Research

That’s how The Washington Post’s editorial board described the Obama’s administration’s response to the failed Christmas Day terrorist attack aboard Northwest flight 253. Within hours of the attack, the Obama administration was willing to sacrifice valuable intelligence in order to please their liberal base by touting a misguided legal precedent that treats bomber Abdulmutallab as an everyday criminal:

The Obama administration had three options: It could charge him in federal court. It could detain him as an enemy belligerent. Or it could hold him for prolonged questioning and later indict him, ensuring that nothing Mr. Abdulmutallab said during questioning was used against him in court… It is now clear that the administration did not give serious thought to anything but Door No. 1. This was myopic, irresponsible and potentially dangerous.

Yet, in another example of the Obama administration’s cluelessness on fighting terrorism, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs told Fox News Sunday this morning that Abdulmutallab “was interrogated, valuable intelligence was gotten based on those interrogations and I think the Department of Justice made the right decision - as did the FBI agents.”  Unfortunately, the White House continues to ignore the fact that “when they read him his legal rights nearly 10 hours after the incident, he went silent,” as The Associated Press notes.

President Obama’s continued failure to understand the war against terrorism is one of many things he will have to explain to the nation in his State of the Union address this Wednesday. In haste, the White House appears to have squandered this valuable opportunity. As The Washington Post’s editorial board concluded:

[T]he decision to try Mr. Abdulmutallab turns out to have resulted not from a deliberative process but as a knee-jerk default to a crime-and-punishment model.