so, the terrorists win...

[INDY500]

Are you sure the "somewhat stinky guy" didn't have an explosion in his underwear?

 

[martha]

He may have.

 

[MrsSpringsteen]

boston.com

Another Cheney blasts Obama on terrorism
Posted by Foon Rhee, deputy national political editor January 6, 2010 10:06 AM

Like father, like daughter.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney caused a ruckus last week by blasting President Obama's response to the attempted bombing of a US airliner on Christmas Day. Obama, the critic-in-chief said, was pretending that the US wasn't at war with terror.

Liz Cheney today criticized Obama's remarks on Tuesday after huddling with his Cabinet and national security team. Head of an outfit called Keep America Safe, she said his decision to suspend sending detainees from Guantanamo Bay to Yemen, an increasing Al Qaeda hotbed, wasn't enough. While it will delay closing the controversial detention facility since half the remaining 198 detainees are from Yemen, Obama vowed to keep his promise to close it down.

"Pausing the transfer of al-Qaeda terrorists from Guantanamo Bay to Yemen is insufficient to ensure the security of the United States. If President Obama is serious about keeping the American people safe, he should reverse his irresponsible and ill-advised decision to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility," she said in a statement.

"He should reverse his decision to usher terrorists from Guantanamo onto U.S. soil. He should reverse his decision to bring the mastermind of 9/11, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, to New York. He should reverse his decision to give KSM and other terrorists the rights of Americans and the benefit of a criminal trial in an American civilian court," Cheney added. "He should immediately classify Abdulmutallab, the Christmas Day bomber, as an illegal enemy combatant, not a criminal defendant. He should inform Attorney General Holder that he will no longer allow the Justice Department to treat terrorism as a crime instead of an act of war, nor will he allow them to investigate or prosecute CIA officials who kept us safe after 9/11, or disbar or otherwise punish the lawyers who provided the legal framework for programs that saved American lives."

She also echoed her father's verbal assault that the president isn't treating the battle against terrorism like the war it is: "President Obama has weakened American security by treating terror as a law enforcement matter, refusing to use every tool at his disposal to prevent attacks, and taking his eye off the ball. America's homeland security and counterterrorism systems will continue to erode in the absence of strong, consistent, unwavering presidential stewardship. It's time for the President to make defending this nation his top priority."

 

[INDY500]

suspend sending detainees from Guantanamo Bay to Yemen

reverse his decision to give KSM and other terrorists the rights of Americans and the benefit of a criminal trial in an American civilian court

reverse his irresponsible and ill-advised decision to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility,"

classify Abdulmutallab, the Christmas Day bomber, as an illegal enemy combatant, not a criminal defendant.

All of which the American people support overwhelmingly by the way.

 

[Irvine511]

what does the Gitmo gulag have to do with this incident?

 

[BVS]

All of which the American people support overwhelmingly by the way.

Now you have the pulse of the American people?

 

[INDY500]

what does the Gitmo gulag have to do with this incident?

gulag

Bomber's Yemen Link Mires Gitmo Closure

(AP) The alleged Yemeni roots of the attack on a Detroit-bound airliner threaten to complicate U.S. efforts to empty Guantanamo, where nearly half the remaining detainees are from Yemen.

Finding a home for them is key to President Obama's pledge to close the prison, but emerging details of the plot are renewing concerns about Yemen's capacity to contain militants and growing al Qaeda safe havens.

While inmates of other nationalities have left Guantanamo in droves, roughly 90 Yemenis have been held at the U.S. military prison in Cuba for as long as seven years.

A breakthrough seems less likely since al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula claimed responsibility for the plot to bomb a U.S.-bound airliner on Christmas Day. The group counts two former Guantanamo detainees among its leaders, and some in the U.S. Congress are warning against sending any more detainees to Yemen.

 

[Irvine511]

send them to michigan, then.

 

[BVS]

So since we created the breeding groud we should just keep it indefinately, or maybe you just support keeping it open not allowing any new detainees and close it's doors after the last of them die?

 

[INDY500]

So since we created the breeding groud we should just keep it indefinately, or maybe you just support keeping it open not allowing any new detainees and close it's doors after the last of them die?

So attacks on the U.S. will slow or even stop once the "breeding ground" of Guantanamo is closed?

Well, another talking point of the Left that has absolutely no basis in reality.

 

[anitram]

A breakthrough seems less likely since al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula claimed responsibility for the plot to bomb a U.S.-bound airliner on Christmas Day. The group counts two former Guantanamo detainees among its leaders

Did these two escape from Gitmo?

 

[INDY500]

send them to michigan, then.

Having to endure Michigan Winters rather than spending them in the Caribbean -- may actually constitute torture.

 

[Dalton]

It's true. My balls are frozen to my thighs. Right now.

 

[INDY500]

Did these two escape from Gitmo?

I rather think you already know the answer to that, but why not learn from that mistake instead of duplicating it many times over.

 

[Irvine511]

So attacks on the U.S. will slow or even stop once the "breeding ground" of Guantanamo is closed?

my guess is that it is on the laundry list of complaints this individual had.

be warned, the generation of terrorists inspired by the Bush administration are growing up and not getting laid and have no jobs and are going to start blowing shit up.

 

[INDY500]

my guess is that it is on the laundry list of complaints this individual had.

be warned, the generation of terrorists inspired by the Bush administration are growing up and not getting laid and have no jobs and are going to start blowing shit up.

And exactly how is not getting laid and having no jobs the fault of Bush, America and Western Civilization?

And what inspired the Maidenform Bomber during the Age of Obama? The lack of affordable health care? No Green jobs? Those Fat Cat Wall Street Bonuses?

We dumped Bush for a president named Barack Hussein Obama, who studied in a madrassah as a child and who has vowed to close Gitmo and stop torture. Exactly what else is on this laundry list?

 

[Irvine511]

And exactly how is not getting laid and having no jobs the fault of Bush, America and Western Civilization?

And what inspired the Maidenform Bomber during the Age of Obama? The lack of affordable health care? No Green jobs? Those Fat Cat Wall Street Bonuses?

We dumped Bush for a president named Barack Hussein Obama, who studied in a madrassah as a child and who has vowed to close Gitmo and stop torture. Exactly what else is on this laundry list?

we should have dropped loaves of bread and fish on Afghanistan and Iraq.

 

[INDY500]

we should have dropped loaves of bread and fish on Afghanistan and Iraq.

Neither of which the 9/11 attackers ever lived to see so it couldn't have been on their laundry list.

Knocking down buildings and blowing up planes isn't really the goal of terrorists. Critics of Bush were right when they mention that "terror" is just a tactic when chiding his use of the term War On Terror.

Do you know what the goal, for which terror is just one tactic, actually is?

 

[Bluer White]

my guess is that it is on the laundry list of complaints this individual had.

We'll need to ask the Al Qaeda terrorist's appointed attorney about those complaints.

be warned, the generation of terrorists inspired by the Bush administration are growing up and not getting laid and have no jobs and are going to start blowing shit up.

I think you are more inspired by the Bush administration than a terrorist is.

 

[Strongbow]

We'll need to ask the Al Qaeda terrorist's appointed attorney about those complaints.



I think you are more inspired by the Bush administration than a terrorist is.

 

[Irvine511]

Do you know what the goal, for which terror is just one tactic, actually is?

to draw the United States into unwinnable, costly wars in the Middle East and to cause the country to go bankrupt like the Soviet Union.

 

[Strongbow]

to draw the United States into unwinnable, costly wars in the Middle East and to cause the country to go bankrupt like the Soviet Union.

So you believe like some in Al Quada and South Asia do, that the war in Afghanistan caused the Soviet Union to go bankrupt?

 

[maycocksean]

Now you have the pulse of the American people?

Perhaps they also have biweekly meetings like the African American Community?

Funny though, that I've never been invited. . . .

Does that make me unAmerican?

So attacks on the U.S. will slow or even stop once the "breeding ground" of Guantanamo is closed?

Well, another talking point of the Left that has absolutely no basis in reality.

I won't argue with you on this one. I think closing Gitmo is neither here nor there. To me closing it is just a political gesture, and one that is creating a lot of headaches.

Theoretically they could house the prisoners anywhere so why not just keep them where they are?

 

[INDY500]

I won't argue with you on this one. I think closing Gitmo is neither here nor there. To me closing it is just a political gesture, and one that is creating a lot of headaches.

Theoretically they could house the prisoners anywhere so why not just keep them where they are?

It's never been explained why Gitmo North would be perceived by the world as better than Gitmo Classic. Just one of those political memes that gets repeated so often some people are bound to accept it.
Unfortunately, the president is one of those people.

 

[deep]

It's never been explained why Gitmo North would be perceived by the world as better than Gitmo Classic. Just one of those political memes that gets repeated so often some people are bound to accept it.
Unfortunately, the president is one of those people.

Because the whole premise of GITMO from the onset was that it is a magic island like LOST.

People can be held indefinitely without being charged and no international laws or conventions apply there. This is what the Bush Administration claimed.

 

[MrsSpringsteen]

Remember when Cheney said if people voted for Kerry there would be a greater chance of terrorist attacks, etc.? I guess they're just getting an early start on Obama.

 

[MrsSpringsteen]

wired.com

Obama: Software Flaws Let Christmas Bomber Get Through

* By Noah Shachtman
* January 7, 2010



Crappy government software — and failure to use that software right — almost got 289 people killed in the botched Christmas day bombing.

“Information sharing does not appear to have contributed to this intelligence failure; relevant all-sources analysts as well as watchlisting personnel who needed this information were not preventing from accessing it,” the White House noted in its review of the incident. The problem was in the databases, and in the data-mining software. “Information technology within the CT [counterterrorism] community did not sufficiently enable the correlation of data that would have enable analysts to highlight the relevant threat information.”

You bet it didn’t. Government search tools weren’t even flexible enough to handle simple misspellings. As the White House review notes:

A misspelling of Mr. Abdulmutallab’s name initially resulted in the State Department believing he did not have a valid U.S. visa. A determination to revoke his visa however would have only occurred if there had been a successful integration of intelligence by the CT [counterterrorism] community, resulting in his being watchlisted.

This is a problem that commercial software firms largely solved years ago. (Try typing “Noa Schactmann” into Google, and see what comes up.) How it could persist in the CT community, I just don’t understand.

In a memo to his agency chiefs, President Obama ordered the Director of National Intelligence to “accelerate information technology enhancement, to include knowledge discovery, database integration, cross-database search, and the ability to correlate biographic information with terrorism-related intelligence.”

All of which will be helpful. But analysts have to actually use the tools. That didn’t happen in the Christmas attack. “NCTC and CIA personnel who are responsible for watchlisting did not search all available databases,” the White House noted.

The Department of Homeland Security did run Northwest Airlines flight 253’s passenger manifest against terrorism databases. But only after the flight took off. Ugh.

 

[INDY500]

Coming soon to our health care system.

"Crappy government software" and a flood of bureaucrats that "fail to use that software right."

Yeah.

 

[ntalwar]

This is a problem that commercial software firms largely solved years ago. (Try typing “Noa Schactmann” into Google, and see what comes up.) How it could persist in the CT community, I just don’t understand.

This is a poor example used by the author to conclude that the software is crappy. Western European name misspellings are easier to identify in software. I don't think google would fare as well with more exotic languages and regional dialects.

 

[BVS]

Coming soon to our health care system.

"Crappy government software" and a flood of bureaucrats that "fail to use that software right."

Yeah.

Is this how you feel about the military and NASA as well?