From the last Morning Jolt of the week, breaking and sad news:

Awful News Out of Ankara

Back when I lived in Ankara, I went into this building plenty of times — I begin today in shock.

Turkish police say a suicide bomber detonated his explosives at an entrance to the U.S. Embassy in the Turkish capital Ankara on Friday, killing two people, according to the Associated Press.

A U.S. State Department official confirmed to CBS News that at least one guard had been killed at the embassy, but the victim’s nationality was not given. U.S. Embassies are usually guarded by a combination of local security personnel and American diplomatic security forces.

An AP journalist reported seeing a body in the street in front of an embassy side entrance. It was not clear whether the victims of the blast were U.S. nationals, but they were identified as embassy security guards by the French news agency AFP.

The bomb appeared to have exploded inside a security checkpoint at an entrance to the embassy.

CNN’s Turkish service said witnesses had seen the bomber approach the building and enter a gate to the fortified compound. It wasn’t clear whether the bomber entered the building before detonating their explosives.

I lived in Ankara from 2005 to 2007. People used to ask me if it was dangerous, and I answered it was probably the safest city in the region — the national, political, and military capital of a NATO ally, with cops and special national police and troops of every kind all around. There was a modest U.S. military presence as well, although most of it was working at the embassy, with Turkish troops at nearby bases, or working with moving non-combat supplies through Incirlik Air Base (pronounced In-jer-lick) to Iraq.

The only attempted terror attack that I recall in the city during my time there was a suicide bomber who tried to get into the Justice Ministry. But when you saw a terror attack in Turkey, chances are it was the PKK (the Kurdistan Worker’s Party), which was fighting for a separate Kurdish state. The PKK liked to put bombs in trash cans, etc., but they mostly targeted Istanbul and the coastal beach resorts, trying to scare away the tourists. The PKK certainly wasn’t pro-American, but Americans weren’t generally the targets of their wrath — the Turks and their government were.

There was an al-Qaeda presence in the country while I was there, and periodically folks who worked at the embassy would tell me they suspected the bad guys were “probing” their defenses and attempting to conduct surveillance, looking for weaknesses, etc. But Turks made up a very small portion of al-Qaeda’s ranks; at the time, out of the several hundred al-Qaeda sitting in Guantanamo Bay, six were Turkish citizens.

Of course, al-Qaeda hit the British consulate in Istanbul with a truck bomb back in 2003, along with the HSBC bank. In 2008, there was an attack with guns on the U.S. consulate in Istanbul; three gunmen were killed and three Turkish police were killed.

(It’s worth noting that Istanbul is the cultural and economic capital of the country while Ankara is the political capital, somewhat analogous to New York and Washington. I suspect maintaining security in the sprawling, crowded, narrow-streeted megalopolis of Istanbul is considerably tougher than in Ankara, a government town that was a relatively sleepy town until Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey, made it the new capital.)

Every interaction I had with embassy security guards, Turkish police, and related folks during my time reassured me with their dedication and expertise. I’ve commented that I would completely trust Turkish airport security with the see-through-clothes x-ray scanners more than I would trust TSA; they consistently demonstrated a culture of absolute professionalism — at least to Western outsiders.

The sense I got back then was that the U.S. and Turkey were proving to be thoroughly effective partners in counter-terrorism efforts; two fairly big fish in Al-Qaeda were caught in Turkey during those years, Louai Sakra and Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi.

The U.S. consulate in Turkey had moved far from the city center and built like a fortress with extensive security, a development that Tom Friedman lamented back in 2003. The U.S. embassy in Ankara is located downtown, not far from several other embassies and just down the road from the Turkish national assembly (the legislature). I know there had been talk about moving the embassy outside the city center — partially out of security concerns, partially because the embassy itself was a very dated structure (we used to joke about it as a classic example of Early American Cinder Block Architecture). Diplomats had very mixed feelings about a potential move, feeling that their job of interacting with the Turkish government would be more difficult if they were working in some outer suburb.

Keep in mind, I haven’t followed Turkish news or politics nearly as closely since I returned in 2007, and my observations about life in Ankara may be outdated.

Steven Cook: “Most obvious suspects in Ankara embassy bombing are PKK, Syria, and some al Qaida wannabes. Could even be Turkish nationalists.”

UPDATE: A Turkish journalist, Mahir Zeynalov, says that Turkish police have identified the suicide bomber as a member of DHKP-C, a Marxist-Leninist party in Turkey.

Notice the strange pattern when this administration discusses the issue of terrorism with the American people:

In the attempted bombings of the Detroit flight and Times Square:

On December 28, 2009, three days after Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab attempted to detonate explosives in his underwear aboard an airliner over Detroit, President Obama told the country that the incident was the work of “an isolated extremist.” It wasn’t. Abdulmutallab was trained, directed, and financed by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, a fact he shared with investigators early in his interrogation.

The same thing happened less than six months later, after Faisal Shahzad attempted to blow up his Nissan Pathfinder in Times Square. Two days following the botched attack, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano took to the Sunday shows to dismiss reports of a conspiracy and insisted that the attempted bombing was just a “one-off” by a single attacker. It wasn’t. A week later, after much of the information had leaked, Attorney General Eric Holder acknowledged that the United States had “evidence that shows that the Pakistani Taliban was behind the attack. We know that they helped facilitate it, we know that they probably helped finance it and that he was working at their direction.”

In the Fort Hood shooting, Obama’s comments the following morning:

This morning I met with FBI Director Mueller and the relevant agencies to discuss their ongoing investigation into what caused one individual to turn his gun on fellow servicemen and women. We don’t have all the answers yet. I would caution against jumping to conclusions until we have all the facts.

The government’s later assessment Fort Hood shooting:

Sen. Susan Collins on Wednesday blasted the Defense Department for classifying the Fort Hood massacre as workplace violence and suggested political correctness is being placed above the security of the nation’s Armed Forces at home.

During a joint session of the Senate and House Homeland Security Committee on Wednesday, the Maine Republican referenced a letter from the Defense Department depicting the Fort Hood shootings as workplace violence. She criticized the Obama administration for failing to identify the threat as radical Islam.

“The documents attached illustrate how the Department is dealing with the threat of violent Islamist extremism in the context of a broader threat of workplace violence,” read the letter, which was obtained by Fox News.

Despite Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan’s e-mail conversations with al-Qaeda’s Anwar al-Awlaki, the FBI did not classify the shooting as terrorism.

Now, in the administration’s accounts of the deadly attack on our consulate in Benghazi:

Within 24 hours of the 9-11 anniversary attack on the United States consulate in Benghazi, U.S. intelligence agencies had strong indications al Qaeda–affiliated operatives were behind the attack, and had even pinpointed the location of one of those attackers. Three separate U.S. intelligence officials who spoke to The Daily Beast said the early information was enough to show that the attack was planned and the work of al Qaeda affiliates operating in Eastern Libya.

Nonetheless, it took until late last week for the White House and the administration to formally acknowledge that the Benghazi assault was a terrorist attack. On Sunday, Obama adviser Robert Gibbs explained the evolving narrative as a function of new information coming in quickly on the attacks. “We learned more information every single day about what happened,” Gibbs said on Fox News. “Nobody wants to get to the bottom of this faster than we do.”

Four attacks by radical Islamists against Americans, and four statements from the administration mischaracterizing the nature and scope of the threat. It is harder and harder to believe this is just a series of innocent mistakes.

One of the hallmarks of analysis of the 9/11 attacks is the tragic, infuriating manner that most Americans in and out of public life disregarded a threat that grew throughout the nineties: the attempted bombings of airliners in the Philippines, the bombing at our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania; the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole… One could throw in the Khobar Towers bombing as well.

The pre-9/11 attacks only briefly impacted the public debate. In the 1990s many politicians, much of the media, and much of the public seemed to think that as long as the threat was primarily to Americans overseas, it was a less pressing concern. Out of sight, out of mind.

The argument that “Bush ignored warnings” is a hardy perennial of the Left’s worldview. Here’s how a New York Times column marked the 9/11 anniversary earlier this week:

In the aftermath of 9/11, Bush officials attempted to deflect criticism that they had ignored C.I.A. warnings by saying they had not been told when and where the attack would occur. That is true, as far as it goes, but it misses the point. Throughout that summer, there were events that might have exposed the plans, had the government been on high alert. Indeed, even as the Aug. 6 brief was being prepared, Mohamed al-Kahtani, a Saudi believed to have been assigned a role in the 9/11 attacks, was stopped at an airport in Orlando, Fla., by a suspicious customs agent and sent back overseas on Aug. 4. Two weeks later, another co-conspirator, Zacarias Moussaoui, was arrested on immigration charges in Minnesota after arousing suspicions at a flight school. But the dots were not connected, and Washington did not react.

Could the 9/11 attack have been stopped, had the Bush team reacted with urgency to the warnings contained in all of those daily briefs? We can’t ever know. And that may be the most agonizing reality of all.

You never hear many specifics about what the Bush administration could or should have done; without knowing the details of the plot, or the identities of the perpetrators, the only thing the government can do is tell all security personnel to “be on alert.” (We know that a pre-9/11 use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” on someone like Moussaoui in FBI custody was unthinkable.) By the time the hijackers pulled out their box-cutters, the only people in a position to respond were on the planes themselves, or an effort for the dreadful option of shooting down the hijacked airliners.

Now we see new attacks on Americans overseas.

But if the Independent’s sources are right, the warnings about threats to our diplomats in Libya were clearer:

According to senior diplomatic sources, the US State Department had credible information 48 hours before mobs charged the consulate in Benghazi, and the embassy in Cairo, that American missions may be targeted, but no warnings were given for diplomats to go on high alert and “lockdown”, under which movement is severely restricted.

The second 9/11 attacks, the ones on our diplomatic personnel on Tuesday, seem a bit simpler to defend against than hijacked airliners; either get our personnel out of an insufficiently secured location or send in Marines and a Fleet Anti-Terrorist Security Team, as the president ordered after the attacks.

So why didn’t that happen?

Jeryl Bier sends along this item, pointing out that the U.S. State Department’s Overseas Security Advisory Council issued a memo five days before the attacks in Libya and Egypt, declaring that there was no indication of any attacks on the 9/11 anniversary.

Terrorism and Important Dates

Global

9/6/2012 

OSAC currently has no credible information to suggest that al-Qa’ida or any other terrorist group is plotting any kind of attack overseas to coincide with the upcoming anniversary of September 11. However, constituents often have concerns around important dates, holidays, and major events, Often times, these concerns are the result of increased media attention to the issue, rather than credible evidence of a terrorist plot.

Assessing, predicting, and preventing the actions of terror groups is undoubtedly difficult, perhaps one of the hardest tasks our government faces. But every erroneous assessment, like this one, ties our stomachs into knots, seeing that a long-established, well-funded, global-scale system can still make the wrong call, with deadly consequences.

Ross Douthat and Jeffrey Goldberg are far too kind to today’s Democratic party.

Douthat: “Imagine, for a moment, that these were George W. Bush’s policies at work. A quest for regime change in Libya, conducted without even a pro forma request for Congressional approval. A campaign of remote-controlled airstrikes, in which collateral damage is inevitable, carried out inside a country where we are not officially at war. A policy of targeted assassination against an American citizen who has been neither charged nor convicted in any U.S. court. Imagine the outrage, the protests, the furious op-eds about right-wing tyranny and neoconservative overreach. Imagine all that, and then look at the reality. For most Democrats, what was considered creeping fascism under Bush is just good old-fashioned common sense when the president has a “D” beside his name.”

Goldberg: “These last eight days, as well as the last 10 years, suggest to me that there is only one American foreign policy; this default foreign policy is interventionist, moralistic, and militarily robust. Everything else is commentary.”

A less charitable interpretation is that in a dangerous world, there is a clear set of policies that is required to protect the country, but only one party is honest about it.

When Democrats are not in the White House, they will scream bloody murder – in some cases, quite literally – and do everything they can to stop those policies, denouncing them loudly and pledging to repeal them. They will argue that the same or better results can be achieved by a more dovish set of policies, either out of cynicism (they have no intent to really change the policies once elected) or naivete (for example arguing for a  “global test” for U.S. action, believing foreign leaders really do care deeply about the safety and security of Americans). If it is the former, they do everything possible to undermine public support for difficult policies that they, deep down, know are necessary.

They will even argue that the very concept of a “war on terror” is merely a “political phrase” and refer to the administration as a “gang.”

By contrast, when the Republicans are not in the White House, they will offer general support with occasional muted gripes; this may not be terribly relevant because the Democratic president may not even bother to ask Congress for authorization for his overseas wars kinetic military actions.

Sigh . . . Merry Christmas:

(AP)  Iraqi authorities have obtained confessions from captured insurgents who claim al Qaeda is planning suicide attacks in the United States and Europe during the Christmas season, two senior officials said Wednesday. Iraqi Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani told The Associated Press that the botched bombing in central Stockholm last weekend was among the alleged plots the insurgents revealed.

Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, in a telephone interview from New York, called the claims “a critical threat.” Both al-Bolani and Zebari said Iraq has informed Interpol of the alleged plots, and alerted authorities in the U.S. and European countries of the possible danger. Neither official specified which country or countries in Europe are alleged targets.

There was no way to verify the insurgents’ claims. But Western counterterrorism officials generally are on high alert during the holiday season, especially since last year’s failed attack by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the so-called underwear bomber, who tried to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day.

I hate it when somebody tries to give me the same present they tried to give me last year.

On the bright side, if, God forbid, something occurs on Christmas, I’ll bet we hear from President Obama sooner than, say, three or four days after.

In Time magazine:

The official says he can’t recall a dry run in any of the scores of cases he’s worked on. “Rehearsing an attack runs the considerable risk you’ll be caught without ever being able to attempt the strike — which is the only goal of terrorists,” he says. “If you’re determined to strike and have chosen your method, you’d be better off taking your chances, since success isn’t even an option if you don’t try. Testing the terrain simply increases the risk you’ll be caught without ever really have constituted a threat.” Most would-be terrorists, he says, go through painstaking, detail-obsessed planning in the shadows to increase their chances of success once they go into action — though that sort of sweating the small stuff usually helps set off vigilante antiterrorism agencies.

“Vigilante anti-terrorism agencies”? Oh, hell yeah. Sign me up. I don’t want a badge or training; I just want the masked cowl and chance to beat the snot out of terrorists.

Wait . . . oh, I guess they probably meant vigilant antiterrorism agencies.

As our president would say, “Happy Cinco De Cuatro.”

In today’s Jolt:

MSM: Darn It, Faisal, Bomb Scares Are Supposed to Follow a Narrative

Finally, the New York Times is coming around on profiling; they headline a piece, ‘From Suburban Father to a Terrorism Suspect’. Be careful of those suburban dads!

Allahpundit: I feel a little sorry for Contessa Brewer, who’s taking the brunt of the outrage today merely for being dumb enough to say something that her colleagues are too smart to own up to in public. The media’s invested a year in building the narrative that the right is a violent, racist, proto-terrorist movement that no reasonable person could possibly support at the polls. Can you blame them for being bummed that they didn’t get some return on their investment on Saturday night?

In the Corner, Jonah puts his finger on it: “so many of these people, starting with Obama himself but including former Presidents Clinton and Carter, the Democratic Party, the editorial pages of the New York Times,  and much of the rest of the liberal dominated media, use this talk about the “rhetorical climate” on the right as a means to bully it into silence. That’s what Obama did in his recent commencement address and that’s what hundreds of commentators and bloggers have been doing in response to the tea parties.  They’re saying, “You people need to shut up because you’re aiding and abetting terrorists.” They’re also trying to say to independents: “If you think the rightwingers are persuasive, you need to think again. They’re all just mouthpieces and stalking horses for the homegrown terrorists and the mentally deranged.” And, last, it’s also dangerous. Not because it will breed frustration and anger among Americans who feel unfairly demonized for simply voicing their objections (though if liberals really believe the nonsense they spew about conservatives,  they might ponder that). No, it’s dangerous because it causes the country to look for terrorists where they aren’t while telling them not to look for them where they are.”

Mary Katharine Ham: “It’s always important not to jump to conclusions in a suspected terrorism case, unless the conclusion you’re jumping to is that it was a ‘one-off,’ isolated, lone wolf kind of thing. Then, you’re free to speculate all day long . . . I understand the need for the mayor to be careful before assigning blame for a terrorism attempt, but the problem is he’s only careful not to smear one party. If he doesn’t have information, why is only one conclusion off-limits – the one new information happens to support?”

Meanwhile, this morning Erick Erickson notices a story he deems severely under-reported: “If Arizona had decided to become a sanctuary state and the Gov got white powder in the mail, the media would be all over the story.”