Several churches in northern Nigeria were bombed December 25, in what has been described as “Nigeria’s blackest Christmas ever.” The attacks, perpetrated by the Muslim militant group Boko Haram, killed at least 39 people, “the majority dying on the steps of a Catholic church [in Madalla near the capital of Abuja] after celebrating Christmas Mass as blood pooled in dust from a massive explosion.” Charred bodies and dismembered limbs lay scattered around the destroyed church.

As usual, the world offered the requisite, if perfunctory, condemnations.  Of note, however, is the word so many Western leaders, from the White House to the Vatican, used to characterize this latest Muslim attack on Christians—“senseless”—a word that implies no motive, no goal, no rhyme, no reason.

Although Boko Haram has been bellowing its straightforward and far from “senseless” goals for a decade—enforcing Sharia law and, in conjunction, subjugating if not eliminating Nigeria’s Christians—one can see why so many are decrying the Christmas Day bombings as “senseless”: the mainstream media’s coverage offers little by way of context or continuity concerning the attacks.

Consider the New York Times’ coverage, as reported by Adam Nossiter, in an article titled “Nigerian Group Escalates Violence With Church Attacks.” After stating the facts, Nossiter writes:

The sect, known as Boko Haram, until now mostly targeted the police, government and military in its insurgency effort, but the bombings on Sunday represented a new, religion-tinged front, a tactic that threatens to exploit the already frayed relations between Nigeria’s nearly evenly split populations of Christians and Muslims…

This sentence is fraught with problems.  For starters, Boko Haram has been terrorizing Nigerian Christians for years, killing thousands of them, and destroying hundreds of their churches.  Considering that just last Christmas Eve, 2010, Boko Haram bombed several churches, killing nearly 40 Christian worshippers, the New York Times’ characterization of these latest attacks as “represent[ing] a new, religion-tinged front” is not only unconscionable, but unprofessional.

Boko Haram—whose full name in Arabic is “People of Sunna for Da’wa [Islamization] and Jihad [Holy War]”—has, for a decade, been representing a very “religion-tinged front,” that is, an Islamic front, one that is hostile to all things non-Muslim, with Christians at the very top.

In just the last couple of months, Boko Haram has carried out attacks on dozens of other churches, bombing some, torching others.  In one instance, they opened fire on a congregation of  mostly women and children, killing dozens; they executed two children of an ex-terrorist because he converted to Christianity; they murdered Christian pastors in cold blood; they “went to shops owned by Christians, ordering them to recite verses from the Quran,” killing those who could not.

The media needs to be reminded that freedom comes with responsibility. Having a free press does not mean they should be reckless with what they print, because there are things more valuable than breaking a good story. The reason I am saying this is because of Anwar al-Awlaki’s recent statement that The Washington Post is an unwitting co-conspirator in his crimes.

“They shut down my website following Nidal Hasan’s operation. I had posted an article of mine in support of what Nidal Hasan did, and so, they shut down my website. Then I read in the Washington Post that they were monitoring my communications. So I was forced to stop these communications. I left that region, and then the American air strikes took place.”

For those that don’t remember, Anwar al-Awlaki is one of the leaders of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and is hiding in Yemen. He is exerting an increasingly high profile in terrorist operations, especially those involving attacks on the U.S. and the recruitment of Americans. He is believed to be connected to the Fort Hood shooting and the failed Christmas Day underwear bomb plot. A Senate report says that up to 36 Americans that have been in prison have gone to Yemen, ostensibly to learn Arabic but in reality likely have been recruited by Al-Awlaki’s branch of Al-Qaeda.

To be fair, one would have thought that al-Awlaki would have assumed he was being tracked by now and so the Washington Post’s disclosure wouldn’t affect the effort to capture or kill him. However, if there’s one thing we shouldn’t think we are capable of, it’s that we can step into the mind of a top terrorist and know what’s going on in his head.

This is a reminder that the media has to run stories like this by people with access in the intelligence community to receive feedback on if it will harm our national security. On the bright side, at least the newspapers know they can always count on terrorists as reliable customers.

In January I wrote this about this program: "Watch for the howls from groups that pretend to be interested in American security but are in reality only interested in furthering the Islamic jihad."

And now in the story below there is this: "Islamic groups such as the Muslim Public Affairs Council assailed the policy as profiling because most of the countries, such as Algeria, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia, are predominantly Muslim."

So what exactly are MPAC's priorities?

And what are Obama's? Why should it even be controversial to subject to extra scrutiny travelers from countries that have produced the largest numbers of terrorists? Is it really an efficient use of resources to scrutinize non-Muslims from Norway with exactly the same rigor and care as is devoted to scrutiny of Muslims from Saudi Arabia or Pakistan?

"New rules for screening fliers in place," by Thomas Frank for USA TODAY, April 2 (thanks to Benedict):

WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration is replacing an emergency order that has required extra airport screening of passengers from 14 terrorism-prone countries with a system that will vet all U.S.-bound passengers against a broader array of intelligence sources, two senior administration officials said Thursday.

The emergency order was implemented after the attempted bombing of an airliner over Detroit on Christmas Day.

The new system will treat all passengers flying into the USA the same way, regardless of nationality, said the officials, who were briefed on the policy. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because the policy is not being announced until today....

In early January, the administration required foreign airports to give extra checkpoint scrutiny to anyone flying to the United States from one of 14 countries or who is a citizen of one of those countries.

Islamic groups such as the Muslim Public Affairs Council assailed the policy as profiling because most of the countries, such as Algeria, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia, are predominantly Muslim....

A U.S. consular official originally denied terrorism suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab a visa to enter the United States in 2004 after finding false information on his application, but that official was overruled by a supervisor, according to senior government sources.

Because the 2004 situation was considered resolved, it was not revisited in 2008, when Abdulmutallab received a second U.S. visa, which allowed him to board a Detroit-bound airliner on Dec. 25, officials acknowledged. A senior Republican lawmaker said the reversal of the 2004 decision was a missed opportunity to keep him out of the country.

The decision to overrule the visa denial was one of a series of events that preceded Abdulmutallab's arrest in connection with an alleged Christmas Day attempt to destroy the plane with a bomb. In January, the Obama administration released a review of the case that outlined a number of missteps but did not include any reference to the visa denial.

An official said the incident was left out because the move to overturn the initial decision did not seem out of the ordinary. That official and others said that, in reversing the initial decision and granting Abdulmutallab a visa, consular officials took into account that his father was a prominent Nigerian banker with strong ties to his community. There was no derogatory information or suggestion that he had ties to Islamist terrorism....

Abdulmutallab first applied for a U.S. visa in Lome, Togo, but was told that he needed to apply closer to his place of residence in Nigeria. He returned to Lagos and filed an application that stated incorrectly that he had never been denied a visa, leading a consular official to deny him one.

"It's kind of outrageous that the consular officer overturned this denial in the first place," Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) said in an interview. "The second thing is, if you go back to his first coming to this country, he could have been denied because he had lied on a previous application."...

Sanaa, 18 Feb. (AKI) - Al-Qaeda has prepared "dozens" more bombs like the one used by the young Nigerian accused of trying to blow up an airliner in the United States on 25 December last year. The claim was allegedly made by the Yemen-based Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula terror cell in a message posted in its online magazine 'al-Malamih'.

"We have dozens of sophisticated explosive devices which are similar to that used by the Nigerian,Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab on the Christmas Day flight from Amsterdam to Detroit," said the message in 'al-Malamih'.

Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula said in December it had provided Abdulmutallab with the explosive device he allegedly used to try to blow up Northwest Airlines Flight 253 with nearly 300 people aboard.

"The plan was to blow up the plane as it approached Detroit, so that it would fall onto buildings below and kill the maximum number of Americans," the message said.

Had it succeeded, it would have been the worst attack on the United States since Al-Qaeda's September 11 2001 assault.

"Four years ago, we began producing similar devices to that used by Umar Farouk," the 'al-Malamih' message said.

AQAP was officially formed in January 2009 from a merger of Al-Qaeda's Yemeni and Saudi branches.

The message claimed that Abdulmutallab trained at camps in Yemen in the second half of last year and was eager to "go into action".

Abdulmutallab was "always quiet and thought a lot," kept to himself, read the Koran and fasted every Monday and Thursday, the message said.

The explosive material used in the device concealed in the Nigerian's underwear was 'Pent', it stated.

Just four grammes of the substance are needed to produce a major blast, it claimed.

"The reason we chose a flight that left from (the Dutch capital) Amsterdam, is that the Netherlands is a country that has offended the Koran and Islam," the message stated.

This may be a reference to late Dutch director Theo Van Gogh's film 'Submission' which was aired on Dutch TV in 2004...

And/or Geert Wilders' Fitna, though the jihadists' claim of revenge on Amsterdam through this act seems like a hollow excuse to agitate for the erosion of free speech in Europe. Never mind that the mandate for jihad to impose Islamic law exists regardless of excuse du jour offered in jihadist propaganda.

Last August, Nicholas George, 22, was getting ready to fly from Pennsylvania to Pomona College in Claremont (Los Angeles County) when TSA agents found Arabic-English flash cards in his pocket - the 200 cards included such words as "bomb" and "explosive" - two stereo speakers in his carry-on bag, a Jordanian student ID card, and a passport that showed he had visited Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Malaysia and Sudan. TSA agents detained George for questioning. They determined he was not a security threat and released him less than five hours later. Now, he is suing.

Of course the ACLU is representing George. The group explained in a press release that episodes like George's "may actually make us less safe, by diverting vital resources and attention away from true security threats."

Nonsense. If ever there was a person you want the TSA to look at very carefully, it's a young male who has Arabic flashcards with words like "bomb" in his pocket, studied in Jordan and recently spent time in Sudan, a country that the State Department believes to sponsor terrorism. Add the fact that George had stereo speakers - remember an explosive-laden tape recorder was used to bring down Pam Am Flight 103 in 1988 - in his carry-on luggage, and it would amount to professional malpractice if TSA and FBI agents did not search and question George.

When I first read this story, I had to wonder if, in a world with no shortage of individuals hungry to be victims or discredit the system, the young man was trying to be detained....

(As an aside: The ACLU complaint claims that authorities never Mirandized George during the nearly five hours he was held. That would mean that authorities were faster to Mirandize accused Christmas Day bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab than George. That means authorities questioned George longer than Abdulmutallab without Mirandizing him.)

According to the complaint, a TSA supervisor questioned George "in a hostile and aggressive manner," while he was "polite and calm." Also, FBI agents questioned George to see if he was involved with any "pro-Islamic groups," then determined George was not a threat. However, the complaint alleges that FBI questions were "wide-ranging and strayed far from any conceivable criminal activity."

Boo hoo.

"Nick is not claiming to have been scarred for life. No one is trying to get rich off this," Roper told me. And: "What this is about is accountability."

You see, if learning Arabic or traveling to the Middle East is enough to get you handcuffed and questioned by the FBI, then - Roper said this - "the terrorists have won."

Au contraire, if TSA staff, airport cops and FBI agents - the plaintiffs [sic -- should be defendants] in this lawsuit - are afraid to do their jobs, then terrorists will win.

Look no further than Fort Hood, Texas. Colleagues were afraid to report the radicalized rants of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, lest they seem anti-Islamic, so they looked the other way. The toll: 13 dead....

I have a few questions for the White House, the Pentagon and for Congress.  Firstly, are we or are we not at war?  Secondly, why are we fighting blindfolded?  We have a New Intelligence Plan under review by President Obama.  Swell.  From now on, prior to Mirandizing foreign Soldiers of Allah like the Christmas Day Bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the FBI and the Department of Justice (read that:  Attorney General Eric Holder) will actually consult with the intelligence community.

Americans are angry that Holder induced Abdulmutallab to clam up and lawyer up after only fifty minutes of interrogation – by Mirandizing him like an American citizen accused of a statutory crime.  Far from that, he’s a Muslim jihadist from Nigeria and what he did was a deliberate Act of War against The United States of America. Obama’s new intel plan came to light this morning in Walter Pincus’ report in The Washington Post.  Read the entire story here:

“The Justice Department and the FBI will consult with the intelligence community on information about terrorism suspects arrested in the United States before deciding whether to read them their Miranda rights under a plan now under review in the White House, according to senior administration officials.

The proposal follows a controversy over the handling of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who is accused in the attempted Christmas Day bombing and who was read his constitutional rights 10 hours after his arrest…”

Controversy? Please. That is all rather disingenuous of The Post.  Abdulmutallab actually talked for fifty minutes, went under an hours-long sedation for medical treatment of his burns, and spoke no more following his post-treatment Mirandization.

“…We are analyzing lessons learned [in the Detroit Christmas Day case] with the goal of ensuring full information from across the government is available to law enforcement personnel on the ground as they conduct interrogations and make decisions on how to handle terrorist suspects,” a senior official said Friday. He requested anonymity because the new procedures, which arise from a review ordered by President Obama, have not yet been approved.

“The final decision about Miranda and other law enforcement decisions will continue to lie with the FBI and Department of Justice,” the official added…”

Ah, so!  Well, I have a few more questions that have never been answered since the 9/11 attacks.  If we are not at war, why do widely recognized leaders of the World of Islam keep talking about waging Holy War (jihad) against the Great Satan America and conquering the West?  If we are at War, against what enemy are we engaged?  This has never been clearly defined by anyone – not by the Commander In Chief or Congress or anyone in the Pentagon.  What makes, to use Obama’s term, so-called “isolated extremists” extreme?  Do all the post-9/11 fourteen thousand-plus world-wide acts of violence against non-Muslims really have nothing in common?

Nearly nine years after 9/11, much of the American public remains confused as to whatever you call this undefined situation is really about.  It’s high time for some definition of terms from someone in the Halls of Power.  Otherwise we’ll continue fighting blindfolded.  And blindfolded by ignorance of Muslim doctrine, I would say the odds are long against us.

Columbia University Associate Professor Marc Lamont Hill did his usual babbling act on “The O’Reilly Factor” last night.  This time, the issue was putting the Christmas Day underwear bomber and 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed on trial in civil court rather than before a military tribunal.

This expert in hip-hop music might have been able to help select the rap music to blast in the ears of terrorist detainees while they were being interrogated at Guantanamo – an option no longer available under Obama’s detainee-friendly policies.  But who cares what Hill thinks about anything else?

Apparently, O’Reilly does.  However, O’Reilly was only using Hill as a foil.  His real beef in this case was with Deputy National Security Advisor for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism advisor John Brennan, who claimed that those who criticize the Obama administration’s handling of terrorist suspects are only serving Al-Qaeda. This is the same John Brennan, by the way, who let his deputy take a ski vacation right after the Christmas Day bombing attempt and who told us last year:

The President does not describe this as a ‘war on terrorism’…

Brennan also criticized using the term ‘jihad‘ in connection with radical Islamic acts of terror even though the Islamists use that term themselves to describe what they are doing.

Brennan won’t come on The Factor. Neither will Attorney General Eric Holder, the architect of the terrorist constitutional rights campaign.  But using a clown with no credibility like Hill as a stand-in does nothing to advance the discussion. Invite someone of stature to debate the issue like Colin Powell.

O’Reilly made the legitimate point that al Qaeda terrorists aiming to kill innocent civilians are violating the laws of war, which means that properly constituted military tribunals are the appropriate trial forum. Obama, in signing the Defense Authorization bill last year, agreed to retain the military commissions with certain reforms.  So Bill’s common sense question was why not use them.

Brennan wrote in a USA Today op-ed piece that even the Bush Administration chose civil trials over military trials in most cases and were successful.  He pointed to the shoe bomber trial as an example. The problem with Brennan’s reasoning is that military trials were suspended for years, while left-wing challenges to their constitutionality (including with Holder’s assistance when he was in private practice) slowly wended their way through the courts.  The Supreme Court ultimately decided not to invalidate military trials per se for alien enemy combatant detainees so long as they comport with certain due process requirements.

This issue deserves serious debate by intelligent experts.  Save Marc Lamont Hill for a comedy segment.

Here's a fresh report from the frontlines of Eurabia: Erick Stakelbeck interviews jihadists in London. "London's Islamic Radicals Speak Out," by Erick Stakelbeck for CBN News, February 9:

Great Britain recently raised its terror alert to "severe" following reports that al Qaeda was plotting new attacks.

But Britain may be facing an even greater threat from within -- one the British government helped to create.

CBN News recently traveled to London to interview a number of leading Islamic radicals who have settled there with the full knowledge of the British government.

All Eyes on London

Just one year before attempting to blow up an airliner over Detroit, Christmas Day bombing suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab studied engineering at University College London.

During his stay there, he networked with known Islamic radicals. Security sources believe he may have linked up with al Qaeda.

Abdulmutallab is just one of many Islamic terrorists with ties to London. Some live there with help from the state.

One example is Yasser al-Sirri, who faces a death sentence in Egypt.

Then there is Anjem Choudary. To date, he has not been charged with terrorism, but his pro-jihad views have led some to call him Great Britain's most hated man.

"Many people love the idea of jihad, you know?" Choudary told CBN News. "And they want to engage in it."

A radical Islamist can find a little bit of everything in London. Ex-jihadists, current jihadists, "wannabe" jihadists: they're all there. So how did this happen?

During the 1980s and 1990s, British authorities granted asylum to a number of Islamic terrorists wanted in their home countries.

"All of this happened under the assumption that if you allowed these people to operate in London, if you allowed them to do whatever they wanted to do, they would not be attacking Britain," terrorism expert Peter Neumann explained....

And that assumption, of course, comes from the pandemic willful ignorance regarding the jihad doctrine within Islam.

"Opposing view: 'We need no lectures,'" by John Brennan, the Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, in USA Today, February 9:

Politics should never get in the way of national security. But too many in Washington are now misrepresenting the facts to score political points, instead of coming together to keep us safe.

Immediately after the failed Christmas Day attack, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was thoroughly interrogated and provided important information. Senior counterterrorism officials from the White House, the intelligence community and the military were all actively discussing this case before he was Mirandized and supported the decision to charge him in criminal court.

The most important breakthrough occurred after Abdulmutallab was read his rights, a long-standing FBI policy that was reaffirmed under Michael Mukasey, President Bush's attorney general. The critics who want the FBI to ignore this long-established practice also ignore the lessons we have learned in waging this war: 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.

It's naive to think that transferring Abdulmutallab to military custody would have caused an outpouring of information. There is little difference between military and civilian custody, other than an interrogator with a uniform. The suspect gets access to a lawyer, and interrogation rules are nearly identical. [...]

This administration's efforts have disrupted dozens of terrorist plots against the homeland and been responsible for killing and capturing hundreds of hard-core terrorists, including senior leaders in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and beyond -- far more than in 2008. We need no lectures about the fact that this nation is at war.

Politically motivated criticism and unfounded fear-mongering only serve the goals of al-Qaeda. Terrorists are not 100-feet tall. Nor do they deserve the abject fear they seek to instill. They will, however, be dismantled and destroyed, by our military, our intelligence services and our law enforcement community. And the notion that America's counterterrorism professionals and America's system of justice are unable to handle these murderous miscreants is absurd.

Sure. They can't name them, they can't call them what they are, they don't dare to discuss what they believe, they won't try to learn anything about what their motives or goals might be, but they can handle them. Sure. Trust Brennan. After all, his record is so sterling.

via Who are the 300 terrorists held in U.S. prisons? | Washington Examiner.

A SENIOR official at Amnesty International has accused the charity of putting the human rights of Al-Qaeda terror suspects above those of their victims.

Gita Sahgal, head of the gender unit at Amnesty's international secretariat, believes that collaborating with Moazzam Begg, a former British inmate at Guantanamo Bay, "fundamentally damages" the organisation's reputation.

In an email sent to Amnesty's top bosses, she suggests the charity has mistakenly allied itself with Begg and his "jihadi" group, Cageprisoners, out of fear of being branded racist and Islamophobic.

Sahgal describes Begg as "Britain's most famous supporter of the Taliban". He has championed the rights of jailed Al-Qaeda members and hate preachers, including Anwar al-Awlaki, the alleged spiritual mentor of the Christmas Day Detroit plane bomber.

Amnesty's work with Cageprisoners took it to Downing Street last month to demand the closure of Guantanamo Bay. Begg has also embarked on a European tour, hosted by Amnesty, urging countries to offer safe haven to Guantanamo detainees. This is despite concerns about former inmates returning to terrorism.

Sahgal, who has researched religious fundamentalism for 20 years, has decided to go public because she feels Amnesty has ignored her warnings for the past two years about the involvement of Begg in the charity's Counter Terror With Justice campaign.

"I believe the campaign fundamentally damages Amnesty International's integrity and, more importantly, constitutes a threat to human rights," Sahgal wrote in an email to the organisation's leaders on January 30. "To be appearing on platforms with Britain's most famous supporter of the Taliban, whom we treat as a human rights defender, is a gross error of judgment."...

His optimism, however hedged, was understandable. His interview took place 3 1/2 years after the London terrorist attacks of July 7, 2005. During that period, the British authorities put dozens of would-be terrorists on trial and thwarted numerous attacks. In the immediate wake of 7/7, the Security Service’s public critics had taken its bosses to task for infiltrating violent groups without doing more to break them up. Needless to say, Britain’s domestic spies immediately set out to do just that, in a flurry of arrests and prosecutions.

But that, of course, was before Christmas Day 2009, when a young Nigerian — the former head of the Islamic students’ association at University College London — tried to blow up an Amsterdam-to-Detroit flight and shattered the myth of Britain’s newfound imperviousness to Islamism. Though security officials in Britain insist that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab radicalized after he left the country for Yemen (Sanaa, in turn, blames everything on London), the case of the Underwear Bomber has dramatized the extent to which Britain remains a launching pad for jihad. (Nigerian Nobel Prize laureate Wole Soyinka prefers the term “cesspit” to describe London’s function as an Islamist breeding ground.)

via Londonistan | Foreign Policy.

Obama said: “I fundamentally disagree with that. Now — do these folks deserve Miranda rights? Do they deserve to be treated like a shoplifter — down the block? Of course not.” President Obama ought to call Attorney General Eric Holder. In a five-page letter to Senator Mitch McConnell, Holder lays out in exhaustive detail exactly why these folks deserve Miranda rights and why his Justice Department will treat them like a shoplifter down the block.

Holder's letter responds to criticism of the Obama administration's handling of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Christmas Day bomber, from McConnell and other Republicans. Holder writes:

The decision to charge Mr. Abdulmutallab in federal court, and the methods used to interrogate him, are fully consistent with the long-established and publicly known policies and practices of the Department of Justice, the FBI, and the United States Government as a whole, as implemented for many years by Administrations of both parties. Those policies and practices, which were not criticized when employed by previous Administrations, have been and remain extremely effective in protecting national security. They are among the many powerful weapons this country can and should use to win the war against al-Qaeda.

I am confident that, as a result of the hard work of the FBI and our career federal prosecutors, we will be able to successfully prosecute Mr. Abdulmutallab under the federal criminal law. I am equally confident that the decision to address Mr. Abdulmutallab's actions through our criminal justice system has not, and will not, compromise our ability to obtain information needed to detect and prevent future attacks.

Nobody doubts that Abdulmutallab can be prosecuted. There were nearly three hundred people on the plane when he tried to blow it up. He lit himself on fire. Authories gathered his badly burned underpants and the components of the bomb. His prosecution was never seriously in question, which is precisely what makes the decision to Mirandize him quickly so outrageous.

via Obama vs. Holder.

Attorney General Eric Holder said Wednesday he made the decision to charge the Christmas Day terror suspect in civilian court rather than the military system, with no objection from all the other relevant departments of the government.In a letter to Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell PDF, the attorney general wrote that the FBI told its partners in the intelligence community on Christmas Day and again the next day that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab would be charged criminally.Special Report: The Christmas Day Terror AttackHolder said that the possibility of detaining Abdulmutallab in the U.S. military system under the law of war was explicitly discussed in the days following the arrest, including at a Jan. 5 meeting that included President Barack Obama and senior members of the national security team.”No agency supported the use of law of war detention for Abdulmutallab, and no agency has since advised the Department of Justice that an alternative course of action should have been, or should now be, pursued,” the attorney general wrote.

via Holder Defends Handling of Abdulmutallab – CBS News.

The terrorist organization is deploying operatives to the United States to carry out new attacks from inside the country, including “clean” recruits with a negligible trail of terrorist contacts, CIA Director Leon Panetta said. Al Qaeda is also inspiring homegrown extremists to trigger violence on their own, Panetta added.

The annual assessment of the nation's terror threats provided no startling new terror trends, but amplified growing concerns since the Christmas Day airline attack in Detroit that militants are growing harder to detect and moving more quickly in their plots.

“The biggest threat is not so much that we face an attack like 9/11. It is that Al Qaeda is adapting its methods in ways that oftentimes make it difficult to detect,” Panetta told the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Al Qaeda is increasingly relying on new recruits with minimal training and simple devices to carry out attacks, the CIA chief said as part of the annual assessment of national threats provided to Congress by the top five U.S. intelligence officials.

Panetta also warned of the danger of extremists acting alone: “It's the lone-wolf strategy that I think we have to pay attention to as the main threat to this country,” he said.

The hearing comes just over a month since a failed attempt to bring down an airliner in Detroit by a Nigerian suspect. And the assessment follows only a few months since U.S. Army Maj. Nidal Hassan is accused of single-handedly attacking his fellow soldiers at Fort Hood, Texas, killing 13.

Director of National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair described Hassan as homegrown extremist. He also said that Al Qaeda can be expected to continue and try to attack the United States until Osama bin Laden and his No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahri, are dead.

The U.S. still does not know the intended targets of suspected terrorist Najibullah Zazi, who was arrested in September and charged with plotting to attack New York City with homemade bombs, Blair said.

Blair warned as well of a growing cyber threat, saying computer-related attacks have become dynamic and malicious.

Obama has promised to make cyber security a priority in his administration, but the president's new budget asks for a decrease in funds for the Homeland Security Department's cybersecurity division.

The government's first quadrennial homeland security review states high consequence and large-scale cyberattacks could massively disable or hurt international financial, commercial and physical infrastructure.

The report, obtained by The Associated Press, said these types of cyberattacks could cripple the movement of people and goods around the world and bring vital social and economic programs to a halt.

via FOXNews.com – Intelligence Officials Warn Attempted Al Qaeda Attack Months Away.

"England 'Is Cesspit For Breeding Islamic Terror,'" by Martyn Brown for the Express, February 3 (thanks to H. Jarrett):

A NOBEL prize-winning author has accused England of being a "cesspit" that nurtures Islamist terrorism, in a damning indictment of Labour's failed multicultural experiment.

Wole Soyinka, the first African winner of the literature prize, claimed the Nigerian student who tried to blow up a jet over Detroit on Christmas Day, was radicalised during his time at University College London. The criticism comes amid a growing row between Nigeria, Britain and Yemen about where Umar Farouq Abdulmutallab turned to violent extremism.

Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, said last week that "ideology knows no boundaries" and the blame for Abdulmutallab's extremism could not be "pinned on any one place".

But Mr Soyinka, 76, who was born in Nigeria and studied at Leeds University in the 1950s, said: "England is a cesspit. England is the breeding ground of fundamentalist Muslims.

"Its social logic is to allow all religions to preach openly. But this is illogic, because none of the other religions preach apocalyptic violence. And yet England allows it."...

The Obama administration’s decision to read the Christmas Day bomber his Miranda rights has rightly come under withering criticism. Instead of a lengthy interrogation by officials with al Qaeda expertise, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was questioned for 50 minutes by local FBI agents and then later advised of his “right to remain silent.”It’s well understood that the focus on gaining evidence for a criminal trial was an intelligence failure of massive proportions. Not well understood is that the most powerful recent argument for aggressively interrogating terrorists, keeping them in military detention, and prosecuting them in military commissions comes to us from the Obama Justice Department itself.On Dec. 18, 2009, days before the Christmas attack, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, Preet Bharara, made a secret filing in federal district court that was aimed at saving the prosecution of Ahmed Ghailani, another al Qaeda terrorist. Ghailani is facing charges for helping al Qaeda bomb U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. Ghailani argues that those charges should be dropped because lengthy CIA interrogations have denied him his constitutional right to a speedy trial.

via David B. Rivkin Jr. and Marc A. Thiessen: A Tale of Two Terrorists – WSJ.com.

Any cop, prosecutor, or defense lawyer will tell you that the quickest way to get a suspect to stop talking to you is to read him his Miranda Rights and get him a lawyer.  The Obama Department of Justice, under Attorney General Eric Holder, has now begun dancing, two-stepping, ducking and dodging about, in earnest, as to who actually made the Christmas Day decision to Mirandize Muslim Underwear Bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab – and why.  It was a terrible mistake, whether he was to be sent to a Civilian Court or handed over for a Military Tribunal. I tell you that from twenty years of experience in law enforcement. 

The Los Angeles Times has the latest chapter in this ever-morphing story:

“The decision to advise the accused Christmas Day attacker of his right to remain silent was made after teleconferences involving at least four government agencies — and only after Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab had stopped talking to authorities, according to knowledgeable law enforcement officials.

Among those involved in the hastily called teleconferences were representatives from the Justice Department and the FBI, along with officials from the State Department and the CIA.

“It was a [law enforcement] community-wide conference, and they discussed a number of things,” one source said on condition of anonymity. “That’s when decisions were made on which course was going to proceed, to Mirandize him or otherwise.”…

…The source said that Abdulmutallab was not read his rights until he made it clear that he was not going to say anything else… It still remains unclear who gave the go-ahead to read him the Miranda warning…”

Swell.  So what if he didn’t want to talk any more at that moment?  We didn’t need a confession.  We needed more information. The interrogation should have resumed after the medical treatment and a nice hot meal.  With all of the eye-witnesses to what happened aboard Northwest Flight 253 a confession would not be necessary for conviction in either a civilian or military trial.  More information from Abdulmutallab about what he knows of pending attacks would have been most helpful.

Is this attempted bombing an act of war or just a plain old vanilla criminal conspiracy?

Either way, why would the Obama Administration want to assist a criminal conspirator or a Soldier of Allah (take your pick) who just got caught with his flaming pants down in the act of trying to blow up an airliner and kill hundreds of Americans by not holding him for further life-saving intelligence-gathering – without benefit of counsel?  It was not about a confession at that point. It was about stopping the next attack.  American lives were, and are, at stake.  Mirandizing Abdulmutallab was not only foolish, it raises the question as to how serious Obama and his administration really are about protecting The United States of America – and winning the War.