Dec 30 2009
Confirmation II: More Obama Changes To National Security
I hate it when I am right on matters of life and death, when the conclusion is we could see a lot more death in our immediate future. I took a lot of heat when President Obama came to office hoping he would succeed. I did this because I knew his failure would have dangerous results. I was more than willing to give him a chance to see the real world behind the security wall and adjust his thinking.
Sadly, in that case I was wrong. If I had my way I would have been right about President Obama growing into the job as President and would have been wrong about the incompetent and radical changes his liberal management team would inflict on our security. But we are were we are.
As the evidence has been trickling out since the nearly successful Christmas Day Massacre on Flight 253 I have seen signs that the liberal mindset rampant in team Obama had made drastic and dangerous changes to our national security efforts. Changes that exposed us to more successful attacks here at home. Attacks that not only include the pure luck miss on this past Christmas day, but includes the tragic Ft Hood massacre earlier this year.
This morning I pondered what exactly did the Obama administration change inside our national security that could have led to the shut down of the terror task force investigations into Major Nidal Hasan (the Ft Hood Massacre) and which allowed a Nigerian Jihadist to ignite his faulty bomb on Flight 253. In my last post I noted on State Department source – apparently a career professional in my opinion – who noted there were changes in how intelligence dealt with threats who were Muslim.
Now William Kristol has another deep source in the intel community expanding on the changes made by Team Obama, which likely led to the increase success of terrorist attacks here in the USA:
Obama fundamentally altered the culture and risk-taking incentives of the intelligence community with policy and personnel changes. The sense of urgency is gone, and he’s made it uncool to call the war on terror a war at all. If he wants to treat terrorism like a criminal act, rather than an act of war, we should not be surprised when the results look a lot like the bureaucratic foul-ups that happen all the time in law enforcement. He gutted the Homeland Security Council coordinating role, he diluted the focus of the daily intel brief, he made CIA officials worry more about being prosecuted for doing their jobs than capturing terrorists. He’s so worried about the political consequences to his administration of a terrorist attack on our home soil that he denies the obvious — that Major Hasan is a jihadist terrorist — and he wants to shut down GITMO and bring terrorists here. He’s made it his business to turn much of the national security apparatus set up by Bush and Cheney upside down and has succeeded….
On the comparisons to how the shoe bomber was treated, it’s important to note that the shoe bomber was arrested in December 2001. President Bush’s order authorizing detentions of enemy combatants was issued in mid-Nov 2001 and there was scant infrastructure in place or much precedent a month later to hold a terrorist in custody as an enemy combatant. Of course, by 2002 there was GTMO and the CIA program overseas, and President Bush started designating terrorists as enemy combatants, including Jose Padilla (a US citizen), al-Marri, and detainees at GTMO. Most important…I bet that if the administration had thought the shoe bomber had more information to provide under interrogation, President Bush would not have hesitated to order the Justice Dept to have the criminal charges dismissed and designate him as an enemy combatant. Will Obama take that step if his investigators tell him that’s the only way to get more info from Abdulmutallab? The point is that we’re eight years down the road from 9/11 and the shoe bomber, and Obama refuses to use the authority he has to get the intelligence we need.
I am not at all surprised at these revelations, and I expect many more to start cascading out of the career intel circles now that we have a horrible pattern of missteps by Team Obama. What we desperately need right now is an investigation into all the changes made by Team Obama so we can undo the damage and lower our risk to future ‘human created disasters’ – a.k.a. terrorist attack.
What we have reaped is two terrorists now hiding behind their Miranda rights and lawyered up. Whatever information they have that could lead to future attacks is now hidden to us.
Team Obama and the Democrats know a very inconvenient fact of the federal bureaucracy. All the changes made in personnel and policy are recorded in memos and documents throughout the intelligence community. If we start there we can unravel the damage done.
Remember that Obama focused most budget cuts on defense, such as F-22, Obama surely would have extended budget cuts on these programs.
Of course, these programs are not as efficient as they should be, these programs should be the LAST subjected to budget cuts.
In the meantime, he increased budgets in entitlement programs.
He must really thought that by being elected into the Oval Office, the world will become…safe…
Obama is a Muslim.
In my opinion he is making no mistakes,
he plans the defeat of America
will he have the time?
It is running out fast.
I think Israel will take out Iran in months,
it is getting serious for him
As I stated in my response to the previous post, “Obama hasn’t had to formally change a single policy to reduce our ability to prevent terrorist acts. His language, priorites, and general disdain for a defensive state of mind have sent the message loud and clear. Unfortunately it has been heard both here at home and by our enemies abroad.” Add into the mix any actual concrete policy changes and it becomes inevitable that Americans will die as the result.
Obama’s world view see us as the problem. Given that is where he comes from, how can anyone expect him to be anything other than another Jimmy Carter – weak and ineffective. The damage he’ll do to this country just by being in office may be irreversible. I hope not, but it took 8 years of Ronald Reagan to get us back on track, and Obama is trying to “accomplish” more than Carter even imagined.
To all you folks who thought he could be trusted not to screw things up too much I ask one question. How’s that hope and change working out for you?
Obama wants to push through “Immigration Reform” in 2010.
If Napalitano is still DHS secretary I think it is a bad idea.
I’m very concerned about our Southern Border. Iran is in Bolivia and Venezuela
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article6971582.ece
Face-palm
“If we start there we can unravel the damage done.”
It won’t happen as long as Obama is in office. He is not just as bad as I always was sure he would be; he is even worse.
Obama’s complete lack of empathy for the Iranian protestors is proof positive that he is unfit for the office.
If he has managed to do this much damage in only one year, I can only imagine how bad things will be three years from now.
I saw an interesting interview by Campbell Brown of Michael Chertoff. She asked how the Bush administration differed from the Obama administration. He would not characterize the two but said that the marching orders from Bush were that no stone would never be left unturned that was a threat to the American people. That at least every week all threats were reviewed by Bush. That when any one in the intelligence community put their head on the pillow at night, they needed to know that every bit of information that they knew, was accurately characterized, passed on and as perfect as humanly possible. Bush never let up.
I find it so pitiful and pathetic that MSM feels that it has to protect Obama from criticism. Poor baby. Do these same people remember how they treated Bush after 911……what did you know and when did you know it, was just the beginning. Is Obama man enough to float his own boat or is the media going to help him do it and let him get away with his pathetic response to the killing of 13 of our military and an almost bombing of an airliner. He will never reflect on his policies if he doesn’t get what he deserves when he does something stupid and Americans will die.
I doubt that Obama cares about human life at all.
This has been expected. Afghanistan ‘surge’ or not, the U.S. is shifting to a strategic defensive posture. The overall level of combat and attrition that is caused by contact with our military is falling for our enemy. He can now devote resources elsewhere.
Defensive warfare stinks. One argument that has been rejected by the left was that we were fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan to prevent fighting over here. We are going to see just how true or false this argument is over the next few years.
Kathie, they put Obama in office. When they protect him, they are only trying to shield themselves from blame.
This entire rotten structure – the msm, the democrat party, and all their hangers-on – is now so corrupt and so committed to pushing lies that no reform is possible. They must be swept away if this country is to have any hope for the future.
I’m not sure what shape the future will take, but it can’t possibly be as bad as what we have now.
AJ, have you seen this?
Mark Tapscott: What is Barack Obama doing?
By: Mark Tapscott
Editorial Page Editor
December 31, 2009
Some distressing civil liberties questions must be asked about an ever-lengthening list of decisions, proposals, and observations by President Obama.
To begin, Obama is the first president to give an international law enforcement organization like Interpol free rein within the territorial confines of this nation, presumably not excluding the arrest and exportation of Americans to be charged with crimes under international law.
Put simply, this means the Constitution is no longer the supreme law of the land in America. Thanks to Executive Order 12425 , which Obama signed Dec. 16 without explaining why, the supreme law of the land is now arguably whatever Interpol says it is, most likely as directed by the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands, in conjunction with the United Nations. ”
Rest of the article is here:
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/What-is-Barack-Obama-doing_-8700165-80341107.html
[…] then there were these massive organizational changes to a system that was protecting us: Obama fundamentally altered the culture and risk-taking […]
[…] correlates well with all the other drastic changes to our security system that was doing what it took to protect America by identifying and acting on […]
[…] More unwise changes have become public as well. This nation came one failed detonator away from our second 9-11. We know more threats are in the pipeline, possibly already active. Our sensor nets have been proven to be turned way down, our responses dulled by liberal revenge against Bush-Cheney. We need to stop the liberal madness that has gripped some people. They are too unstable to be defending us. […]