Boston: The
Price of Distraction
By DICK MORRIS
Published on
TheHill.com
on April 16, 2013
Immediately after 9/11, America was united, vigilant and determined
not to permit a repeat of the slaughter of the innocents. But since
then, we have let down our guard.
Partisans on the right might say that we did so because the attorney
general and the president tied the hands of those who are charged with
defending our homeland. Partisans on the left might say that budget cuts
impaired our ability to staff our homeland security efforts adequately.
Both would be partially correct.
But the fact is, we have let down our guard, and the attack on these
magnificent athletes -- and their children -- is the result.
Our homeland security effort has been running on fumes under President
Obama. Ever since George W. Bush left office, we have stopped developing
the same kinds of leads and are no longer pursuing them with the same
alacrity and élan as we did before. Now the investigators are more
fearful than are those they investigate: the chances of getting indicted
for over-zealousness or making a career-ending mistake looms before
every one of them every day, inhibiting their efforts.
We now kill terrorists from a unmanned drone flying overhead at two or
three times the rate we reached under the Bush administration. But a
dead man tells no tales. Our source of interrogation-driven leads is
drying up. Even when we catch a terrorist, we have no place to put him.
Recently, we were fortunate enough to capture Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame,
a Somali terrorist leader. We could not question him at Gitmo; the
rendition centers on foreign soil are all closed now. And we dared not
repatriate him, lest he lawyer up and we lose all his information. So we
put him on a Navy ship for two months as it sailed around the Indian
Ocean. How many others have we let go without interrogating them
adequately?
And when we do interrogate suspects, we do so under the rules of the
U.S. Army Field Manuals, which restricts us to the most gentle of
interrogation techniques. No hitting, touching, threatening or even loud
shouting. Presumably we will get the information we need by some kind
persuasion!
We have no idea as this is being written whether the terror attack in
Boston -- which, indeed it was -- was perpetrated by an international
organization or a lone wolf. Either way, we were caught napping.
Until now, with the exception of the Fort Hood massacre and the Little
Rock shooting of a U.S. soldier, blood has not been spilled on our soil
since 9/11.
But it has been as much due to our efforts as to our enemies' failures,
largely mechanical bomb-making failures. Since Bush left office and
Obama brought in new rules and priorities, the record of attacks that
would have succeeded had the bomb been made properly and which were
thwarted by no effort of our own is daunting.
On Dec. 22, 2001, a bomber failed to detonate a bomb hidden in his shoe
on a plane from Paris to Miami, and alert passengers subdued him.
Hundreds were saved through nothing but dumb luck. Then on Christmas Day
in 2009, a Nigerian man tried to ignite a bomb hidden in his underwear
on a flight bound for Detroit. It failed to detonate. Luck again. On May
1, 2010, a car bomb in Times Square failed to detonate and was disarmed
after its smoke was spotted. Dumb luck again. And on May 10, 2010, a
pipe bomb in Jacksonville, Fla., exploded while about 60 people were
praying in a mosque -- again, through luck, there were no injuries.
On April 15, 2013, our luck ran out. This is no way to run our national
security.
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