Asking Questions

By now we know that the attempted airline bombing on Christmas day was planned by two former residents of Gitmo who were released and sent back to Saudi Arabia. We know that the “Underpants Bomber” was trained in an al Qaeda camp in Yemen and we know that Obama has plans to send up to eighty current Gitmo residents back to Yemen. We also know Mr. Underpants was initially in a chatty mood, opining that there are plenty more like him out there. How much more will we know in the coming days? Not much.

By arresting Mr. Underpants and processing him through the civilian courts, giving him Miranda rights and providing him with a lawyer we effectively ended any chance that we could have had to gather information necessary to thwart other attacks. Not only did Homeland Security fail before the attack, they failed miserably after the attack.

Marc Thiessan has an informative article in today’s USA Today that deals with just this problem. We no longer question terrorists. We either kill them in air strikes or we lawyer them up. Thiessan:

Instead of looking for ways to release these dangerous men, we should be capturing and interrogating more of them for information on planned attacks. But that is something the U.S. no longer does. President Obama has shut down the CIA interrogation program that helped stop a series of planned attacks — and in the year since he took office, not one high-value terrorist has been interrogated by the CIA. (emphasis added)

The job of Homeland Security is to prevent attacks against Americans, not release ridiculous statements after the fact. When it comes to national security, what we don’t know will kill us.

Related:

No Sheeples Here: Clowns To The Left Of Me, Jokers To The Right. Homeland Security Stuck In The Middle.

Ruby Slippers: Underwear Bomb Contained Enough Explosives to Bring Down Plane

Another Black Conservative: Great Balls of Fire: Photos of the Underwear Bomber’s briefs

American Power: The Politically Correct Myth of Airline Bombers