Bomb Plot Reveals Weaknesses
In post-Bush blame assignment operations. Obama-era lefties show a marked lack of cohesion and consistency on whether trying to ignite your explosive-laden underwear on a plane is a big deal or not, whether heads need to roll or not, and in which part of the fish the rots starts.
News first.
ABC: top Yemeni AQ bombmaker’s work. It was bigger than the shoe bomb. But this underwear bomb’s detonator failed.
Apparently, this means they’ll need to see us with our pants off, one way or another. ABC again.
The Times of London has more on the other way of detecting bombs … detecting the bomber. This was done a couple of years ago, but apparently they weren’t sufficently interested in him to make him drop trou, let alone keep him off the plane.
Waiting on the usual suspects to start denouncing the incompetence of the president of the United States and his inept regime, much as they did the first seven years of this war, police action or whatever it is supposed to be …
(Tap tap tap)
You’ll recall that terrorism was caused not only by decades of American imperialism, but greatly exascerbated by President Bush’s “cowboy” response to the “events” of 9/11. He was responsible for the CIA and FBI failures to detect a plot that killed nearly 3,000 people, which was bad, evidence of his gross incompetence. He then proceeded to cynically exploit assorted laughable Three Stooges routines that may have been associated with one religion or another’s extremist elements as an excuse to spy on Americans and shred the United States Constitution, which was a war crime.
(Tap tap tap)
Come on, guys.
OK, here we go. Andrew Sullivan wants Obama to fire someone. “Eight years after 9/11 and still the US is asleep at the wheel.” More to the point, nearly a year after 1/20. But I thought every junior agent’s failure, transgression, whatever, is the president’s fault! Straight to the top, where the fish rots! Seeing as Andrew doesn’t want to go there, I’m going to guess this does not mark the start of a full Sullivan course change.
Meanwhile, here’s Matthew Yglesias, suddenly averse to attaching responsibility for national security to a presidential administration or its policies.
FDL* is of the opinion that an effort to blow up a plane is no big deal. While myopic and somewhat stupid, this is however consistent with historic lefty insistence that terrorism is a lark, grossly exaggerated as a means of seizing power. Seeing as the Obama admin is actively trying to cede power and assorted constitutional rights to jihadis, the effort to blow up a plane is simply a joke and not a threat to individual rights.
Which brings us to Gawker, where they think it’s hilarious, but recognize that it may cause some inconvenience.
Whatever. Seriously, though, I think we can all agree that seeing as both the TSA and GWOT are Bush fabrications, we can safely continue to blame it all on him. Especially since DHS and the rest of the security apparatus of the United States has been legitimately focused this past year on the threat posed by right-wing extremists and war veterans, also, on trying to crack the mystery of what motivated Nidal Hasan, and hasn’t had a lot of time to waste on airborne Nigerian goofballs who are trying to set their Yemeni underpants on fire.
American Power takes a more scholarly approach to the same question.
Lieberman, via The Hill: Get yer GWOT on! (He’s using the “pre-emptive” word.)
HotAir: His own dad thought he was a menace. Plus, more from the passengers.
Surber‘s got The Flying Dutchman.
Gateway, AQ Yemen staged a rally, declared war on us four days before the Xmas attack. You remember the cowboy response to that. “Bring it on.”
Riehl: Is there an aspirin factory in Obama’s future? Well, maybe a Yemeni wedding party. Remember, he doesn’t talk about it much, but the other thing Obama inherited from George Bush is a United States military and intelligence network with deep ties and a track record in Yemen and elsewhere it can work on, rather than that Clinton-era, Biden-preferred standoff cruise missile launches.
Steyn re “fatuous cliches about how ‘in this struggle, scholarships will be far more important than smart bombs‘.
This one’s fun. Politico, Xmas bomb plot complicates Gitmo plan:
“I’d expect Yemen’s handling of returned Guantanamo detainees to come under intense U.S. scrutiny,” said Matthew Waxman, a Columbia law professor who was an assistant Defense secretary for detainee affairs under President George W. Bush. “In the past, the Yemeni government has not shown great capacity or reliability, but the U.S. hopes to build a stronger partnership and improve that record, in part because it has few other options in this important region.”
The White House had no comment on how Abdulmutallab’s history might impact future prisoner releases or official dealings with Yemen.
Get real. Everyone knows once we empty out Guantanamo, they stop hating us and the war’s over.
* FDL is the streamlined, more professional logo for the blog formerly known as FireDogLake. I’m going to guess even they didn’t know what that meant. Sounds a little like an artful description of what might happen if you bollix setting your underpants on fire, though.
Topics: terrorists
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 9:53 am Comments (1) on Sunday, December 27, 2009
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December 27th, 2009 at 10:57 am
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