From the diaries by Erick . . . Eric Holder testifies before Congress today on his department’s outrageous Operation Fast and Furious scandal. Eager to provide political cover for Obama’s embattled Attorney General, House Democrats yesterday released a report attempting to exonerate Holder and his political appointees for failing to do their jobs. Of course, their report says Holder’s innocent. The facts say he’s guilty. I say he must resign. This cynical ploy is just the latest effort by Democrats to cover up the truth. Slowly but surely, their web of misstatements, falsehoods, and shifting blame is coming unraveled, revealing a reckless and incompetent administration. First, a recap: The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) lost track of more than 2,000 weapons in a 2010 trafficking sting operation gone bad. Most ended up in the hands of Mexican drug cartels. Many ended up at crime scenes. Some were used in murders, kidnappings, and other violent crimes. Two were found at the murder scene of a U.S. border agent. It’s a disaster and tragedy that could have been prevented, and the Justice Department refuses to take responsibility. First came the denials. ATF chief Kenneth Melson claimed he didn’t know about Fast and Furious until January 2011. But DOJ officials said otherwise in a letter sent to Congress. Melson was briefed in December 2009, before the operation began, and received periodic updates afterward. Attorney General Eric Holder also feigned ignorance when questioned. First he said he hadn’t heard of Fast and Furious until Spring 2011. Then documents showed he received briefings in 2010. When called out, Holder admitted his testimony was “inaccurate” and “imprecise.” Holder frantically backpedalled again when it was discovered that DOJ officials sent a letter with false information to Sen. Chuck Grassley. When asked if they were lying, Holder dodged: “It all has to do with your state of mind.” Democrats will do anything to avoid blame. The DOJ withheld information. The White House accused congressmen of “playing politics.” Officials “screamed” and “cussed at” CBS investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson. The administration sealed the court documents connected to the murder of the border patrol agent. If Holder and Obama’s appointees are innocent, why won’t they hand over relevant documents? Why won’t they answer forthrightly in congressional inquiries? Why won’t they talk politely to investigative reporters instead of screaming and cursing? Why do they seal court documents from public view? It begs a bigger question: What more are they hiding? Amid all this, Obama still insisted in October that he has “complete confidence in Attorney General Holder and how he handles his office.” That’s the biggest problem. Obama has “complete confidence” in a scandal-ridden department. Perhaps it “all has to do with your state of mind.” Americans, meanwhile, have lost their confidence in this administration, and I, along with many other Republicans, have repeatedly called for Holder’s resignation. It’s time he heed those calls. In his State of the Union address, President Obama said, “I am asking my Attorney General to create a special unit of federal prosecutors and leading state attorneys general to expand our investigations into the abusive lending and packaging of risky mortgages that led to the housing crisis.” A new agency run by Eric Holder? I wouldn’t get my hopes up on that one.
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The Fast and Furious Cover Up
There is much outrage in Pakistan over a NATO strike yesterday which took the lives of 24 Pakistani soldiers. Pakistan claims the attacks were unprovoked and has closed off its western border to trucks delivering food and fuel supplies to U.S. and Coalition troops in Afghanistan. It is also demanding the U.S. leave an air base in Pakistan where drones are serviced within two weeks. But when it comes to Pakistan things are never simple and straightforward. For its part, Afghanistan claims that Pakistan was firing upon Afghan and NATO forces near the Afghan-Pakistan border. Now there is no love lost between Afghanistan and Pakistan but the NATO countries in question can certainly confirm or deny what Afghanistan is asserting. Both the U.S. & NATO will conduct separate investigations of the incident. But given Pakistan’s history of being
The killing of Osama bin Laden has created a series of dilemmas for the left. My colleagues have detailed the debt owed the Bush Administration which the current administration juvenilely and churlishly refuses to acknowledge ( here | here ). And many on my side are willing “to give the president credit” for doing his duty. According to reports bin Laden’s location has been known to the administration since March with the same degree of certainty that existed on May 1, so I fail to see what credit is really due unless we are saying that indecisiveness is a virtue. Bin Laden’s death will eventually be seen as the unofficial end of the US assault on al Qaeda. We will leave a war not won and forsake a victory that would make the world a safer place simply because Barack Obama doesn’t have the guts to prevail. What is worse, he wants to give the impression of being serious. Intelligence is the key tool in fighting any war. Technical means are valuable but the only way you can obtain insights into the enemy’s operations and intentions is through prisoners. Taking prisoners and getting intelligence from them carries with it three implications: 1) you have a place to keep them, 2) you have a means to extract the information from them in a timely fashion, and 3) you have a plan for what to do with the prisoners when their intelligence value is exhausted. Even though Obama has backed off his efforts to close the prison at Guantanamo this does not mean he is supportive of its presence. In fact, the easy way to close the prison is to simply stop adding new prisoners while releasing those prisoners held. If you aren’t going to vigorously interrogate the prisoners, because as Leon Panetta reminds us waterboarding does work , why bother taking them in the first place. Lest anyone think this administration will relent on an policy that succeeded in keeping us safe you need look no further than this exchange at Ground Zero between Obama and a member of the 9/11 families group, Debra Burlingame If you don’t want to watch the video, this is the story : When the president approached her table, Burlingame said she told him that as a former attorney she knows he can’t tell the attorney general what to do – an assessment the president agreed with, she said. “And I said, but that shouldn’t stop you from offering your opinion. After all, we wouldn’t be here celebrating today if they hadn’t done their job,” she said. “And they have the hammer of a possible indictment over their heads. Can’t you at least give him your opinion?” The president replied that he wouldn’t, she said. She added, “And he turned around and walked away.” As Jennifer Rubin notes In addition to eliminating the very techniques that allowed us to track down and kill bin Laden, Obama has permitted the Justice Departmentto reopen investigation of previously cleared CIA operatives. Muskaey explains: “ I say ‘reopening’ advisedly because those investigations had all been formally closed by the end of 2007, with detailed memoranda prepared by career Justice Department prosecutors explaining why no charges were warranted. Attorney General Eric Holder conceded that he had ordered the investigations reopened in September 2009 without reading those memoranda. The investigations have now dragged on for years with prosecutors chasing allegations down rabbit holes, with the CIA along with the rest of the intelligence community left demoralized.” Having a animus against both holding and interrogating prisoners, the administration has developed a novel means of reducing prisoner intake while giving the illusion of actively pursuing al Qaeda. We have simply started killing people who we should be taking prisoner. First, let me say that I do not fault the SEALs for killing Osama bin Laden. In my view he falls into a unique category of prisoner whose continued presence would cause problems far beyond the value of any intelligence he could provide. According to the Washington Post : When a window of opportunity opened to strike the leader of al-Qaeda in East Africa last September, U.S. Special Operations forces prepared several options. They could obliterate his vehicle with an airstrike as he drove through southern Somalia. Or they could fire from helicopters that could land at the scene to confirm the kill. Or they could try to take him alive. The White House authorized the second option. On the morning of Sept. 14, helicopters flying from a U.S. ship off the Somali coast blew up a car carrying Saleh Ali Nabhan. While several hovered overhead, one set down long enough for troops to scoop up enough of the remains for DNA verification. Moments later, the helicopters were headed back to the ship. The strike was considered a major success, according to senior administration and military officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the classified operation and other sensitive matters. But the opportunity to interrogate one of the most wanted U.S. terrorism targets was gone forever. The Nabhan decision was one of a number of similar choices the administration has faced over the past year as President Obama has escalated U.S. attacks on the leadership of al-Qaeda and its allies around the globe. The result has been dozens of targeted killings and no reports of high-value detentions. To say the least, this is not a man who has learned anything about fighting the War on Terror from the death of bin Laden, rather he sees the death of bin Laden as nothing more or less than a monkey that is no longer on his back and it gives him good reason to declare victory both in Afghanistan and in the War on Terror in general. Our ability to kill or capture terrorists, roll up their networks, and interfere with their operations is being degraded by the lack of fresh information while the administration continues to act like a tee ball team, all the while talking about its “gutsy call.”
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Obama Winds Down the War on Terror
The most transparent administration in history is having a little trouble with its transparency, down to refusing to show up to explain itself to pesky congressional committees. Spectator alum Phil Klein reports : The Republican-led House Energy and Commerce’s subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations is holding a hearing on the Obama White House’s lack of transparency, but the White House did not send any representatives to testify, despite a GOP request… Republicans on the committee highlighted reports that lobbyists started deregistering from the official lobbying disclosure system in 2008 as Obama spoke of not allowing them to hold positions in the White House, and the deregistration rate spiked in 2009 once Obama announced the policy. Meanwhile, the committee said, that “White House staff have purposely and repeatedly circumvented … visitor logs by meeting with lobbyists at Caribou Coffee and other locations outside of the White House.” Subcommittee chairman Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., also noted that the Obama administration granted 32 waivers from the lobbying ban. One of the witnesses, Anne Weismann, is the chief counsel of the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), a transparency group that had to sue to the Obama administration to get it to release visitor logs that are supposed to be released under the Freedom of Information Act. Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) argued that the White House was a no-show because the Republicans gave them only six days notice and wouldn’t reschedule the hearing. But sources have told me this kind of behavior is routine, not limited to one isolated example or single scheduling conflict.
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Obama White House Doesn’t Show Up to Transparency Probe
Filed under: National Security , Woman Up , PD Investigations , WikiLeaks I have a fondness for the current generation of hackers — inveterate snoops and mostly harmless believers in open access, driven by a commitment to transparency and a subtle addiction to cyber safe-cracking.
