Updates Below!

President Obama is now learning how the loosening surveillance laws put in place under President Bush has exposed Americans to greater threat from Islamo Fascist sleepers. These sleepers are terrorist who also are American citizens or citizens of countries not normally considered part of the front on the war on terror. First we had the American citizen turned radical cleric, Anwar  al Aulaqi. His communications with American citizen Major Nidal Hasan eventually led to the Ft Hood massacre were 14 human beings had their lives snuffed out in the name of Allah.

Since al Aulaqi is American, it has become evident from news reports since the Ft Hood massacre that the liberals inside the Obama justice department had decided to terminate all investigations into al Aulaqi, leaving Hasan free to commit his heinous acts of mass murder (see here, here and here for details on the evidence against the Obama administration – more here on Ft Hood from RCP). al Aulaqi was also in contact with Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Christmas Day underwear bomber who nearly killed 300 people in the skies above Detroit, MI. There is a case to be made that, if team Obama had not taken their eyes off al Aulaqi, the Christmas Day bomber would have been detected and possibly stopped.

At least we would have known enough to not read the attacker his rights and allow is fellow sleepers the chance to go underground and continue to their targets here in America.

So it is no surprise that the suspect behind the NY Times Square bombing attempt is also an American:

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. announced early Tuesday that an arrest had been made in the failed Times Square car bombing, saying that Faisal Shahzad, a 30-year-old American, was taken into custody at John F. Kennedy International Airport as he tried to fly to Dubai on Monday night.

Authorities said Shahzad, who is of Pakistani origin and lived in Connecticut, had paid cash for a Nissan Pathfinder that was found packed with explosives Saturday night on a tourist-crowded block in midtown Manhattan. The vehicle was set ablaze but failed to detonate.

Officials located Shahzad after a sweeping two-day investigation that yielded what senior Obama administration officials described as a flood of international and domestic clues suggesting a plot involving more than one person.

“It was clear that the intent behind this terrorist act was to kill Americans,” Holder said at a rare middle-of-the-night news conference at the Justice Department, nearly three hours after the suspect was pulled from an international flight that had already left the departure gate.

This is the basic fault with the liberal view that the threat of government listening in on citizens in communication with known or highly suspect terrorists is not as great as the threat of political misuse of such surveillance. The checks and balances for the surveillance powers put in place by President Bush and ratified at least 3 times by votes in Congress provide plenty of protection from misuse, if the 4th Amendment hypochondriacs on the far left cared to pay attention.

Al Qaeda is not stupid, and in fact are extremely opportunistic. It has been no secret that the Obama administration planned to be less vigilant, dialing down the reactions to potential threats. It has also been well known the liberals wanted to reinstate the barriers of investigating terrorism around US citizens.

So al Qaeda took the natural path and changed its strategy to one of recruiting basically clean individuals who can move about the US with ease – especially true of US citizens. In this way they have less chance of success on an individual basis, but greater overall chance of success as their human weapons increase in number and agility.

It will not take long for al Qaeda to adjust their approach to improve the detonation procedures for their bombs – the only thing which saved 300 people from dying in the skies over Detroit on Christmas Day, and the only thing which saved those people in harms way in Times Square this weekend. Team Obama needs to reject the liberal madness and denial about being at war and get back to protecting the people. Else he will be a one term President who failed miserably.

Update: One thing I cannot understand is the idiocy of the Obama administration to tell HOW they tracked down the terrorist, thus providing our enemies clear directions on how to escape capture in the future:

A U.S. official said tracing the origin of the Pathfinder was a crucial part of the investigation. Shahzad bought the vehicle through an Internet listing. He gave the seller a fake name, but an e-mail from the transaction included a phone number that was from a disposable cellphone. Extrapolating from telephone records, authorities found Shahzad and confirmed his identity with the seller, the official said.

I am sure al Qaeda is very grateful to the US government for directing them on how to better avoid detection and capture.

Update: You only get so many chances to do the right thing before the American people will begin to take actions themselves (all legal, all valid). One mistake team Obama better not make again (this would be their 3rd strike) is to allow the latest enemy combatant to shut up behind the Miranda wall of silence. Marc Thiessen makes the case succinctly and accurately:

The only reason to read Shahzad his Miranda rights would be to preserve what he says as evidence in his criminal trial. But our first priority should not be preserving evidence for his trial—it should be getting intelligence from him. According to ABC News, Shahzad “recently returned from a five-month trip to Pakistan and the city of Peshawar, a known jumping off point for al Qaeda and Taliban recruits.” Just a coincidence? Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has claimed responsibility for the Times Square attack. While it is unclear whether the Pakistani Taliban group, which is linked to al Qaeda, was behind the plot, it may very well have been involved. The one person who can tell us is Shahzad. We need to know who sent him, who trained him, and whether other attacks are planned.

I would wager that Faisal Shahzad could easily be one of the many trained killers who will be connected to Abdulmutallab (the Christmas Day Bomber). If this turns out to be true, then the Obama administration willfully and with criminal intent turned a blind eye to the safety of Americans, and therefore would be exposed to all options for those same Americans to remove the stupidity in DC which continues to leave us vulnerable to death and mutilation inside our own borders.

Tags: al-Aulaqi, al-Qaeda, Flight 253, Ft Hood, Major Hasan, Time Square Bomb