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Three months before the Times Square terror bombing by a Pakistani-American with ties to terrorists in Pakistan, the Obama administration knew the style of attack, the type of explosives to be used and when the attack would come, yet when the attack happened the administration played dumb with its initial reaction being to downplay the attack as an unsophisticated "one-off" that was a "potential" terror attack.On February 10, I wrote an article at FR based on Vice President Joe Biden's comments about coming terror attacks on the U.S. that were broadcast later that day on CNN's Larry King Live.King mentioned...

There’s no better way to summarize president Obama’s approach to fighting the war against jihad than this: For the next three years, we’re betting our safety on the proposition that Islamic thugs and terrorists will prove to be more incompetent than the Obama administration. In the aftermath of the Times Square bombing attempt, is there another way to consider it? How many “isolated incidents” have to pile up before the president wakes up to the fact that there’s a pattern, one that just might have something to do with a particular fundamentalist religious outlook, and that the politically correct bunker...

In the wake of the Times Square bombing plot, the Obama administration said on Sunday it wants to work with Congress on possible limitations of the constitutional rights afforded terrorism suspects — even for American citizens. Attorney General Eric Holder said changes may be needed to allow law enforcement more time to question suspected terrorists before they are told about their Miranda rights to a lawyer and to remain silent under interrogation. As the nation debates how to proceed against terrorist attacks, particularly as they have become the work of individuals who are difficult to detect in advance, the administration...

More hope and change… Faisal Shahzad was removed from the national terrorist surveillance list before the Times Square attack. Confessed terrorist Faisal Shahzad was removed from the Department of Homeland Security travel lookout list sometime after Barack Obama came into office.

Deep inside a New York Times profile of the accused Times Square bomber — “From Suburban Father to a Terrorism Suspect” – there is this: George LaMonica, a 35-year-old computer consultant, said he bought his two-bedroom condominium in Norwalk, Conn., from Mr. Shahzad for $261,000 in May 2004. A few weeks after he moved in, Mr. LaMonica said, investigators from the national Joint Terrorism Task Force interviewed him, asking for details of the transaction and for information about Mr. Shahzad. It struck Mr. LaMonica as unusual, but he said detectives told him they were simply “checking everything out. In recent...

Confessed terrorist Faisal Shahzad was removed from the Department of Homeland Security travel lookout list sometime after Barack Obama came into office. CBS reported:

Major Update Below!As I posted yesterday, there was a disturbing blurb in a NY Times article that indicated Faisal Shahzad, the now infamous Times Square Bomber, was under surveillance as a potential terrorist during the Bush administration. George LaMonica, a 35-year-old computer consultant, said he bought his two-bedroom condominium in Norwalk, Conn., from Mr. Shahzad for $261,000 in May 2004. A few weeks after he moved in, Mr. LaMonica said, investigators from the national Joint Terrorism Task Force [JTTF] interviewed him, asking for details of the transaction and for information about Mr. Shahzad. It struck Mr. LaMonica as unusual, but...

(CNSNews.com) – Four months after the attempted Christmas Day bombing of Northwest Flight 253 over Detroit and nine years after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, only 14 of the 57 U.S. consulates identified as being at “high risk” for potentially providing visas to terrorists have been furnished with units of the Department of Homeland Security’s Visa Security Program (VSP). President Barack Obama, meanwhile, is planning to freeze the program’s budget for fiscal 2011.

<p>Military Justice: The first of three Navy SEALs charged with abusing a captured jihadist has been cleared. Why has this administration taken the word of terrorists and let American heroes twist in the wind?</p> <p>The acquittal of Petty Officer 1st Class Julio Huertas, 29, of Blue Island, Ill., by a six-member U.S. military jury in Baghdad on Thursday is good news and the correct verdict.</p>

Known to US soldiers as the Valley of Death, it's been the scene of the some of the most intense fighting in the war in Afghanistan. After years of intense fighting, the US has left its remote outpost in the Korengal Valley, in the country's east. Al Jazeera's James Bays has more on the move, which the US calls a re-positioning of forces, but which the Taliban has declared a US defeat.

Terrorists including al-Qaeda pose a serious threat to world security as they attempt to obtain atomic weapons material, Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, declared on the eve of a global summit in Washington to prevent a nuclear terror attack. President Obama will call on the leaders of 47 nations today — the biggest gathering of heads of state by a US leader since the founding of the UN in 1945 — to introduce tougher safeguards to prevent nuclear material ending up in the hands of terrorists. As far back as 1998, Osama bin Laden stated that it was...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- If al-Qaida acquired nuclear weapons it "would have no compunction at using them," President Barack Obama said Sunday on the eve of a summit aimed at finding ways to secure the world's nuclear stockpile.

CAIRO -- Osama bin Laden threatened in a new message released Thursday to kill any Americans al-Qaida captures if the U.S. executes the self-professed mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks or other al-Qaida suspects. In the 74-second audiotape aired on Al-Jazeera television, the al-Qaida leader explicitly mentions Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who was captured in Pakistan in 2003. He is the most senior al-Qaida operative in U.S. custody and is currently detained at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. In 2008, the U.S. charged Mohammed with murder and war crimes in connection with the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on...

WASHINGTON, March 24, 2010 – This summer will mark the first time since 2003 that the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan will overshadow the American presence in Iraq, the top U.S. military officer told Congress today. Driving the eclipse is the 30,000-troop surge President Barack Obama announced for Afghanistan in December, roughly a third of which is in place, and with 18,000 of the additional forces expected to be in Afghanistan by late spring as troop levels in Iraq continue to drop. “Indeed, by the middle of this year, Afghanistan will surpass Iraq, for the first time since 2003,...

Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top commander of American and NATO troops in Afghanistan, contradicted the attorney general on Wednesday when he said that actually, the military still wants to capture Osama bin Laden alive. “I think that is something that is understood by everyone,’’ he said. But perhaps not by Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., who on Tuesday told a House subcommittee that the chances of capturing Mr. bin Laden alive were “infinitesimal” and that he would either be killed by the United States or killed by his own people. “The reality is that we will be reading...

Justice Department officials are firing back at Republican critics who have accused them of being soft on terror, saying they are the ones putting American lives at risk. The comments are the first time that Justice Department officials have struck back publicly after being on the defensive for months. In a recent hearing on Capitol Hill and in separate interviews with Fox News, high-ranking Justice Department officials said new efforts by Republicans to ban or limit the use of civilian courts for terrorism suspects would damage the U.S. government's ability to obtain intelligence and thwart potential attacks.

Would most Americans want to know if the Justice Department had hired a bunch of mob lawyers and put them in charge of mob cases? Or a group of drug cartel lawyers and put them in charge of drug cases? Would they want their elected representatives to find out who these lawyers were, which mob bosses and drug lords they had worked for, and what roles they were now playing at the Justice Department? Of course they would -- and rightly so. Yet Attorney General Eric Holder hired former al-Qaeda lawyers to serve in the Justice Department and resisted providing...

Sen. Lindsey Graham said Sunday that he would help the White House convince his fellow Republicans to support closing Guantanamo Bay if President Obama reverses course and sends the alleged Sept. 11 mastermind and his co-conspirators to military tribunals. Sen. Lindsey Graham said Sunday that he would help the White House convince his fellow Republicans to support closing Guantanamo Bay if President Obama reverses course and sends the alleged Sept. 11 mastermind and his co-conspirators to military tribunals. The South Carolina Republican is considered to be a key player in the administration's strategy to close the detainee camp at Guantanamo....

The recent battle in Marjah in Afghanistan's Helmand province was a key test case for new rules of engagement that emphasized protecting civilians rather than killing insurgents. The town was taken, but whether that was because of the new rules or despite them remains to be seen. The rules of engagement are probably the most restrictive ever seen for a war of this nature. NATO forces cannot fire on suspected Taliban fighters unless they are clearly visible, armed and posing a direct threat. Buildings suspected of containing insurgents cannot be targeted unless it is certain that civilians are not also...

Security experts often stress the urgency and importance of stronger collaboration between the private and public sectors if we hope to turn the tide against the growing number of cyber-threats on the nation's economy and security. So many were happy to hear the Obama administration's top cyber-security official, Howard Schmidt, say in one of his first public addresses since he took the job last year that improving these partnerships will be a priority of his office. And to that effect, Schmidt's office declassified today some of the Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative documents, a secretive plan drafted by the Bush administration...