NYC, Terrorism, And Inconvenient Truths For The Right

Failed Times Square bomber, Faisal Shahzad, poses a very interesting problem for not just the Obama administration, but the entire country - that includes conservatives, by the way.

While conservatives are forming the narrative that this was an abject failure of Homeland Security, I have to question several aspects of those claims. True, the no-fly list was ineffective on this front, but Federal agents spotted Shazad's name on the passenger manifest and were able to capture him.

It's called a "fall-back provision". When one system doesn't catch something or someone up-front, the secondary provisions are there to correct the incident. And while this paints the picture for conservatives that the Feds were nothing more than bumbling keystone cops. The reality is that law enforcement did great job in gathering information that lead to Shazad's arrest. The only caveat to that was how he was able to make it onto the plane.

The reality of using tracking systems like the no-fly list is that the reliability of them are largely predicated on one person making the proper call at the right time. Considering the timeline of actions between Shazad's poorly constructed "bomb" and police discovering his identity, I'm not too surprised ( but still troubled ) that a TSA screener missed the opportunity to catch him up front.

------------------------------------

Conservatives are foaming at the mouth with this one. They are doing their level best to play all the angles that they refused to look at when Bush was in office and even are creating the narrative that the "mainstream media" are about to blame Bush for this incident. Predictable and quite frustrating to deal with as well.

Malkin seems to be taking the "Arizona" approach by hinting that we should prevent immigrants from the middle east from marrying. This is already an issue of sorts in various portions of America, as immigrants will attempt to marry a natural born citizen to gain their own citizenship. This has not been shown to be the case with Shahzad, though Malkin is cultivating that theme. And while her piece takes to task how at various points in the past 20 years some "terrorists" have been shown to use the marriage angle to gain entrance into America, I'm wondering where all the abject rage and purse-lipped anger was in regards to the Bush administration. After all, this is surely a touchy subject for an anchor baby.

There were many instances like this that occurred on Bush's watch - Richard Reid, The Ft. Dix Plot, and the JFK airport plot.

Conservatives weren't even a fraction as critical towards the Bush administration and how the investigations were handled. These were all "terrorists" that were equally as amateurish as - if not more so - Shahzad.

The intel and resources used to capture Shahzad worked, even with the lapse in communication. There's even a report out that an army surveillance plane was the key in finding out where Shahzad was headed - they traced his call while he was reserving his ticket. However, this story is slowly being walked-back, likely due to the fact that this was more than likely not to be reported.

And while conservatives and their media masters are going to spin this incident to their own ideological advantage, the reality is that Shahzad was captured in less than 54 hours from when the make-believe bomb was intended to go off.

I'm not going to claim that this was a perfect situation and it was handled with 100% accuracy - that's never going to happen. Anyone claiming the contrary is so divorced from reality that they honestly shouldn't be commenting on issues like this to begin with. There will likely be steps taken to improve communication and intelligence gathering, and that's already starting to happen, and with the information garnered from Shahzad during interrogation ( which is ongoing as of yesterday ) we will learn more about any possible connections he may have had.

Despite what conservatives claim, the Obama administration has a far better record than the Bush administration regarding specific aspects of combating terrorism. And while "close calls" such as this shouldn't be minimized, it's just as bad - if not worse - to over-inflate and issue. Neither approach will benefit this country in any fashion.