The most important story you didn't see last week (and probably
won't ever see)
By
William Tate
AmericanThinker.com
A Senate hearing
last week confirmed the public's worst concern about Barack Obama: That when
it comes to national security Obama hasn't just been asleep at the switch, he
hasn't even bothered
to find the switch.
"I do not
think he (Obama) has a firm grasp yet on the intelligence community," 9/11
Commission Vice-Chairman and former Democrat congressman Lee Hamilton told the
Senate Homeland Security Committee.
This, even
though Obama has been in office for over a year now.
"We were
not paying close attention in this area," commission Chairman Thomas Kean
testified at the hearing into intelligence lapses prior to the Christmas Day
attempted airliner bombing. Kean noted that Obama has instead been focused on
such issues as health care and cap-and-trade.
The two men
have historically been circumspect about making politically charged
statements, but they painted a portrait of an intelligence community,
America's first line of defense against its jihadi enemies, that is devolving
into disarray under Obama's leadership--or lack thereof.
"It's my
impression that the intelligence community is new, relatively new to the
president," Hamilton said, adding, "I'm pretty strong in my thought that he
has to step in pretty hard here. Or some of these tensions that have surfaced
will exacerbate."
"He's gotta
stay on top of this," Kean pleaded. He also called the Christmas Day attempted
attack, "a wakeup call."
"We got
distracted a bit, I think. Everybody from the president on down got
distracted, and we weren't paying full attention to this area, and so these
things were allowed to develop, cracks were allowed to form and things got a
little off track."
And Kean
left little doubt that Obama must start taking the terrorist threat seriously.
"I assume
that they're actually going to follow the statements, and that he is now
going to pay strict attention to this problem. And no matter what else is
going on, he's going to be, his leadership is going to be called for in this
area and he's going to, I assume he's going to exercise it. But it's not
gonna happen without that. I mean, he's gotta stay on top of this."
"The burden
is on the President," Hamilton said, "to be very specific as to who's in
charge of the intelligence community. The president's leadership is the key.
It's crucial and must be continuing or we run the risk of mission confusion."
The two men
were blistering in their criticism of the Obama administration's handling of
the would-be Christmas Day undy-bomber.
Kean said
that when he learned that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab had been Mirandized before
intelligence agents could interrogate him, "I was shocked. And I was upset. It
made no sense whatsoever to me, that here is a man who may have trained with
other people who were trying to get into this country in one way or another,
who may have worked with some of the top leadership in Yemen and al Qaeda
generally, and we don't know the details of that, who may know about other
plots that are pending and we haven't found out about them.
"This is
not just about prosecuting an individual. This is protecting the American
people. And decisions of this kind should never have been made without the
full input of the greater intelligence community, particularly the DNI
(Director of National Intelligence) ... and the fact that this was done
without that kind of consultation was to me upsetting and shocking... I just
don't believe this individual should have been given all these rights or the
lawyers before being questioned fully."
Hamilton
concurred.
"I think
we have to be guided by the principle that we have to get all the
intelligence we can from these people. That's the principle. There did not
seem to be a policy from the government as to how to handle these people.
This is a difficult business: interrogating people. And you better make sure
you have the right people asking the questions.
"An awful
lot is at stake in finding out all you can."
Hamilton
added, "These people present a real challenge for us within our constitutional
system. The problem is you've got a detainee, you can't prove a criminal
charge against him, let us say, at the same time he could kill you. It doesn't
fit in the American constitutional system. And we haven't figured it out yet.
"This is
an area where the legislative branch and the executive branch have failed.
Flat out failed."
When asked
if Congress could spur the necessary changes with new laws, Hamilton placed
the responsibility directly on the Obama administration. "The threat is out
there now. The flaws have been revealed. You've got to deal with those flaws
right now. You can't wait to change the law."
Kean
slammed the administration's decision to try 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh
Mohammed in New York, a decision from which Obama is now
apparently
backtracking. "Regardless of how we feel about whether that trial should be
going on in New York, again I gather that the Attorney General did not consult
any member of the intelligence community before making that decision, which
also has security implications. So I think we've got to get our act together."
And,
despite the Obama administration's attempt to -- what else? -- blame Bush for
the intelligence failings, the commission chairmen testified that 80% of their
panel's recommendations have been implemented since they made them.
Almost all
of those changes happened during the Bush administration.
The major
exception? The recommendation that the commission called among the most
important: reform of congressional oversight of the intelligence community.
Yet Congress, which has been in the control of Democrats for the majority of
time since the 9/11 Commission urged the changes, has failed to implement
them.
"We ought
to go back at it," Senator John McCain told his colleagues on the committee.
"And we ought to keep going back at it until such time as we shame our
colleagues into being more concerned about national security than they are
about turf."
The picture
that emerged from the hearing was of a president disinterested in national
security, more concerned about health scare and cap-and-tax than in preventing
what his Homeland Security chief infamously
called
"man-caused disasters"; of an administration more busy fighting turf wars than
waging the real war against Islamic terrorists--whom Obama refuses to even
call by that name; of a Commander in Chief who doesn't take seriously his most
essential job of protecting this country's citizens, more focused on extending
terrorists these citizens' rights than he is on gathering the intelligence
needed to keep Americans safe.
The
Obamedia all but ignored the hearing, of course. It was more important for
them to protect their anointed One ... even if folks' lives are at stake.
William Tate is an
award-winning journalist and author
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