Boston: The Price of Distraction

by Dick Morris | April 17, 2013 12:03 am

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 our homeland defense. 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 that 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 those they investigate. The chances of getting indicted for overzealousness or making a career ending mistake loom before them, 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 Guantanamo. 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 manual, 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 kind persuasion!

We have no idea as this is being written whether this terror attack — which, indeed it was — has been perpetrated by an international organization or a lone wolf. Whichever, we were caught napping.

Until now, with the exception of the Fort Hood massacre and the Little Rock shooting of a U.S. soldier, we have not had blood spilled on our soil due to terrorism since 9/11. But it has been as much due to our efforts as to their 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 December 25, 2009, a Nigerian man tried to ignite a bomb hidden in his underwear on a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit. It failed to detonate. Hundreds were saved through nothing but dumb luck.

–On December 22, 2001, a bomber failed to detonate a bomb hidden in his shoe on a plane from Paris to Miami and alert passengers were able to subdue him. 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.

–On May 10, 2010 a pipe bomb in Jacksonville, Fla. exploded while sixty Muslims were praying in a mosque but, 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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