Columnist.
It was just as frightening, and in its own way even more infuriating, than the almost successful attempt to blow up Northwest Flight 253 as it approached Detroit on Christmas Day. I'm talking about the wholly unacceptable comment/excuse offered by this country's secretary of supposed Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano: "I think the important thing to recognize here is that once this incident occurred, everything happened as it should have."
The president and commander-in-chief had pledged to close the brig at Guantanamo by January 22. So what's he going to do with the prisoners there now? Turn them loose? Surely not. Instead, it's been decided to move the prison, or at least part of it, to a site at Thomson, Ill., on that state's western edge. Call it Gitmo on the Mississippi.
Why is the Obama administration transferring Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who proudly proclaims himself the mastermind of the September 11 attacks, to a federal district court in New York? Has the defendant tired of the tropical breezes at Guantanamo? Would a change of scenery to the urban reaches of lower Manhattan improve his spirits? Or just those of a new administration bent on change if only for change's sake?
A familiar pattern emerges after every treacherous assault on this country. The surprise attack is dissected not just to learn who wreaked all the havoc, but who was responsible for missing the clues that it was coming. It happened after Pearl Harbor, when Americans wanted to know why it took so long to get the warning to Hawaii, particularly because our people in Washington knew an attack was likely, having broken the Japanese diplomatic code. Why, on that Sunday morning, December 7, 1941, were our aircraft lined up wingtip to wingtip at Hickam Field just waiting to be taken out by Japanese dive-bombers and fighters? It had to be a conspiracy!
