Feb 12 2010

Obama’s Ministry Of Misinformation

We all know the liberal news media is clueless to the core, so they miss a lot of things. But we are now faced with a much more serious question when it comes to the current administration: are they completely clueless or are they serial liars? I used the above picture to at least set the stage for the lesser of two evils – total incompetence. I fear it may not be that rosy.

The matter surrounding this questions is sadly deadly serious. It revolves around how to treat enemy combatants who are part of a multi-pronged attack force headed our way to kill us. Today there are three excellent reviews on why the Obama administration royally F’d up when dealing with the Christmas Day Bomber – who nearly killed 300 innocent people on a plane over Detroit.

Three articles out today highlight why the lame comments from the administration – trying to cover up their misstep – are even more damning than the mistake they made lawyering up a foreign enemy combatant on our soil. What we are stuck with is either we have total incompetents trying to stop deadly and determined terrorists, or we have ideologues who could care less about American lives lying to us about what they are doing. Either way, this is about as ugly as it gets.

First up is a great piece by Stuart Taylor in the National Journal, as he shreds Eric Holder’s BS excuses for screwing up with the Miranda rights for one Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab:

Holder claimed in a February 3 letter to Senate Republicans that it is “far from clear” that the government has the legal authority to hold a suspected enemy combatant captured in the United States without access to an attorney. He said that Mukasey, in his previous role as a U.S. District judge, had ruled that a detainee named Jose Padilla “must be allowed to meet with his lawyer,” and that a federal Appeals Court in New York had later found the military detention of Padilla to be unlawful.

Holder misleadingly omitted critical facts. First, Padilla was a U.S. citizen. Second, Mukasey’s ruling did not involve Padilla’s initial interrogation but rather his right — after more than eight months in military detention — to have a lawyer’s help in petitioning for release. Third, the Supreme Court reversed the Appeals Court ruling for Padilla on jurisdictional grounds in 2004. Fourth, the justices held the same day, in the case of Yaser Esam Hamdi, that a U.S. citizen captured abroad and linked to “forces hostile to the United States” can be held in this country without charges as an enemy combatant. Fifth, another federal Appeals Court, in Richmond, Va., later upheld the military detention of Padilla in the U.S. and also (as Holder noted in passing) of Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, a suspected Qaeda agent from Qatar who was arrested in Peoria, Ill.

Emphasis mine. Did Holder mislead from ignorance or malice? I’ll let everyone decide for themselves, but it is clear he was completely and utterly wrong.

Then there is this piece from Michael Mukasey, the above cited judge by Obama’s Ministry of Misinformation, who also shreds the BS coming from the administration:

Contrary to what the White House homeland security adviser and the attorney general have suggested, if not said outright, not only was there no authority or policy in place under the Bush administration requiring that all those detained in the United States be treated as criminal defendants, but relevant authority was and is the opposite. The Supreme Court held inHamdi v. Rumsfeld that “indefinite detention for the purpose of interrogation is not authorized” but also said in the same case that detention for the purpose of neutralizing an unlawful enemy combatant is permissible and that the only right of such a combatant — even if he is a citizen, and Abdulmutallab is not — is to challenge his classification as such a combatant in a habeas corpus proceeding. This does not include the right to remain silent or the right to a lawyer, but only such legal assistance as may be necessary to file a habeas corpus petition within a reasonable time. That was the basis for my ruling in Padilla v. Rumsfeld that, as a convenience to the court and not for any constitutionally based reason, he had to consult with a lawyer for the limited purpose of filing a habeas petition, but that interrogation need not stop.

It is pretty amazing all those lawyers and legal eagles in the Obama administration just can’t seem to grasp the precedence here. This is as lame a cover up as I have seen, and the mistake they are trying to hide is serious:

There was thus no legal or policy compulsion to treat Abdulmutallab as a criminal defendant, at least initially, and every reason to treat him as an intelligence asset to be exploited promptly. The way to do that was not simply to have locally available field agents question him but, rather, to get in the room people who knew about al-Qaeda in Yemen, people who could obtain information, check that information against other available data and perhaps get feedback from others in the field before going back to Abdulmutallab to follow up where necessary, all the while keeping secret the fact of his cooperation. Once his former cohorts know he is providing information, they can act to make that information useless.

Yes, the intelligence is gone, the accomplices have run to cover and the other weapons are now on their secondary or tertiary paths and targets.

But the Ministry’s lies are legion, as Thomas Joscelyn relays in this 3rd article in the Weekly Standard:

President Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan, made the same point on Tuesday in an op-ed for USA Today. Brennan argued: “Terrorists such as Jose Padilla and Saleh al-Mari did not cooperate when transferred to military custody, which can harden one’s determination to resist cooperation.”

Brennan and Gibbs are wrong. In fact, Jose Padilla only started cooperating once he was transferred into the military’s custody and interrogated.

Jose Padilla was arrested at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport on May 8, 2002. At the time, U.S. authorities had multiple reasons to be suspicious of him. Most importantly, senior al Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah had been taken into custody in late March 2002 and provided information to authorities that led to the identification of both Padilla and his would-be accomplice, Binyam Mohamed. The two were identified as al Qaeda recruits who had been tasked with a mission inside the U.S.–namely, an attack on a high-rise apartment building.

The FBI even offered to put Padilla up in a hotel so they could continue their conversation. But when the agents tried to turn the conversation towards Padilla’s al Qaeda ties, he shut down the interview. “He stood up and told me the interview was over and it was time for him to go,” Fincher recalled during testimony.

Padilla was then read a Miranda warning, arrested on a material witness warrant and transferred to the Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) in New York.

Padilla would ultimately talk. But, contrary to Gibbs and Brennan, it wasn’t until he was placed in the military’s custody–not when he was returned to the civilian court system.

The Obama Ministry of Misinformation is using the perfect example of why what they did was wrong (Padilla), clearly showing how they have left us exposed to other attacks. For this reason alone we could lean towards incompetence – why use the one example that proves you screwed up?

The Obama administration has been trotting out their ignorance for weeks trying to shore up their image, and telegraphing warnings to the terrorists in the process. Their incompetence allowed all those around Abdulmutallab to cover their tracks and change their plans. So I can also understand why they could be lying through there teeth.

Regardless, the terrorists are still heading our way. And all the misinformation in the world (whether from ignorance or lying) will not stop them. Only actionable intelligence can stop suicide terrorists.

Something this administration better realize right now.

Update: Andy McCarthy weighs in, as does Scott at Powerline.

Update: More here

10 responses so far

10 Responses to “Obama’s Ministry Of Misinformation”

  1. granitroc says:

    Great reporting. Thanks for connecting the dots. Is anyone in Washington awake? How about the MSM? How about Fox?

  2. aerospook says:

    As you so eloquently point out, this cannot be mere stupidity, but a calculated path. One has to wonder what the result will be from the next successful attack. Will it simply result in Napolitano and Holder being fired? Will it result in impeachment hearings for Obama?

    Or, will it be used to revoke additional freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution?

  3. Redteam says:

    Aerospook….

    yes

  4. AJStrata says:

    aerospook,

    My feeling it will lead to Holder and Napolitano fired AND impeachment. If Americans die over this stupid move it will all be well deserved and supported by the people.

  5. OregonGuy says:

    It seems that we have no mechanism for inquiry:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsjuOcGATu0&feature=player_embedded

    found at Gateway Pundit.

    There is no CIA program in place to interview detainees.
    .

  6. daniel ortega says:

    And no one in your media will tell you this:

    Evidence has reached debkafile’s counter-terror sources that the Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737-800 which crashed after takeoff from Beirut on January 25, killing all 92 aboard, was blown up in mid-air.
    This was an al-Qaeda operation timed for one month to the day after its failed attempt to destroy an American Northwest airliner bound for Detroit.
    It is becoming clear that either a bomb was planted on the Ethiopian flight with a timer or a passenger acted as suicide bomber.
    Western security agencies in the Middle East involved in combating al Qaeda believe that its planners picked on the Ethiopian flight for more than one reason apart from the date: They had been tipped off that a group of French undercover agents, including Maria Sanchez Pietton, wife of the French ambassador to Beirut, and top Hizballah operatives, including secretary general Hassan Nasrallah, would be aboard.
    Mme Pietton lost her life in the crash, while the Hizballah travelers were saved by switching to another flight at the last minute.
    The first bodies recovered from the Mediterranean off the Lebanese town of Naama showed all the hallmarks of explosion victims: They were found strapped to their seats with their heads, hands and feet blown off and scattered, typical effects of an explosive blast.
    Eye-witnesses at the time heard a loud explosion and saw the plane enveloped in a ball of fire as it gained altitude after takeoff from Beirut international airport.
    Both France and Hizballah have denied they were targets.

    Lebanese officials, led by prime minister Saad Hariri, have spent two weeks trying to hide the fact that the Ethiopian airline disaster was caused by terror. But Lebanese health minister Jawad Khalifeh gave the game away by a slip of the tongue Tuesday, Feb. 9: “The plane exploded during flight and the cabin, as well as the bodies of those on board, were dispersed into the sea, in different locations,” he said, trying to explain why some of the corpses were found dismembered.
    He then tried to correct himself by saying he “didn’t mean a military explosion.”

    SNIP

    from here: http://www.debka.com/article/8599/

    what’s this mean? It means Al-Qaeda has corrected the
    malfunction and it now works.

    In my opinion? Obama/Holder knows and is in on it.
    But you can rubbish my opinion. What does matter is that Al-Qaeda blew a 737 out of the air a month ago.

    You may be next.

  7. ivehadit says:

    Yes, yes, yes AJ, you know we have been saying for months and months that there is an agenda from this group in the WH.

  8. kathie says:

    Anyway why was Brennan incharge of this case? He is an appointee, where are the sworn in heads of the departments? I guess they were out of town for the Christmas Holidays! Someone tries to blow up an airlines filled with American passengers, and a czar is the decider? This administration’s priorities are absolutely buzzer!

  9. jeudi says:

    Why does the administration continue to try to justify itself with such transparent and easily refutable arguments?

    A guess: this is the way it will be , going forward. They will not change, nor listen to reason, or history. So they can only use lies and feigned outrage to defend their actions, with the confidence that the MSM, who brung ’em to the dance, will continue to support them.

    The appeal is to the dedicated left, the uninformed, , and the starry-eyed hopey-changey true believers, but two of those three groups are no longer listening.