On President Obama’s speech yesterday:

I thought it was rather appalling. I find it mind-numbingly bureaucratic, flat, bloodless. It was almost inside baseball describing how bureaucracies work.
And his conclusions? Directive # 1 is: High-priority intelligence will now have to be treated urgently not just some of the time, but all of the time. That’s a remarkable advance!!
And then he said at the beginning: The first conclusion [of his review] is that, in this world, timely intelligence, etc, etc, is of the utmost importance. Well, this is a president who after we seized Abdulmutallab — who had extremely timely intelligence regarding Yemen, who had been armed and trained in Yemen — was given a lawyer and Miranda rights and shut up almost immediately after singing at the beginning about everything he knew.
That is the timeliest of intelligence regarding Yemen, which the president’s terrorism advisor said today is the newest and the most aggressive and the most surprising al-Qaeda element in the world. Here is information waiting to be gleaned and received — and we are gratuitously giving it away [by lawyering up Abdulmutallab].
Talk about not connecting the dots! The administration has little control over what happened before a terrorist attack, but it had total control over what happened afterwards, and it blew it. …
It looks as if he gave this speech in order to undo the impression of his earlier addresses [of the Christmas bombing].
A, he said the buck stops here, because it looked as if he was detached and blaming everybody else. Secondly, he said we are at war, which is a concession, because people are complaining about the fact, rightly so, that he gave the bomber over Detroit a defense lawyer and treated him as a civilian defendant.
But here is how the president actually sees it. He said we are at war with al-Qaeda, who are “a network of hatred.”
Now, first of all, it’s not just al-Qaeda. It’s jihadism. al-Qaeda is a leading edge of it, but there are imitators, affiliates, cells all over the world. It’s a religious ideology, a religious cult. It’s an extremist cult.
And when he speaks about hatred — there is a lot of hatred in the world. It’s not an inchoate hatred. It’s hatred of a specific kind. It’s religious fanaticism, hatred of the West and of its liberties, et cetera.
And when you don’t identify what the war is about, you leave everyone cold. And you end up saying, as Obama did, one of our responses … was reaching out and assuring Muslims of an interest in mutual respect, that we understand their aspirations, meaning three items: education, secure job, and security.
Well, the bomber over Detroit was well-educated and he had all the security of a mansion in London. The guy who killed the seven CIA agents in Afghanistan was a doctor. Osama bin Laden is a multimillionaire. This is not about oppression or poverty or lack of education. The Fort Hood shooter had education and security as an army psychiatrist.
He [Obama] will not speak about the nature of the war … That remains incomprehensible.
And thus you’ve got to ask yourself: “A network of hatred” — why? and over what?