Jack Kelly, one-time "National Security" columnist for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette,
chimes in this week on Terrorism, Islam, Torture, and Security. Were I
the MacYapper, I'd call it Jack's "TITS" column.
But I'm not. So I won't.
Jack, as usual, twists things too far. It's painful to watch, really. Him clamping down on those talking points.
Jack begins:
It evidently didn't matter to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab that Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, is trying to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay and has sucked up shamelessly to the Islamist regime in Iran.
Mr. Abdulmutallab, 23, is the Nigerian who on Christmas Day boarded Northwest Air Lines flight 253 with a sophisticated bomb built into his underwear. That Mr. Abdulmutallab wound up doing more harm to liberal shibboleths than to the 278 passengers is due to a faulty detonator and prompt, heroic action by Dutch tourist Jasper Schuringa rather than to any action taken by the U.S. government.
But that didn't prevent Janet Napolitano, the comically inept secretary of Homeland Security, from declaring on the talk shows last Sunday that "the system worked."
At this point I am reminded of Pittgirl's
drinking game. The rules are similar to the "Hi Bob" drinking games I learned about (though
never participated in, dammit) in college. For the latter, the rules are simple: while watching the "Bob Newhart Show" (the good one, set in Chicago with Suzanne Pleshette) take a drink whenever any character says "Hi Bob." For Pittgirl's game, simply take a drink whenever our mayor, lucky Lukey, uses the phrase "Moving forward."
Either case, that's lotsa liquor.
I am thinking, however, that were we to all take a shot whenever Jack Kelly parrots a Republican talking point, the ranks of AA would grow by leaps and bounds. Good for Seagrams and the Coors/Busch families but not so good for our livers or brain cells.
Back to the column and how "the system worked." Check out
Jake Tapper on December 27:
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told me this morning on "This Week" that “everything went according to clockwork” in how passengers, crew and the government reacted to the attempted bombing of Flight 253.
But she wasn’t so sure about how well the government performed before the incident. [emphasis added.]
Here's Spencer Ackerman at the
Washington Independent:
Somehow this has rocketed around journalistic circles as Napolitano defending the system that allowed Abdulmutallab to board the plane. Marc Ambinder wrote it up that way. So did Mike Allen. Andrew Sullivan followed on Ambinder. Bill Kristol not only echoed them, he’s also saying Napolitano has now “conceded” the system didn’t work. All for saying exactly what she said on “This Week.”
Looking, again, at what she said, she was talking about what happened after the failed bombing attempt - not at how he got on board the plane. She even said so on the 27th.
And now in light of that, how silly does Jack's next paragraph look?
Ms. Napolitano backtracked the next day after it was revealed Mr. Abdulmutallab's father had warned U.S. authorities a month ago about his son's radicalism, that Britain had banned him from entering that country, and that Mr. Abdulmutallab had paid for his ticket in cash and had no luggage, both of which ought to have been red flags.
So everything that Jack writes after "it was revealed..." is more or less completely moot.
If we were drinking were in place, we'd all be catching a really nice buzz right about now.
Let's move on. Jack writes:
"This incident was a compound failure of both intelligence and physical security, leaving prevention to the last line of defense -- the passengers themselves," Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Georgetown University, told The Washington Post.
And again fails to tell you the whole story. Here's Hoffman in context
at the Washington Post:
But Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism analyst at Georgetown University, called the suspect's ability to smuggle the device on board profoundly disturbing, given that the TSA has spent more than $30 billion on aviation security since 2004, the world's airlines collectively spend an additional $5.9 billion a year, and PETN is well-known as a favored material for terrorist suicide bombers.
"This incident was a compound failure of both intelligence and physical security, leaving prevention to the last line of defense -- the passengers themselves," Hoffman wrote in an e-mail.
Now Jack would have you believe that Hoffman is talking about the Obama Administration's general plans to combat terrorism when it's obvious that Hoffman is discussing TSA security going back to 2004.
For the recovering alcoholics in the crowd playing the Jack Kelly drinking game, it's best not to read Jack's next paragraph:
We're likely to hear no more from Mr. Abdulmutallab about the plot, because -- thanks to the Obama administration's "criminal justice" approach to fighting terrorism -- he has lawyered up.
Damn our criminal Justice System! If only Obama got serious with this lone plane bomber like the real men of the Bush Administration did with the last lone plane bomber. If only he and didn't waste any time with our quaint "criminal justice" system.
Uh-oh:
A federal court judge on Friday accepted the guilty plea of Richard Reid, the man charged with trying to blow up a trans-Atlantic flight last December with explosives in his shoe.
But at least the true-blue defenders of all that's good about Amurika denied Reid one of those detestable lawyers, right?
Um, no:
Reid's attorneys said he wanted to spare his family the difficulty of undergoing a lengthy trial.
In a statement Wednesday, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft said "Richard Reid, like any defendant, is free to plead guilty to criminal charges. The Justice Department has not entered into any plea agreement with Reid."
Reid was "like any other defendant"? Ashcroft is such a wimp.
And then Jack Kelly, honest to goodness "I know what's right and what'll fix America" conservative endorses torture:
"Do you think that most Americans prefer that this guy is a) watching cable TV in a warm cell funded by taxpayers and enjoying his right to remain silent; or b) at an undisclosed location being waterboarded to learn about his little friends back in Yemen and their plans to kill us?" a friend asked Michael Goldfarb of The Weekly Standard.
Damn our girly criminal justice system! It won't let us torture the bad guys!
I want to jump closer the end. In a section devoted to the need to do some sort of racial profiling, Jack writes:
Brian Jenkins, a terrorism expert for the RAND Corp., said that of 32 terror-related "events" in America since 9/11, 12 occurred in 2009. This spike probably is due in part to the fact that security officials in the Obama administration think it more important to avoid hurting the feelings of Muslims than to take effective measures to protect Americans.
I have not been able to find the exact source of those numbers.
In November, 2009 Jenkins
testified before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee with some similar numbers:
Since 9/11, authorities in the United States have uncovered nearly 30 terrorist plots involving “homegrown terrorists.” This total includes plots to carry out attacks in the United States or abroad, as well as support for foreign terrorist organizations. Although not all of the plots, if undiscovered, are likely to have resulted in successful attacks, very little separates the ambitions of jihadist wannabes from a deadly terrorist assault. The essential ingredient is intent. Domestic intelligence collection remains a necessary and critical component of homeland security.
Authorities uncovered eight of these terrorist plots in 2009; adding two actual attacks (the shooting in Arkansas and the Fort Hood case) puts the level of activity in 2009 much higher than that of previous years.
But Jenkins also said in the same testimony (actually it's the very next sentence):
Apart from common inspiration, there is no evidence of any organizational connection between these events. They appear to be individual responses to jihadist propaganda in the context of U.S. policy decisions. American foreign policy should not be determined by a handful of shooters and would-be bombers, but we must accept the fact that what America does in the Middle East, Afghanistan, and Pakistan may provoke terrorism in the United States. Wars are no longer confined geographically.
And:
The plots show that radicalization and recruitment to terrorist violence is occurring in the United States and is a legitimate security concern. It has, however, yielded very few recruits. With roughly 3 million Muslims in America, although some estimates run much higher, 100 terrorists represent a mere 0.00003 percent of the Muslim population—fewer than one out of 30,000.
Tell me again why Jack used Jenkins as supporting material?
One final point from Jenkins. He began his testimony with this:
The lack of significant terrorist attacks on the United States since 9/11 suggests not only intelligence and investigative success, but an American Muslim community that remains overwhelmingly unsympathetic to jihadist appeals. Modern communications, especially the Internet, offer access to violence-exalting narratives, but there is absolutely no evidence to show that attempts to exploit the dismay of some Muslims at policies that can be portrayed as an assault on faith or community have interrupted the integration of immigrant communities. What authorities confront are tiny conspiracies or the actions of individuals, which in a free society will always be hard to predict and prevent.
So, Jack. Tell me again about how wrong it is not to connect Islam with Islamic terrorists.
