Weekly Standard.com
There's still time to reverse course.
11:07 AM, Feb 15, 2010 · Rachel Abra
We’ve shaken our heads in disgust often in the last year over the Obamic decision to permit a bunch of Chicago political hacks and the U.S. attorney general--the CPH Plus One--to run much of foreign policy out of the White House. It’s had real-world consequences, not least that the tension between the Axelrod-Emanuel-Jarrett axis (appease despots whenever possible) and the Clinton state department (appease them, but accuse them while you’re doing it) has given time and breathing room to the bomb-building wing of the Iranian dictatorship. But this chilling report by Eli Lake tells us that the cost of the Eric Holder end of that decision has been a much more immediate threat:
U.S. and allied counterterrorism authorities have launched a global manhunt for English-speaking terrorists trained in Yemen who are planning attacks on the United States, based on intelligence provided by the suspect in the attempted Christmas Day bombing after he began cooperating.
U.S. officials told The Washington Times that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, facing charges as a would-be suicide bomber, revealed during recent cooperation with the FBI that he met with other English speakers at a terrorist training camp in Yemen.
Information about the bomb plots was shared with the FBI after Mr. Abdulmutallab's family traveled from Nigeria to help coax the former student into cooperating, after a period of about five weeks when he refused to help authorities.
He gave them 50 minutes-worth of information when they grabbed him, and then he clammed up after they read him his rights. And then, as if he were Frankie Pentangeli in reverse, they brought in his family to get him to sing. Only this is not a brilliant moment in fiction or film, this is for real, and those wasted, precious five weeks may well result in American deaths. Lots of them. There’s no pleasure in blaming Obama and his permanent campaign for endangering us so, and there’s no disgust, either—there’s only fear, and the hope that this information will shock them into reversing course and actually leading, with the safety and security of our homeland in mind.
