From today’s Jolt:

He’s Talking, But We Would Prefer Him Singing
My preference was always to waterboard Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab until his lungs grew moldy, but I’m one of those knuckle-dragging insensitive types who finds flying in coach aggravating enough without some lonely Muslim engineering student working out his bonding issues through the use of high explosives. But the administration says that even though he was read his Miranda rights within 50 minutes of his arrest — what, were trying to beat a pizza delivery? — he’s now talking because of his family. (Ah. We’re threatening to waterboard the family. What? No, not them either?)
The Washington Post tells us: “In recent days, two law enforcement sources said, Abdulmutallab has told authorities more about where he trained overseas and others he met there — leads that the FBI has shared with other members of the U.S. intelligence community. Investigators are following up to corroborate the information.”
Our old friend Byron York smells something: “The reports represent a striking turnaround in the administration’s position. Ever since the public learned that authorities had just 50 minutes to question Abdulmutallab before he was read his Miranda rights and refused to answer any further questions, the Obama administration has claimed that it had, during that brief interrogation, gotten all the information that was possible to be gained from Abdulmutallab. On Fox News Sunday January 24, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said that “FBI interrogators believe they got valuable intelligence and were able to get all that they could out of him.” When host Chris Wallace asked, “All they could?” Gibbs answered, “Yeah.” On January 31, top White House adviser David Axelrod told Meet the Press that Abdulmutallab “has given very valuable information to the government about activities in Yemen and some of his experiences there.” To emphasize the point, Axelrod said, “We have not lost anything as a result of how his case has been handled.” So just a few days ago the Obama administration claimed that Abdulmutallab had given up everything he knows. Now, they claim he is giving them fresh, useful intelligence.”
The Weekly Standard’s Stephen Hayes is unimpressed. “He started talking five weeks after the attack. Intelligence is perishable. The U.S. government passed on an opportunity to interrogate him at a time when his al Qaeda sponsors in Yemen probably thought he was incapable of talking. And the fact that he is cooperating now should not obscure the gross mishandling of the incident by the Obama administration.”
Curt at Flopping Aces is scoffing: ‘You know what else is not likely? That we get a incompetent terrorist in our hands again. Do you think KSM or the other smart, dedicated, terrorists will fold because mom and pop ask him to? No . . . the Christmas Day Bomber is obviously nothing but a foot soldier and the brains behind him are the one’s we need to capture and interrogate. Actionable intel has an expiration date. The kind of intelligence we needed from this guy, ie. locations of his bosses and handlers, locations of his training, and so on, should of been extracted within hours of his capture. Now, his handlers, his recruiters, his training facilities are all gone because they know he is in our hands. This is all CYA for an Administration that is so inept it is dangerous.”
At NRO, Andy McCarthy says that Holder deserves a bit more credit than Obama for at least standing by his policy and making his views clear, while the president passes the buck: “Then there’s Obama — you know, the guy who actually has decision-making authority. (In the executive branch, all the power is reposed in the president. Everyone else, including the vice president and the attorney general, is just carrying our his policies.) What do we get from our president? We get his already tired routine: Some people say our criminal justice system is not up to the task of dealing with these terrorists. Others say you must give every arrested person Miranda rights and treat them just like shoplifters. I reject this false choice between terrorism and shoplifting.” Well, no, big guy, it’s not a false choice. But it is a choice, it has to be made, and you have to make it. If you’re going to use our criminal justice system because you think, as is, it is capable of safeguarding the country from terrorists, then, as the Attorney General argues, you have to give the terrorists Miranda warnings and be accountable for the fact that you will lose at least five weeks of actionable intel against people who are tying to kill us. If you think the justice system doesn’t work for this class of offenders, then you have to try another approach, as VP Cheney urges, and be prepared for the inevitability of caterwauling from the Left (knowing it will be considerably milder than what Cheney had to deal with). But one way or the other, you’ve got to decide.”

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