By April MacIntyre Jan 1, 2010, 23:57 GMT
The aftermath of the attempted bombing of a Northwest Airlines flight a week by a man who had every indication of being a terrorist has Democrats and Republicans stepping up criticism on President Barack Obama's Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to step down.
US Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano EPA/MICHAEL REYNOLDS
Television news is now filled with talking heads from both sides of the aisles debating this point.
Some Democrats have spoken up and joined the ranks of the GOP for Napolitano to step down following the attempted bombing of a Northwest Airlines flight a week ago, where the attacker's own father warned U.S. authorities about his son's jihadist tendencies.
Terrorist Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab paid cash for his plane ticket and checked no luggage on a transoceanic flight.
One of Abdulmutallab’s friends revealed to the Daily Telegraph (UK) that Umar took to wearing traditional Islamic dress while living in London and leaving "fundamentalist Islamic messages" in an internet chatroom after returning from an Arabic language school in Yemen in 2005. The Telegraph also reveals that Umar came into contact with a radical preacher connected to September 11th Terrorist attack in New York; the preacher, Anwar al-Awlaki.
He was nonetheless allowed to fly, and would have killed 288 people had his act of terror worked. It was a stroke of luck that a faulty detonator - combined with the quick actions of fellow passengers - which saved hundreds from certain death.
Napolitano's remarks after the fact, specifically her initial claim last Sunday that "the system worked" was interpreted and viewed by politicians and security experts who allege that Napolitano is out of her depth.
Napolitano oversees the unpopular Transportation Security Administration, which has been blasted for unfair screening procedures that have gone so far overboard in PC "no profiling" tactics that red flagged passengers are getting through while elderly Grandmas are getting stopped and patted down after a game of twenty questions.
FOX reports that Democratic New Jersey State Senate President Richard Codey wrote a letter "calling on her (Napolitano) to step down."
"We should have someone who doesn't need to go in there and learn about terrorism, learn about security," Codey told FOX News. "How close were these 300 people on this plane from losing their lives because homeland security broke down? Boy, it was really close."
Political commentator and TV news pundit Charles Krauthammer added his dissatisfaction with the Obama White House response to the recent airline attack:
Krauthammer writes: "This absurdity renders hollow Obama's declaration that 'we will not rest until we find all who were involved.' Once we've given Abdulmutallab the right to remain silent, we have gratuitously forfeited our right to find out from him precisely who else was involved, namely those who trained, instructed, armed and sent him.
This is all quite mad even in Obama's terms. He sends 30,000 troops to fight terror overseas, yet if any terrorists come to attack us here, they are magically transformed from enemy into defendant.
The logic is perverse. If we find Abdulmutallab in an al-Qaeda training camp in Yemen, where he is merely preparing for a terror attack, we snuff him out with a Predator -- no judge, no jury, no qualms. But if we catch him in the United States in the very act of mass murder, he instantly acquires protection not just from execution by drone but even from interrogation. "
FOX also noted that Democratic strategist Dan Gerstein was displeased with Napolitano's handling of the incident:
"I tend to think she will be pushed out in the next couple of months," Gerstein, a former adviser to Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., said.
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