Holder’s Haste Makes Waste of Intel by Andrew C. McCarthy on National Review Online

Holder’s Haste Makes Waste of Intel by Andrew C. McCarthy on National Review Online: "Eric Holder’s Justice Department rushed to file an indictment Wednesday against Flight 253 terrorist Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. The telling document is a monument to lost opportunity. Come hell or high water, the Obama administration will press ahead with its commitment to treat al-Qaeda’s war against the United States as a crime wave best managed by the federal courts.

“Al-Qaeda,” in fact, is a term you will not find in the bare-bones, seven-page charging instrument. Nor will you encounter such words as “Yemen,” “jihad,” “terrorism” — neither “Islamic” or “Islamist.” And if you’re looking for the names of any co-conspirators — such as the al-Qaeda satellite (al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula) that has publicly claimed credit for the attempted Christmas Day atrocity, or the enemy combatants who’ve been running that outfit since their improvident release from Gitmo — you’d best look elsewhere.

Mentioning “enemy combatants,” of course, would be tantamount to saying there is an ongoing military conflict. It would be as if Congress had authorized the use of force after an attack against the United States — as if we had, say, a couple of hundred thousand American troops in harm’s way. There’s no hint of that in this indictment. Instead, we helpfully learn that Delta Airlines is a “United States commercial airline of which Northwest Airlines [is] a subsidiary.” We learn that Northwest’s Flight 253, along with the 289 passengers and crew onboard, were “at all times material to this Indictment . . . in the ‘special maritime jurisdiction of the United States.’”

That turns out to mean that we can have a civilian criminal prosecution in which “venue is proper in the Eastern District of Michigan.” What could possibly be more important than that?

Lots of things: gathering intelligence, for one. We have now had confirmed — by President Obama himself, along with top White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan — that, while Janet Napolitano’s system was working so well, Abdulmutallab was an untapped well of operational intelligence."