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War On Terror: The Justice Department employs nine lawyers previously involved in the defense of terrorist detainees. This is a colossal conflict of interest. Just whose side are they on? From the dropping of a voter-intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party to the decision to try 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Muhammed in a civilian court within blocks of where the World Trade Center once stood, the actions and attitudes of the Justice Department and Attorney General Eric Holder toward the thugs and terrorists who threaten us has grown curiouser and curiouser. We may now have a clue as...

Republicans were up in arms last week — and rightly so — over the outrageous accusation by John Brennan, President Obama’s top anti-terrorism advisor, that his critics “only serve the goals of al Qaeda.” Sen. Christopher Bond (R-Mo.), vice chairman of the Intelligence Committee, said Brennan “needs to go” because he’s no longer “credible” on security matters. That’s putting it mildly. Indeed, there are several reasons — apart from his shamefully partisan name-calling — to question Brennan’s effectiveness. Start with the near-tragedy of the Christmas would-be airline bomber — who was foiled only by alert passengers: Brennan has admitted that...

Holder's decision to Mirandize the Christmas bomber was bad enough. Telling the world he was talking again waseven worse Security: The administration says the Christmas bomber is now cooperating with authorities. We thought they got all the information he had in a 50-minute chat. So just why are we letting our enemies know he's talking? In any war, it's vitally important that you know what your enemy is planning and doing, just as it's important that your actions and plans remain secret. And when you know about your enemy's plans it's important they don't know that you know. We were...

On January 7, President Obama finally gave us the “surprising” and indeed “shocking” details of the Christmas Day attempt by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab — the now infamous underpants bomber — to destroy an airliner and kill all aboard plus an unknown number of others on the ground. Things have not stood still since President Obama’s speech on January 7. Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair is reported to have said on January 20

There is that old saying, "almost doesn't count, except in horse shoes." It certainly doesn't count when trying to catch a terrorist with a bomb attached to his a private parts, designed to explode an airplane to smithereens over a major city. Today the LA Times discovered that the US learned some new intelligence about Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab right after his plane took off from Amsterdam. Government Officials were going to interviewing the terrorist as soon as he landed in Detroit.

Security: Two of the four leaders allegedly behind the attempted destruction of Flight 253 were released from Guantanamo two years ago. The case for indefinite detention has been made once again, and not in Illinois. Sometimes America's chickens do come home to roost. In a statement released Monday, al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, which counts among its leadership two former Guantanamo detainees, claimed responsibility for the attempted destruction of Northwest Airlines Flight 253. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the crotch bomber, told FBI agents he was trained for his Christmas Day mission in Yemen by top leaders of the group who provided...

"Big Sis" Janet Napolitano reassured nervous Americans not to worry -- Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's attempt to blow up Northwest Flight 253 did not indicate a larger terrorist plot. In an effort to respectfully restrain from jumping to conclusions, the Homeland Security Secretary refused to confirm whether Abdulmutallab had a connection to al-Qaida. Less than twenty-four hours later, Napolitano reconsidered her statement, admitting that maybe Abdulmutallab "should not have been allowed on the airplane." Napolitano said, "What I would say is our system did not work in this instance [emphasis mine] -- no one is happy or satisfied with that."...

HOUSTON — The man accused of trying to bring down a Detroit-bound U.S. airliner on Christmas Day spent two weeks in Houston last year attending a seminar conducted by a Web-based Islamic education center.

Hijackers Said to Seek Navy Targets Tue Aug 20, 3:29 PM ET By SETH HETTENA, Associated Press Writer SAN DIEGO (AP) - Investigators believe the San Diego-based Sept. 11 hijackers who helped crash an airliner into the Pentagon ( news - web sites) initially were sent to California to pinpoint targets in the Navy's largest West Coast port, a federal law enforcement source told The Associated Press. Investigators believe al-Qaida operatives Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar, who arrived in California in January 2000, most likely were assigned to identify San Diego-based Navy ships to attack, said the federal official, who...

Bleeding Hearts and Jihadi Revolving Doors Michelle Malkin Wednesday, December 30, 2009 Sen. Joe Lieberman was right to sound the alarm about Yemen in the wake of the Undy-Bomber's Christmas Day terror attack over American skies. But he was wrong to call it "tomorrow's war." The Yemen-based jihadist network has been at war with us for years -- since before the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions, since before Sept. 11 and well before our current commander in chief had begun his vaunted work as a community organizer. The bleeding-heart ostriches of the left are blaming (who else?) cowboy George W. Bush...

Keying off an article in the UK Times Online about Northwest Airlines flight 253 bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab organizing an antiwar seminar called "War on Terror Week", I did some quick research before the links get scrubbed.From the Times:According to isocnews.com, an online magazine for Muslim students, War on Terror Week at University College London was one of the events of the year in 2007. There was a slick video advertisement for the event, an eye-catching poster and packed lecture theatres for five days of discussions about Guantánamo Bay, allegations of torture and the subject of “Jihad v Terrorism”. The...

Iowahawk Special Guest Opinionby Umar Farouk AbdulmutallabYesterday while I was lying in the burn ward getting my crotch bandages changed, I had a chance to catch the air disaster movie marathon on TCM. The lineup included "Zero Hour," "The High and the Mighty," "Skyjacked," and "Airport '75." For all their campy fun and unintentional laughs, those corny old films really serve as a grim reminder how the whole in-flight terror experience has gone completely downhill since the jet set golden years of the 50's, 60's and 70's. What happened to all those pretty stewardesses and polite, well dressed infidels, screaming...

This attack demonstrates al Qaeda's sophistication and adaptation. The tactic Mr. Abdulmutallab used to bring the explosive onto Flight 253 will be particularly difficult to thwart. Shoe-bomber Richard Reid's failed attack forced air travelers to grow accustomed to removing footwear in airports; the impact of the "crotch bomb" on airline passengers can only be imagined. Once that's in place, killers could just move on to concealing bombs in more difficult-to-search places. In fact, they already have. In August, high-profile terror suspect Abdullah Asieri wounded Prince Mohammed Bin Nayef, Saudi Arabia's counterterrorism chief, after smuggling a pound of high explosives and...

In Online Posts Apparently by Detroit Suspect, Religious Ideals Collide By Philip Rucker and Julie Tate December 29, 2009 The 23-year-old Nigerian man accused of the attempted Christmas Day bombing of an American airliner apparently turned to the Internet for counseling and companionship, writing in an online forum that he was "lonely" and had "never found a true Muslim friend." "I have no one to speak too [sic]," read a posting from January 2005, when Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was attending boarding school. "No one to consult, no one to support me and I feel depressed and lonely. I do not...

If you’ve been wondering how alleged failed transatlantic underpants bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was able to board a plane for the U.S. after his father had warned of his terrorist sympathies, you need to understand the different data bases of suspected terrorists, and how they operate. The only entry in the US intelligence community’s principal electronic data base of suspected terrorists mentioning Abdulmutallab was based on a visit by the suspect’s father to the U.S. Embassy in Abuja, Nigera, according to two U.S. national security officials. Here is a chronology of what happened: Abdulmutallab’s father, wealthy Nigerian banker Dr. Alhaji...

Cell phone-related materials, including SIM cards, were recovered during searches of "flats or apartments of interest" connected to Flight 253 bomber suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, Fox News learned Monday. SIM cards, which store cell phone numbers and incoming or outgoing calls, may be able to determine who was talking to whom in the months and days prior to Abdulmutallab's flight from Nigeria to Detroit. The cards are now being analyzed as investigators continue searching locations where Abdulmutallab may have stayed. The discovery comes as a court hearing to determine whether the government can get DNA from the suspect was postponed....