As I have noted many times, the successful terrorist attack at Ft Hood and the nearly successful underwear bomber on Flight 253 over the skies of Detroit are evidence that team Obama lowered our national security detection thresholds. This altering of how we respond to suspicious communications or contacts with known or suspected terrorism supporters is how these two attacks succeeded. The question is: are these the only repercussions of poor decisions made in President Obama’s first year in office?

As I noted here and here, the administration decided mounting evidence of collusion, along with public declarations supporting al Qaeda’s bloody methods and goals, were to be ignored if the target was American, or if their support was employed outside the primary battle grounds of Iraq, Afghanistan or Pakistan. Last year the administration actually had debates for months as to whether an Algerian funneling Jihad fighters to kill our military personnel in Afghanistan was actually an act of war! Think of how that warped thinking would have played out during the Cuban Missile crisis if JFK was not sure Russian Nukes on Cuban soil was a threat from Russia.

Today we have two news articles that may illustrate how these Obama ‘adjustments’ to national security are allowing terrorist more opportunities to attack us here in America. First a success story with some new details about the NY City Subway bombing attack that was thwarted last September:

The cooperation of would-be lead bomber Najibullah Zazi has helped law enforcement officials piece together a fuller picture of the evil plan to kill innocent straphangers around the 9/11 anniversary last year.

Zazi and his two Queens friends allegedly planned to strap explosives to their bodies and split up, heading for the Grand Central and Times Square stations – the two busiest subway stations in New York City.

They would board trains on the 1, 2, 3 and 6 lines at rush hour and planned to position themselves in the middle of the packed trains to ensure the maximum carnage when they blew themselves up, sources said.

During Zazi’s brief visit to Queens from his home in Denver last September, he rode the subway multiple times to the Grand Central and Wall St. stations, scouting where to best spread death and mayhem, the sources said.

Zazi has confessed that he, Medunjanin and Ahmedzay – all buddies from Flushing High School – traveled to Pakistan in August 2008 to fight with the Taliban against U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

So how is it team Obama succeeded here? Well let’s give credit were it is due. Zazi and his cohorts were more than likely detected by team Bush in August 2008 as they traveled to Pakistan. This would initiate Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) investigations and would probably include FIS Court authorization to monitor communications and money transfers (the monitoring is apparent from these news articles). All this would be initiated under President Bush and inherited by President Obama.

In this case you have  a holdover investigation from the Bush period, as you did with Anwar al Aulaqi. In al Aulaqi’s case, the Obama administration decided he was too far out of the battle field to be treated as an enemy combatant. The result was Ft Hood and the underwear bomber.  Zazi had traveled to the heart of the war on terror and was known to have received bomb making training, there was no excuse to not follow through on Zazi. Once he and his allies began assembling their bombs and moving towards their target in NY City they were arrested.

In our second example we have the story of 300 missing Somalis, some of whom also could be terrorists. Somehow they slipped unseen into America and are now running lose, undetected:

Federal authorities say they’re certain nearly 300 Somalis allegedly smuggled into the United States by a Virginia man who admitted contacts with an Islamic terrorist group are in the country, but they can’t find them despite a worldwide search for leads.

The search, first reported by the Washington Examiner, started in early February after Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested Anthony Joseph Tracy on charges that he helped smuggle the Somalis into the United States from Kenya.

The 35-year-old has since been indicted on charges of conspiring with Cuban Embassy officials in Kenya to help the Somalis illegally enter the United States. ICE Agent Thomas Eyre has testified that authorities are “concerned” about the contact Tracy admitted having with the Somali terrorist organization Al-Shabaab, an al Qaeda ally.

…

According to court documents, Tracy helped the Somalis move to the United States by getting them travel visas to Cuba through contacts he had at the Cuban Embassy in Kenya. Tracy’s attorney declined comment for this story.

The Somalis are believed to have entered the United States through the border with Mexico after making a circuitous trip from Kenya to Dubai to Moscow to Cuba to South America then to Mexico and northward, Eyre testified.

So what is different in this situation? First off it is targeted around Somalia. Even though Yemen and Somalia (and other countries) are known hot beds of Islamist Fascist activities, Team Obama’s debates last year had them focus only on the battlefields of Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. It has been documented that team Obama took their eyes and ears off Yemen, only to realize in the wake of the underwear bombing of a Saudi Official (which did detonate, but did not kill its target) that probably was not a good idea, and so in late summer they began to watch Somalia again.

I fail to see why they did not do go through the same madness with Somalia (and other countries). Whoever started recruiting outside the war zones for attacks on America under this administration was very insightful. And they would also be very successful as Ft Hood and flight 253 proved.

Another difference here is the target of this smuggling ring is an American, which means there are extra precautions when getting permission to surveillance a US citizen. Team Obama has been hesitant to investigate leads that lead to American citizens, this is also documented in the previous posts linked above. That is why they took their eyes of Anwar al Aulaqi last summer. If they decided radical islamists cleric al Aulaqi was not a threat, god knows who else they decided to ignore in their summer of liberal stupidity.

Instead of the near perfect record of defending America under President Bush, President Obama’s approach is proving to be hit or miss at best. As we move away from the Bush period, and leads begun under is watch pan out one way or the other, we are left with the changes made by team Obama. And we are left with team Obama’s naive belief (now proven false) that we can safely let down our guard a little bit for the sake of liberal paranoid dogma.

Tags: Afghanistan, al-Aulaqi, al-Qaeda, Flight 253, Ft Hood, Pakistan, Somalia, Zazi