Obama to return to failed lawfare policies of past

Washington Times Editorial:

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Mr. Obama suggests that trying the terrorists in open court did not damage U.S. security. He neglects to mention what took place during the prosecution of the sheik.

During the trial, prosecutors turned over a list of 200 unindicted conspirators to the defense - as the civilian criminal justice system required them to do. Within 10 days, the list made its way to downtown Khartoum, and Osama bin Laden knew that the U.S. government was on his trail. By giving this information to the defense in that terrorism case, the U.S. courts gave al Qaeda valuable information about which of its agents had been uncovered.

In another case, according to then-U.S. District Judge Michael Mukasey, there was seemingly innocuous testimony about delivery of a cell phone. That alerted terrorists to government surveillance. They shut down their communication network and intelligence was lost to the government forever.

Giving terrorists access to the U.S. legal system is hardly a cost-free exercise, as a seemingly naive Mr. Obama appears to believe.

This is pretty clear evidence that he is not very smart. There is another more glaring example that is not mentioned. In the trial of the African embassy bombers we had to reveal that we had been intercepting calls on Osama bin Laden's satellite phone. He immediately quite using it so we lost the chance to discover the 9-11 attacks were coming.

This is just a terrible decision and demonstrates how unsuited Democrats like Obama are when it comes to judgment on national security matters. He is going to make it easier for our enemy's to evade our intelligence apparatus.