Rory Cooper
National Review/The Corner
2/9/2010
Earlier this weekend, former Alaska governor Sarah Palin told Chris Wallace in a Fox News interview that the Obama administration’s position on dissent is that detractors should “sit down and shut up.” The Huffington Post crowd immediately jumped on the statement, saying it couldn’t be supported.
Well, 24 hours later, White House homeland-security adviser John Brennan put this argument to rest by publishing a blog in USA Today that not only tells Americans to sit down and shut up but also accuses them of “serv[ing] the goals of al-Qaeda” if they question the president’s national-security strategy — as if two-sided political discourse is al-Qaeda’s ultimate goal.
In fewer than 400 words, Brennan embarrasses himself with half-truths, selective omissions, and name-calling hysteria. But more importantly, he identifies one of the major problems facing the Obama White House: They lack a credible leader on homeland security that the American people fully trust. This problem clearly began when DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano came out days after Christmas saying “the system worked.”…
…In his blog, Brennan says Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was “thoroughly interrogated” immediately after his failed bombing attempt. However, even Brennan has stated that the interrogation lasted 50 minutes. Under no plausible scenario is 50 minutes of interrogation “thorough.”
Brennan goes on to say the “most important breakthrough occurred after Abdulmutallab was read his rights.” He fails to mention how many weeks that took, nor why we even know about this. Based on what can be gathered from administration officials, Abdulmutallab began cooperating long after intelligence was still actionable. White House officials leaked this conversation, putting Abdulmutallab’s profoundly cooperative family at risk and signaling to al-Qaeda that anything operational this foot soldier knows should be revised…
…Brennan accuses the president’s opponents of “fear-mongering” and says, “We need no lectures about the fact that this nation is at war.” On the bright side, administration officials have regularly failed to call our efforts against terrorists a war, so at least this brazen acknowledgement is progress. But they do in fact deserve a lecture…
The article continues at NRO.
