No smoking gun?!

It seems the only way the Obama Administration will be able to spot terror, er, sorry, “human caused disaster” suspects is if they saunter into an airport pushing a shopping cart loaded with bombs, fuses, guns, ammo and box cutters. At least that’s the impression one gets listening to the various administration officials blithely attempting to explain away the terrorist attack against a Northwest Airlines plane over Detroit on Dec. 25.

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First Janet Napolitano, the incompetent den mother of the Department of Homeland Security, made the rounds of Sunday talk shows Claiming that the “system worked” because the plane did not crash and burn and the terrorist was ultimately apprehended. Then the administration sent out its “B” team in the person of John Brennan, deputy national security advisor to the President, who claimed there was “no smoking gun” that could have alerted officials to the intentions of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, as he boarded the Detroit bound aircraft. Au contraire, Mr. Brennan. There were so many smoking guns that one would have to be deaf, dumb and blind to miss them. Let us count them:

• Smoking Gun #1— Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s father contacted American authorities to warn them of his son’s radicalization.
• Smoking Gun #2—Abdulmutallab’s name was on a list of suspected al Qaeda sympathizers accessible to Homeland Security and the NTSA, although not on a no-fly list.
• Smoking Gun #3—Abdulmutallab paid in cash for his ticket.
• Smoking Gun #4—Abdulmutallab had no luggage.
• Smoking Gun #5—Abdulmutallab asked if he could board the aircraft without a passport.
• Smoking Gun #6—DHS knew about undie-bombs because Prince Muhammad bin Nayef, Security Chief of Saudi Arabia, disclosed an attempt on his life using just such a tactic last August.
• Smoking Gun #7—its one thing to have information, it’s another to use that information in a utile manner. Why is there no cross-referencing of names between the various lists available to security agencies? Or is it possible that Jamie Gorelick’s dreaded “wall” has been rebuilt under the Obama sinecure?

From where I sit the only smoking gun I can see is the Administration’s ineptitude and incompetence. Janet Napolitano was a dreadful choice for head of homeland security, given that she was governor of Arizona, a state that’s practically been invaded by drug lords and illegal aliens. Obama could just as well have given the DHS job to Steve Urkel, who would likely be as effective as Napolitano has been so far. Certainly there is no reason to keep her on, given her various gaffes and lapses. This is an administration in deep denial. Whether you call terrorists “terrorists” or “human disaster causers” it still amounts to the same thing; there are people out there that want to harm us and the only way to deal with them is to annihilate them, deprive them of places of respite and cut off their sources of supply. These are all things the Obama Administration has no interest in doing as it pursues a headlong course towards disaster with eyes wide shut.