectly: “We already have a Department of Homeland Security and its address is 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.” It is there, not at DHS, that the problem resides. The President has in place exactly the team he wants. To clamor for Napolitano’s firing when she is just carrying out the boss’s program is to shift the blame from where it belongs. — Andrew McCarthy
The wake-up call from Flight 253
Terrorists can always adapt to new restrictions. After 9/11, knives and sharp metal objects were banned from carry-on luggage, so Richard Reid attempted to detonate a shoe bomb. Thereafter everyone’s shoes were checked, so the Heathrow plotters planned to use liquid-based explosives. Now liquids are strictly limited, so Abdulmutallab smuggled PETN, an explosive powder, in his underwear. There is no physical constraint that determined jihadists cannot find a way to circumvent. Yet US airport security remains obstinately reactive — focused on intercepting dangerous things, instead of intercepting dangerous people. Unwilling to incorporate ethnic and religious profiling into our air-travel security procedures, we have saddled ourselves with a mediocre security system that inconveniences everyone while protecting no one.
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