TRIAL BY ERROR

John Brennan, President Obama's Assistant National Security Advisor, made the rounds on the Sunday talk shows. He seemed to have two points to make. The first was that Janet Napolitano, Secretary of Homeland Security, is not the fool that she appeared to be when she said "the system worked" in the Christmas attack on a U.S. airliner. He assured us that the president has full confidence in her. I think at this very moment that Janet is evaluating whether she should be spending more time with her family back home.
Brennan's second message was that the terrorist, Abdulmutallab, (trained, armed, and directed by Al-Qaida in the Arab Peninsula) was properly charged as a criminal defendant, rather than being detained as an enemy combatant. He acknowledged that this second course was available, but the administration's considered judgement was that the guy should be treated as a criminal with full constitutional protections. This must be a lie.
Abdulmutallab was immediately arrested by the FBI. There was no time for anyone to debate the issue, flip a coin, or bounce it by Barack. Clearly, it is the considered opinion of the president and Eric Holder that all terrorists who survive suicide bombing attacks deserve the constitutioonal protections we would grant a car-jacker.
Brennan was asked if it would not have been preferable for the terrorist to have been questioned by military or intelligence personnel to see what kind of exigent information he might have offered regarding other pending attacks, or his own contacts with Al-Qaida. Brennan allowed that the guy did start talking immediately, but after he was lawyered up, he stopped talking.
However, this did not mean to Brennan that the terrorist would never talk. No, Brennan felt that when the guy saw what kind of trouble he was in, he would start talking again in a plea-bargain scenario.
ARE YOU KIDDING ME? We already plan to negotiate with the terrorist? We think a would-be suicide bomber may be so afraid of a lethal injection that he will beg to snitch so that he can live for 50 years in a super-max prison?
So President Obama is compounding his mistake of trying Kaleed Shiek-Mohammad in federal court in New York. And he is doing it to show that, being a nation of laws, we are being true to our values. What a load of crap!