The Patriot Post® · Islamists Attack Christmas Party

Barack Obama’s timing is impeccable.

As you recall, hours before the bloody Islamist attack in Paris three weeks ago, Obama was asked about the strength of the Islamic State and the spread of ISIL surrogates to the West. He offered these words of assurance regarding the metastasizing threat of the Islamic State’s terror campaign: “We have contained them.”

Apparently not.

Wednesday morning, Obama was asked in a CBS interview if an attack like the one in Paris could happen here. He responded: “We have to make sure that we keep a clear-eyed view about what needs to be done. ISIL is not going to pose an existential threat to us. … [O]ur homeland has never been more protected by more effective intelligence and law enforcement professionals at every level than [it is] now. If you look at the number of successful terrorist attacks that have occurred, you know, we have disrupted a lot of them…”

Apparently not.

Hours after that remark, two Islamists targeted an office Christmas party in San Bernardino, California, and murdered 14 people, wounding 17 others.

As for Obama’s claim about being safer now than ever, an hour before the attack yesterday, we published my column, “The Escalating Cost of Obama’s Foreign Policy Failures.” In that column, I refuted Obama’s absurd claim, and reiterated, “Make no mistake: The same sort of bloody mayhem we witnessed in Paris is coming to a homeland theater near you. Indeed, a timeline review of the frequency of Islamist attacks in the U.S. clearly shows a sharp increase beginning with Obama’s first year in office.”

Obama was asked about the California assault shortly after his CBS interview, prior to the apprehension and identification of the assailants. Unable to blame global warming for the California assault, predictably, Obama used the bodies of victims as a platform to advance his gun-control agenda, telling reporters, “There are some steps that we could take, not to eliminate every one of these mass shootings, but to improve the odds that they don’t happen as frequently — common sense safety laws.”

Actually not. California has some of the most restrictive gun laws in the nation (and even those don’t remotely equal the laws in France, where assailants used fully automatic weapons). And for the record, improvised explosive devices are easy to construct, and do a lot more damage than guns — as demonstrated in Paris.

While the details of yesterday’s Islamist assault are a bit clearer this morning, we thought you might want some perspective on how we analyzed this incident in real time, versus the 24-hour news folks at CNN and Fox. What follows are excerpts from my rolling analysis for our editorial team, followed by what we know now.

1645 (Eastern Time Zone): Astounding now, 2.5 hours after this assault, SBPD has not issued an official confirmation of how many assailants, what vehicle, etc. Fox and CNN ramble on with endless speculation about how many “shooters” and what vehicle.

1645: My LAPD contact confirms at least two assailants and black SUV. One assailant has an Arabic name — significant because this implies an organized assault and possible Islamist motive. As the MSM talkingheads continue with their claptrap, what none of them have said, but we all know for certain: This assault occurred in a “gun free zone.”

1745: CNN and Fox continued regurgitating the most inane garbage for the last 3.5 hours — stupid speculation about every aspect of assault. That’s totally disrespectful of the victims and their families. Dumbest remarks: “sending in a robotic robot” and a reference to “explosive bombs.” The only person who has less information than the MSM is the spokeswoman for the San Bernardino PD. Her statements are about an hour behind the handful of actual facts in the media coverage.

1915: LAPD contact confirms owner of vehicle is “Syed Farook” and second assailant not known. Still possible a third assailant. According to sources, assailant walked by a lot of people on the first floor, to target second floor meeting room, county employees at Christmas party. Clearly a connection between the assailant and the targeted group. Want to bet Obama turns this into “workplace violence” because of religious intolerance? Bad Christians intolerant of Muslim coworker?

2045: SBPD finally confirms two assailants dead, one suspect detained. LA FBI ASAC all but confirms “terrorism.” Name of assailant might be a clue… CNN braying jackass Don Lemon and “psychological expert” insists this attack fits Obama’s “mentally ill gunman” narrative, regardless of religion of assailant. Insists more gun control is the solution.

This morning, here’s more of what we know:

Fourteen people were murdered at a San Bernardino Christmas party by two people armed with handguns and semiautomatic rifles, a.k.a. “assault weapons,” as the Leftmedia nefariously dubs them.

The attack was the deadliest since 27 were murdered in Newtown, Connecticut in 2012. The Leftmedia, meanwhile, is hysterically reporting that it’s the 355th mass shooting this year. Their source? A small group of anti-gun malcontents running a propaganda website that purports to tally such incidents. To inflate the numbers, the group includes, for example, incidents involving pellet guns. Fully a third of the shootings they count left no one dead, and many of the others are gang-related.

Yesterday’s attackers were killed after a police chase, and identified as Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik. As you may have guessed by reading their names, they were Muslim. They were also married. Farook was a health inspector for the San Bernardino County Department of Public Health, which was hosting the party the perpetrators targeted.

“He was very religious,” Farook’s father said of his son. “He would go to work, come back, go to pray, come back. He’s Muslim.” Farook traveled to Saudi Arabia recently and began growing out his beard, which may signify religious observance. And a couple wouldn’t leave their six-month-old child with Farook’s mother to undertake what would almost certainly be a suicide-by-cop mission without a greater motivation.

The two had bombs and other such items at their home, and the tactical gear they used in the attack indicates planning, certainly not the Obama administration’s favorite standby, “workplace violence.”

Indeed, in a press conference this morning, Obama insisted, “We don’t know why they did it. … We do not know their motivations.” But he then launched his preferred assessment: “It is also possible this is workplace related.” He repeated that claim multiple times, along with references to “mass shootings” to keep the focus on weapons, rather than “mass murder,” keeping the focus on assailants. He concluded, “We see the prevalence of these kinds of mass shooting in this country. … We all have a part to play. … It’s going to be important for all of us — including the legislatures — to see what we can do.”

Notably, Obama did not mention the most relevant fact in terms of motive — the fact the assailants were Muslim.