Eric Holder’s interview with Good Morning America had a retro feel to it. For example:
Attorney General Eric Holder has an urgent message for Americans: While he is confident that the United States will continue to thwart attacks, “the terrorists only have to be successful once.”
Where have we heard that before?
It turns out that terrorism is a very real problem:
In the last 24 months, Holder said, 126 people have been indicted on terrorist-related charges, Fifty of those people are American citizens.
“I think that what is most alarming to me is the totality of what we see, the attorney general said. “Whether it is an attempt to bomb the New York City subway system, an attempt to bring down an airplane over Detroit, an attempt to set off a bomb in Times Square … I think that gives us a sense of the breadth of the challenges that we face, and the kinds of things that our enemy is trying to do.”
Apparently no one asked Holder, why do they hate us?
Holder also rejected any criticism of the FBI’s sting operations:
To combat the threat of Americans turning to al Qaeda and violence, the United States is monitoring scores of radicals and has set up stings to blunt the threat.
The increasing number of FBI stings, such as the alleged plot to detonate a bomb at a Christmas tree lighting in Portland, are not without controversy, but Holder vigorously defended them.
“Options are always given all along the way for them to say, ‘You know what, I have changed my mind. I don’t want to do it.’ Everyone that we have charged has said, ‘No I want to go forward,'” he said. “All those actions were designed to kill Americans.”
This is the one that I found rather mind-blowing; it turns out that the executive branch has constitutional powers after all:
Turning to how terror suspects are tried, Holder said he still believes the “decision as to how people get prosecuted, where they get prosecuted, is an executive branch function. Even if those suspects are being held now at Guantanamo Bay. Holder said Congress should not be interfering with that.
“It’s — from my perspective — a constitutional issue,” he said.
He’s right, of course. But do you think that the liberals who backed Obama in 2008 because he was the most left-wing candidate believed they were voting for an aggressive view of the President’s war-fighting powers?
UPDATE: All I can say is, I’m glad I’m not a lefty who thought that Obama would change things: “Obama administration readies indefinite detention order for Guantanamo detainees.”
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