The downward-spiral effect of America's terror policies

In the aftermath of President Obama's statement today on the "potentially disastrous" failure to stop Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab from boarding an airliner in an apparent bombing plot, Spencer Ackerman points out a distinction that should be highlighted when discussing what has been called a breakdown in connecting the dots by the intelligence community. Obama said the intel was available, but he then repeated the line about professionals within the intelligence apparatus missing the connections.

Ackerman:

But it’s not true that there was sufficient information “that would have placed the suspect on the no-fly list.” As a U.S. intelligence official told me last week, there is a standard for moving someone from a person-of-interest list run by the National Counterterrorism Center to the FBI-maintained Terrorist Screening Database. That standard is “specific derogatory information leading to reasonable suspicion.” And that FBI-maintained database still has another procedural and evidentiary step to go through before placing someone on the no-fly list.

In essence, if Obama wants to change the standards of how one lands on a no-fly list, he should do it. But to blame officials for not "connecting dots" isn't really accurate. As the official told Ackerman, there are certain standards to follow; simple suspicion has to take that extra step. Ackerman once more:

Obama can say that common sense dictates that Abdulmutallab ought to have been on the no-fly list. But that’s reasoning backward from the conclusion. It’s appropriate after a failure occurs. But it’s not appropriate as an explanation for how that failure occurred. The standard for placing someone on the no-fly list is simply not met by the aggregated intelligence that Obama cited (and he didn’t unveil any new information).

For the president to hawk this as a connecting-the-dots failure seems to be either disingenuous political theatre to put on a show for our feeble minds, or just a misunderstanding of the issue.

Speaking of political theatrics, the administration announced that several Yemenis kept at Guantanamo Bay for years, then found innocent of any crimes, must stay incarcerated due to the "deteriorating security situation" in Yemen, all so Americans can know that their Daddy president is protecting them from the evil terrorists.

Reuters:

President Barack Obama bowed to political pressure from Democratic and Republican lawmakers not to send any more prisoners to Yemen as a result of revelations that a would-be bomber on a Detroit-bound plane had received al Qaeda training in Yemen.

"It was always our intent to transfer detainees to other countries only under conditions that provide assurances that our security is being protected," Obama said.

"Given the unsettled situation, I've spoken to the attorney general (Eric Holder) and we've agreed that we will not be transferring additional detainees back to Yemen at this time," Obama said.

As Andy Worthington has pointed out in his dogged coverage of Guantanamo Bay, this rationale is bad policy at best (in that it only threatens to radicalize more than it protects anyone's safety) and against the rule of law at worst.

“only at Guantánamo can fear trump justice to such an alarming degree” that, “if [the officials’] rationale for not releasing any of the Yemenis from Guantánamo was extended to the US prison system, it would mean that no prisoner would ever be released at the end of their sentence, because prison ‘might have radicalized’ them, and also, of course, that it would lead to no prisoner ever being released from Guantánamo.”

Our monarchical structure says we can indefinitely detain anyone we deem a threat. From Bush to Obama, this is set American policy. Can anyone claim with a straight face that any president in the near future will reverse these policies based on A) today's support torture by (at least) one political party and an alarming number of Americans who have been instilled with fear at every turn, B) our spineless, constantly-posturing political class and C) an irresponsible, for-profit mainstream media that will exploit TERROR! and FEAR! and DANGER! to cull ratings.

So at this point, we're left with what could be called Terrorball, the unwinnable game of fear and paranoia brought to you by Washington's ruling and chattering classes.

Our national government and almost all of the establishment media have decided to play a similar game, which could be called Terrorball. The first two rules of Terrorball are:

(1) The game lasts until there are no longer any terrorists, and;
(2) If terrorists manage to ever kill or injure or seriously frighten any Americans, they win.

Read the entire post at Lawyers, Guns and Money. He shares statistics detailing the number of deaths in America unrelated to terrorism, but caused but things we have accepted as normal, as in starvation, homicide and lack of health care.

Ladies and gentlemen, your America in 2010.