Byron York reports on the Republican response to John Brennan’s accusation that criticism of the Obama administration’s handling of the EunuchBomber amounts to assisting al-Qaeda. Senator Kit Bond and Rep. Pete Hoekstra, the ranking Republicans on the intelligence committees, blasted the White House for its accusations and its handling of the Christmas Day attack. Instead of following Barack Obama’s “the buck stops with me” approach, they accuse administration officials of passing the buck for their own failures:
“The only one making this political is the White House,” says Bond in a statement. “The administration must do better, because trying to pass the buck for their dangerous decisions and divulging sensitive information to al Qaeda is not an effective terror-fighting strategy.”
Hoekstra, too, sees a White House trying to deflect blame from itself for the decision to grant Abdulmutallab full American constitutional rights. “In the last week, the Obama administration has made the calculation that, ‘We’re doing so poorly on national security, let’s blame the Republicans, and let’s say that any criticism of our policies is dangerous to national security and is purely political,'” Hoekstra told me.
In a Wall Street Journal op-ed written prior to the release of Brennan’s, William McGurn notices that the rhetoric at the White House has completely changed after the botched attack. Instead of distancing themselves from the Bush administration’s policies, Obama and his team have wrapped themselves in the Bush cloak:
This weekend, Americans were treated to something new: Barack Obama defending his war policies by suggesting they merely continue his predecessor’s practices. The defense is illuminating, not least for its implicit recognition that George W. Bush has more credibility on fighting terrorists than does the sitting president. …
Leave aside, for just a moment, the substance. Far more arresting is that Mr. Obama now defends himself by invoking a man he has spent the past year blaming for al Qaeda’s growth. You know—all those Niebuhrian speeches about how America had gone “off course,” “shown arrogance and been dismissive,” and “made decisions based on fear rather than foresight,” thus handing al Qaeda a valuable recruiting tool.
Others have happily piled on. John Brennan, a career CIA holdover, used his first public appearance last August as Mr. Obama’s counterterrorism chief to declare a new dawn. No longer would America’s policies serve as “a recruitment bonanza for terrorists.” No longer would we be “defining and indeed distorting our entire national security apparatus” because of terrorism. Henceforth, Mr. Obama would abandon the “global war” mindset, and take care not to “validate al Qaeda’s twisted worldview.”
Like Mr. Obama, Mr. Brennan was singing a different tune this weekend. On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” a testy Mr. Brennan defended the decision that allowed Christmas bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to lawyer up by invoking—you guessed it—the Bush administration. Mr. Brennan claimed the process for reading Abdulmutallab his Miranda rights was “the same process that we have used for every other terrorist who has been captured on our soil.” The FBI, he asserted, was simply following guidelines put in place by Bush Attorney General Michael Mukasey.
Mr. Mukasey begs to differ. “First, the guidelines Mr. Brennan refers to involve intelligence gathering,” he told me. “They do not deal with whether someone in custody is to be treated as a criminal defendant or as an intelligence asset.”
“Second, as for gathering intelligence, it begs the whole question about whether he [Abdulmutallab] should have been designated a criminal suspect. And there is nothing—zero, zilch, nada—in those guidelines that makes that choice. It is a decision that ought to be made at the highest level, and the heads of our security agencies have testified that it was made without consulting them.”
Hoekstra also demanded some salient facts from the White House:
As one of the leading critics of the administration’s anti-terror policies, Hoekstra believes Brennan’s comments are directed at him, among others. “He’s accusing me of distorting of misleading the facts,” Hoekstra says. “So John, let’s talk about what the facts are. Did Janet Napolitano say we were going to get rid of the term ‘terrorism’ and use ‘man-made disasters’ or not? Did the president commit to closing Gitmo within one year or didn’t he? Did he commit to moving the trial of KSM from Cuba to New York City or didn’t he? Did the national security team refuse to identify Ft. Hood as a terrorist attack or not? Did you Mirandize the Christmas Day bomber or didn’t you? Did you hold a press conference to tell the world that he was cooperating or didn’t you? Those are all policy decisions. If I’ve got the facts wrong, where are those facts wrong?”
“They’re like, ‘Don’t criticize us because we’re right and you’re aiding the enemy,” says Hoekstra. “That’s totally inaccurate. We’re arguing for policies that we think will keep American safe, and we are arguing against policies that we think jeopardize our national security.”
But … but … the White House today declared that argument was off-limits, Rep. Hoekstra! It’s not patriotic to question their war and counterterrorism policies — convenient timing, to be sure, while they attempt to hide behind the skirts of the man Obama and his allies bitterly criticized for the last three years.
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