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CHANGING THE SUBJECT:
WHY O NIXED FT. HOOD PROBE
by Dick Morris & Eileen McGann
NYPost.com
As he flew to Asia on Saturday, President Obama told the media in Alaska that he
opposes a congressional investigation into the Fort Hood massacre, saying that
we must "resist the temptation to turn this tragic event into political
theater." Yet, even as he was posturing against political theatrics, he had just
decided that the prosecution of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed would
proceed on the greatest of public stages -- New York City.
With the strict evidentiary rules in force in federal civilian courts, it is
easy to see how the prosecution of Mohammed could morph into an indictment of
the Bush administration's interrogation techniques and waterboarding. As in rape
trials, the magnitude of the underlying crime (masterminding the 9/11 attacks)
might well be lost as the defense puts the victim (in this case, the government)
on trial.
Obama and his handlers know that the key to building favorable ratings is to
control the agenda. And the more the national discussion centers on national
security and terrorism, the more Republicans gain. So the Fort Hood terror
attack comes at an awful time for an administration trying to turn the nation's
attention away from the terrorist threat.
As soon as the killing spree was over,
Obama hastened to call it "an act of violence" -- obscuring the obvious fact
that it was the most serious terror attack on US soil since 9/11. And, as
evidence mounts that the FBI was on to Major Nidal Malik Hasan for years, the
president is doing his best to stop Congress from finding out why these warnings
went unheeded.
Even as Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.), the ranking Republican on the House
Intelligence Committee confirmed that the government knew of 10 to 20 e-mails
between Hasan and a radical imam in Yemen -- who was urging the killing of
American troops -- starting last December, Obama hastened to urge Congress to
refrain from investigating why the danger signs were ignored.
The Obama administration has a clear agenda here:
1) Stop people from focusing in how his administration permitted the worst
domestic terror attack in eight years.
2) Avoid a national airing of how liberal policies -- restraints on the
intelligence community, political correctness in the armed forces -- might have
inhibited the military from reining in Hasan.
3) Re-ignite a firestorm on the left and abroad against the aggressive
anti-terror policies of the Bush administration.
Making all this particularly important for Obama are his other political needs.
As he likely decides to send more troops to Afghanistan and eyes abandoning the
"public option" to secure Senate passage of his health-care plan, Obama has to
rebuild his credibility on the left. A public circus that focuses on
waterboarding and interrogations could be just what he wants and needs.