Category: Terror War

According to testimony to the Senate yesterday as reported in the Washington Post, the Underoos bomber is talking again;

Separately, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III told senators at an intelligence committee hearing that Abdulmutallab was giving information to investigators. Mueller did not elaborate.

The disclosures that the Nigerian student is cooperating with criminal investigators come amid a fierce debate in Congress over the Obama administration’s handling of the case and, more broadly, its approach to national security.

A report from Associated Press;

The break came when US interrogators brought Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s family to the US to convince him to cooperate.

U.S. investigators flew members of Abdulmutallab’s family from Nigeria to the United States on Jan. 17, the senior administration official said. The family members have proved vital in getting Abdulmutallab to talk, he said — indicating that it would have been counterproductive to interrogate him under military rules, as some have suggested.

They act like this makes up for Underoo’s clamming up after he was read his Miranda rights. Hardly. Do they think that terrorists don’t read newspapers? Any intelligence he could have provided after those first 50 minutes is now stale. Any training locations have certainly been dismantled, any trainers and contacts are in the wind. So why would they bother interrogating now? To build future legal cases.

It’s all such a waste of time.

ADDED: Of course dicksmith sees this as a vidication of Tony Camerino’s assertion that we don’t need enhanced interrogation techniques to extract information;

Silly me, I thought only torture techniques like water boarding, slamming into walls, sleep deprivation for 180 hours, placement in insect boxes or food deprivation above 1,000 calories a day could get a suspected al Queda [sic] terrorist to give reliable intelligence.

But we’re getting this information a month after it’s already stale. As DrewM at Ace of Spades accurately points out, this is a unique case. How many family members of these goat ropers are willing to help the US? Of course, we’re extracting old information – so what’s to celebrate?

For months we’ve had the discussion here about whether Carlos Bledsoe and Nidal Hasan were jihadist terrorists and I’m pretty sure the evidence is overwhelming. Most Americans are probably convinced of that fact. But in both cases, the feds have been unwilling to call it terrorism, let alone mention radical Islam in relation to the incidents. They are even reluctant to admit that Mr. Underwear Bomber is a terrorist. This morning, the Washington Times asks if the Obama Administration even knows terrorism exists at all;

It’s not clear what the Obama administration thinks terrorism is, if it thinks it exists at all. The administration doggedly maintains that political, especially jihadist, violence by individuals with no international linkage is not terrorism. This definition might come as a surprise to the Unabomber, who for years was the most sought-after terrorist in America.

President Obama’s knee-jerk response that the Christmas Day bombing plot was not terror-related was probably one of the factors that led Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to be Mirandized quickly and treated as a criminal suspect. It shouldn’t matter that this was a domestic incident; he is a jihadist warrior, and the aircraft was his battlefield.

The other day, I wondered what Lloyd Woodson was planning. The Obama Administration denied that he was motivated by terrorism or Islam, but the Times says otherwise;

A report by the Northeast Intelligence Network reveals that, according to a member of New Jersey law enforcement, Mr. Woodson’s personal effects “not only associate him with ‘radical Islam,’ but also with a ‘militant Islamic group.’ ” But as the two cases mentioned above indicate, even this would not qualify him as a terrorist under the Obama administration’s narrow definition.

So, what will convince the Obama Administration that there are indeed domestic terrorists here (that don’t have right-wing leanings) and that we’re under attack?

Carlos Bledsoe who murdered PVT William Long outside of a Little Rock recruiting station last spring has admitted that he is a jihadist for al Qaeda and asked that his not guilty plea be vacated according to Fox News;

Abdulhakim Muhammad’s attorney, Claiborne Ferguson, said Thursday night that his client sent a letter earlier this month to the judge in his case asking to change his plea to capital murder and attempted capital murder charges.

Ferguson said he hadn’t discussed the request with his client before the letter was sent. Under Arkansas law prosecutors would have to agree and waive the death penalty before the judge could consider it, Ferguson said.

Of course, Ferguson claims that his client is unbalanced and that’s why he confessed, but a conversion to Islam and a trip to Yemen for training say otherwise. And there must’ve been a reason that the FBI was tailing and investigating Bledsoe before the killing.

So all of the federal cops went to Congress yesterday to report how well they did on the Detroit Christmas bomber case. The Washington Times reports on the caper;

[Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair] said Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab should have been questioned by the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group, or HIG, a special panel established by President Obama.

“We did not invoke the HIG in this case. We should have. Frankly, we were thinking more of overseas people. And, you know … that’s what we will do now. And so we need to make those decisions more carefully,” Mr. Blair told Sen. Susan Collins, Maine Republican and ranking member of the Homeland Security Committee.

Yeah, so the HIG, which the Obama made som much noise about last summer, wasn’t used in favor of domestic law enforcement. And, now, maybe they’ll use the HIG next time.

At the Senate hearing Wednesday, Ms. Napolitano, Mr. Blair and Michael Leiter, director of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), all testified that they were not consulted when an FBI special agent and the Justice Department decided to try Mr. Abdulmutallab in a civilian court.

Sure, why not? If you ask an FBI special agent and a Justice Department lawyer and no one else how a case should be handled, is there any doubt what the answer will be.

Sen. John McCain, Arizona Republican, said the decision to try Mr. Abdulmutallab in federal court was a “terrible, terrible mistake.”

Thanks for standing up, McCain, but we probably need to use stronger words. Something like “What are you guys? Incurable fuckups? The Three Stooges? Keystone Kops? Give me one reason I shouldn’t call for your immediate execution.”

When asked why the NCTC failed to put Mr. Abdulmutallab on the proper no-fly lists, Mr. Blair said security analysts had been pressured in the past to reduce the no-fly lists and not to add new names.

“As you read through the guidance given to analysts that they were expected to cast a very fishy eye on the inclusion of lots more — lots more names,” Mr. Blair said. “And the pressure was in the other direction. Shame on us for giving into that pressure.”

Shame? That’s all? Shame? Thankfully the terrorist was only marginally more of a buffoon than our own government. I’m sure our luck will hold.

Remember back in August when General McCrystal asked the Obama administration for some more resources to fight the war in Afghanistan and we were told by the administration and the talking heads that there was no reason to rush a decision because winters were calm and the Taliban didn’t fight in the winter.

Well, tell me what this is;

An attack in which the Taliban claimed to have infiltrated key government sites in central Kabul killed five people on Monday morning, hospital officials said.

Thirty-eight other people were injured, said Dr. Kabir Amiri, head of Kabul hospitals. Afghan security forces were among the casualties, he added, without clarifying.

At least two explosions and gunfire shook central Kabul about 9:20 a.m. Monday, with the Taliban saying it was conducting a militant operation.

The attack started as 14 members of Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s Cabinet were to be sworn in, said Parliament member Fawzia Koofi.

About 20 Taliban insurgents entered the presidential palace; the ministries of finance, mines and justice; and the Serena Hotel, said spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid. The militants claimed responsibility for at least one explosion.

Surprise, the Taliban read the newspapers, too. Last month, the military announced that the “drizzle” of troops won’t be in place until August, that no one is in a big hurry to put forces in the war. So who is surprised that the Taliban took advantage of that?