When you are waiting for someone an hour can seem like a long time, but when you really want to accomplish something an hour is really not that long. Here are some things you can’t do in an hour:
- Run a marathon
- Watch a feature length movie
- Read a novel
- Watch a baseball or football game
- Make a good batch of chili
However there are some things that you can accomplish in less than an hour, such as:
- Eat a doughnut
- Watch a M*A*S*H re-run
- Walk a mile
- Take a shower
- Brush your teeth
- Take out the garbage
- Change the oil in your car
- Order and pick up a pizza
- Check your e-mail
- Complete the interrogation of someone named Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who tried to blow up a plane using a bomb in his underwear
That’s right #10 was completed in 50 minutes before the FBI decided to read him his Miranda rights and put him into the criminal justice system. You will probably not be surprised to find out that he soon had a lawyer who advised him to stop speaking to the FBI. So now if they want him to divulge any information they will have to go the plea bargain route up to and including setting him free. Aren’t you glad we got rid of Bush and Cheney? I mean, seriously, don’t you feel safer?
What Did He Know?
Does anyone believe what the Obama administration is telling us that they got everything they could out of this 23 year old novice in 50 minutes. The kid was definitely talking, so why stop him? He just got back from Yemen and probably had a wealth of information to give up. He belongs in Guantanamo. Are we not, as Obama finally admitted, at war? Or are we at war, but just not with this guy? (And by the way, Obama has been in office a year now so why hasn’t he captured Osama bin Laden? During the campaign he snorted that McCain wouldn’t even follow him to his cave, as if Obama had the address).
Regardless of your position on “enhanced interrogation techniques” and let’s just say you put those aside. You want to keep this guy where you can interrogate him again and again. Where you can work to gain his trust, and where you can corroborate other information you find until he has been in your custody so long his information is stale and no longer of use. Here’s a little secret for the Obama administration… it takes longer than 50 minutes.
An Embarrassment of Incompetence
Close on the heels of Janet Napolitano’s blundering at the helm of the Department of Homeland Security we have this astonishing exchange between Chris Wallace of Fox News Sunday and White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, as reported in the Washington Examiner by Byron York:
On “Fox News Sunday,” host Chris Wallace asked White House spokesman Robert Gibbs whether President Obama was informed of the decision to read Abdulmutallab his Miranda rights before or after it was done. Gibbs avoided the question, saying, “That decision was made by the Justice Department and the FBI, with experienced FBI interrogators.” Gibbs stressed that “Abdulmutallab was interrogated and valuable intelligence was gotten as a result of that interrogation.”
Wallace pressed. “But we now find out he was interrogated for 50 minutes,” he said to Gibbs. “When they came back, he was read his Miranda rights and he clammed up.”
“No,” Gibbs answered. “Again, he was interrogated. Valuable intelligence was gotten based on those interrogations. And I think the Department of Justice and the — made the right decision, as did those FBI agents.”
“Let me just press one last question,” Wallace said. “You really don’t think that if you’d interrogated him longer that you might have gotten more information, since we now know that Al Qaeda in Yemen — ”
“Well, FBI interrogators believe they got valuable intelligence and were able to get all that they could out of him,” Gibbs said.
“All they could?” Wallace asked.
“Yeah,” Gibbs said.”
