One of these days, I'll get the chance to confront Fred Hiatt and ask him why he insists on misusing the Washington Post to continue his attacks against the Obama administration. This morning, he decided that it's really the Obama administration that ought to be questioned, instead of the Pakistani-American suspect it has in custody.
IN THE PAST two days, the Obama administration has released significant amounts of information about its arrest of Faisal Shahzad, the man accused of trying to detonate a car bomb in New York's Times Square. The most significant assertions: Mr. Shahzad, a Pakistani-born, naturalized U.S. citizen, received bomb training in Waziristan when he traveled to Pakistan late last year and has confessed to being responsible for making and trying to detonate the makeshift bomb.
But much is still not known about the administration's handling of this case. For example, how long was Mr. Shahzad questioned before he was read his Miranda rights? And what triggered the Justice Department's decision to suspend the "ticking time bomb" exception in case law that gives law enforcement officers an opportunity to gather information before advising a suspect of his right to remain silent? The administration has also not publicly addressed whether it consulted with intelligence officials on the best way to deal with Mr. Shahzad. Nor has it said whether its High Value Interrogation Group (HIG) -- a group of law enforcement and intelligence experts specially trained for terrorism cases -- was up and running and deployed in the Shahzad case.
The administration rightly came under fire for its handling of the case of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian citizen who tried to ignite explosives on a Detroit-bound plane on Christmas Day. In that case, the Justice Department failed to adequately consult its intelligence partners and rashly embraced a law enforcement approach without fully considering other options, including holding Mr. Abdulmutallab as an enemy combatant.
The Shahzad case is different, primarily because Mr. Shahzad is an American citizen. The decisions the administration has made in this case may have been well considered by all responsible parties and well founded. But the public is entitled to understand in greater detail what choices the administration made, through what process, and why.
Fred, you ignorant slut. For years you stood by and watched the Bush administration subvert democracy, taking away our civil rights and writing over the Constitution. All of a sudden, you're the concerned citizen watching for abuses of power and looking for a better government. The story here is, no one got hurt, and law enforcement officials correctly handled the situation. No one had to be interrogated at Gitmo. No one was stripped of their habeus corpus rights. We do in fact have a process that doesn't require Jack Bauer to rescue us from Teh Terrorist Threat.
So please, please consider leaving the Washington Post and going somewhere else, anywhere else. Hey, I hear the Washington Times is in need of some assistance. I'll bet they'll like you there.
