We got it wrong in Detroit. From Michael Hayden, former Director of the C.I.A from 2006-2009

For the first 50 minutes we were doing this the right way, well for the most
part. Then the order came in to stop interrogating the Islamic terrorist Umar
Farouk Abdulmutallab. He was then read his Miranda rights( remember, this
almost successful Islamic terrorist is NOT an American citizen) and granted
this future martyr the cover of our Constitution. Please recal that just two or
three days into his administration President Obama issued an executive
order that limited all interrogations by the U.S. government to the
techniques authorized in the Army Field Manual. Even in the earliest
days of the Obama administration, the rules of engagement started
changing, and not for the better. This is a really good op-ed and hope you
will take the time to read all of it. Obama is public enemy #1 to this Patriot.

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Michael V. Hayden

We got it wrong in Detroit on Christmas Day. We allowed an enemy combatant the protections of our Constitution before we had adequately interrogated him. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab is not "an isolated extremist." He is the tip of the spear of a complex al-Qaeda plot to kill Americans in our homeland.

Flight 253 and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab

In the 50 minutes the FBI had to question him, agents reportedly got actionable intelligence. Good. But were there any experts on al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in the room (other than Abdulmutallab)? Was there anyone intimately familiar with any National Security Agency raw traffic to, from or about the captured terrorist? Did they have a list or photos of suspected recruits?

When questioning its detainees, the CIA routinely turns the information provided over to its experts for verification and recommendations for follow-up. The responses of these experts -- "Press him more on this, he knows the details" or "First time we've heard that" -- helps set up more detailed questioning.

None of that happened in Detroit. In fact, we ensured that it wouldn't. After the first session, the FBI Mirandized Abdulmutallab and -- to preserve a potential prosecution -- sent in a "clean team" of agents who could have no knowledge of what Abdulmutallab had provided before he was given his constitutional warnings. As has been widely reported, Abdulmutallab then exercised his right to remain silent.

In retrospect, the inadvisability of this approach seems self-evident. Perhaps it didn't appear that way on Dec. 25 because we have, over the past year, become acclimated to certain patterns of thought.
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Hat Tip: Flopping Aces

The problems with upgrading security for airlines: It will never be able to keep up.

The Israeli airline El Al has the best safety record of all airlines.
The security measures they use are perhaps unfeasible for our much larger
airlines. We could incorporate some of what El Al uses. Banning many Muslims
from flights(how about all), profiling, more air marshals and other tactics
used by the Israeli airline. Like Obama would use tactics and methods
used by the Israeli state or Jews? Come on now, be serious!


Airline Security: Gentle Solutions to a Vexing Problem
Stratfor Intelligence



"Preventing attacks against U.S. airliners would require unrealistically invasive and inconvenient measures that the airline industry and American society are simply not prepared to implement. El Al, Israel’s national airline, is one international carrier that conducts thorough searches of every passenger and every handbag, runs checked luggage through a decompression chamber and has two air marshals on each flight. The airline also refuses to let some people (including many Muslims) on board. While these practices have been successful in preventing terrorist attacks against the airline, they are not in line with American and European culture and President Obama’s insistence that measures remain consistent with privacy rights and civil liberties. It is also economically and politically unfeasible for major U.S. airlines operating hundreds of flights per day from hundreds of different cities to impose measures such as those followed by El Al, an airline with fewer planes and a smaller area of operation.

And as long as U.S. airport security relies on screening techniques that are only moderately invasive, there will be holes that innovative attackers will be able to exploit. While screening technology is advancing, there is nothing in the foreseeable future that would be able to do more screening with less invasiveness. The U.S. prison system grapples with the same problem, and even there, where inmates are searched far more invasively than air travelers, contraband is still able to flow into facilities.

The lack of coordination among agencies in CT investigations is an old problem that dates back well before 9/11. This challenge lies in the fact that the U.S. intelligence community is broken up into specific agencies — each with its own specific jurisdiction and incentive to leverage its power in Washington by controlling the flow of information. This system ensures that no single agency becomes too powerful and self-interested, but it also fractures the intelligence community and bureaucratizes intelligence sharing."

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SIOA: A Confluence of Folly(Part two)

Here is the second part of A Confluence of Folly from SIOA. Please just read
both parts if you have not already read the first. The battle is against Islam as a whole.



"The idea that Islamic terrorism, violence and hate against Americans is poverty-driven, or a response to some particular American foreign policy (cf. support of Israel, another frontline state in the jihad war) is now clearly debunked after the most recent attack by a wealthy, privileged Islamic terrorist. Islamic terror is motivated by Islamic doctrine; we are the target because we exist.

The adherents of Islamic doctrine attack us because they hate us, they hate us simply because we exist. El Al takes security very seriously, we Americans do not; Israel is very successful with airline security because they ask questions and are not concerned with ridiculous politically correct self-censorship. Relying entirely on technology and ignoring the human component of a potential attacker has already failed."



We live in a time of the confluence of dangerous cultural, intellectual, ethical, moral, and political failures. At a time when American exceptionalism and importance should be encouraged and understood across the country and the world it is diminished instead. When American jobs and livelihoods should be protected and made safe they are undermined by open porous borders and an immigration policy that is neither a proper national policy nor of benefit to newcomers or citizens.

We live in a time when security considerations are built upon absurd concepts of extreme tolerance and a total aversion to cause offense to anyone most particularly those who may be threats. We live in a time of rampaging folly.

We live in a time shaped by definitive concepts of good and evil and right and wrong; there are those who do not share our concepts and hate us for the ideals that we embrace. We are hated because we are not Islamic and we are hated because we help Islam, but never enough. There is no unifying this contradiction as we always remain kafirs to the Islamic umma. No matter how much we help, no matter how “good” we are, the adherents of Islam fight us as they are commanded to do so by Allah and Mohammed.

So obey not the disbelievers, but strive against them herewith with a great endeavour. (Koran, 25:52)

There is bliss across the world at our American failures to acknowledge the truth and tears of frustration here at home at our continuing failure to speak the truth and to fight the enemy and his totalitarian ideology. We fought a devastating civil war over a century ago to end slavery; let us not overturn the results of that struggle by denying that slavery is our future if we do not once again unite in the concepts that have given us the finest country, the light unto the world, so far seen on this planet.


Continue reading part two

Confluence of Folly(Part one)