“In this age of instant reporting and tweets and blogs, there's a temptation to latch on to any bit of information, sometimes to jump to conclusions,” said President Obama, in the late evening of April 19, after Dzokhar Tsarnaev was captured alive in Watertown, Mass. “But when a tragedy like this happens, with public safety at risk and the stakes so high, it's important that we do this right. That's why we have investigations. That's why we relentlessly gather the facts. That's why we have courts. And that's why we take care not to rush to judgment -- not about the motivations of these individuals; certainly not about entire groups of people.”
◼ Don’t Rule Out Anything - Stephen F. Hayes/Weekly Standard
Three days after the attempted bombing of an airplane on Christmas Day 2009, President Obama suggested that the attempted attack was the work of “an isolated extremist.” He made the claim despite the fact that the bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, told interrogators in interviews shortly after his capture that he’d worked with al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Five months later, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano called the attempted bombing of Times Square by Faisal Shahzad a “one off” attack. Other administration officials downplayed the likelihood of ties to foreign jihadists. But several days later, Attorney General Eric Holder acknowledged that the Pakistani Taliban “helped facilitate” the attack. “We know that they probably helped finance it and that he was working at their direction.”
Perhaps most famously, the Obama administration downplayed involvement of al Qaeda affiliated terrorists in the attacks in Benghazi on September 11, 2012. Despite ample evidence of their involvement – including real-time reporting from U.S. officials on the ground in Benghazi, a memo September 12 from the CIA station chief in Tripoli with details of the attacks and who conducted them, and communications intercepts from those involved in the assault – administration officials for days (even weeks) suggested that the attacks came spontaneously in response to an anti-Islam video.
These initial assessments fit nicely with the administration’s broader narrative about the end of the War on Terror and the imminent demise of al Qaeda. They were also wrong.
Why, then, would U.S. intelligence officials be ruling out ties to jihadist groups – or ruling out anything, for that matter – so early?
◼ The Story Behind the Bombers - Christopher Dickey, Eli Lake, Daniel Klaidman/Daily Beast
Americans tend to forget the long list of “holy wars” over the past 20 years, from Chechnya to Somalia to Nigeria, Iraq, Afghanistan, the hinterlands of Pakistan. But all were—and remain—potential spawning grounds for terrorists who want to put their cause in the public eye. Terrorists are usually young men who see themselves almost in chivalrous terms defending oppressed people—and not always their own. (Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s YouTube page is full of videos with references to Muslim knights of old.) They want global respect, or at least a global audience, for their acts. And where better to do that than in the United States? When better than at a public event watched by millions?
◼ Tamerlan Tsarnaev Was 5th Person Since 9-11 to Participate in Terrorist Activities Despite Being Under Federal Investigation - Gateway Pundit
◼ The “Mysterious Motive” Cover-Up on the Boston Attack Begins - Barry Rubin/PJM
Now that the two (main at least) terrorists from the Boston Marathon attack have been killed or captured we enter a new phase, the phase in which the dominant Politically Correct (but Factually Incorrect) forces try to explain away the attack.
Can this be done? Will they really try? Well, yes. True, as one of my correspondents remarked it is much easier to obfuscate far distant Benghazi than the total shutdown and horror in the middle of a major American city. Yet the spin-masters are already at work.
◼ Reminder: Boston bombers not the first refugee jihadist brothers to plot against America - Michelle Malkin
