Joe Biden Claims He Always Knew The Surge Would Work

We live in the internet age now, which can be awkward for politicians who are asked to explain past statements, caught on video. On Face The Nation, yesterday, Biden said he never once doubted that a surge in troops would “help settle things down”??? This Naked Emperor News video exposes Biden’s shameless b.s.

According to Sheriff Joe, we would have been airlifting troops off of buildings in the Green Zone if we had persisted with the surge.

Well, we did persist, and all of the dire predictions Democrats like Biden and Obama made, never happened. In fact, the opposite happened – things “settled down”, enough to bring them home on the Bush administration’s scheduled timetable, which of course, Biden has had the gall to call one of the great achievements of the Obama administration.

The “loyal opposition” despicably played politics with a war, and now is trying to claim “responsibility” for its successful outcome.

Transcript via Face the Nation:

JOE BIDEN: Look, we’re not– we’re not– we’re not taking credit, we had to take responsibility.
When we took responsibility for the mess that were handed to us at the end of last year, an
awful lot of very informed news people like you, Bob, were wondering whether or not that
country could be put together.

From the beginning, I’ve been on your show so many times in the previous years, and my
mantra was: This requires a political solution. I never once doubted that additional American
forces would, in fact, meet the military objective of settling things down. But nothing would
matter, we would not be able to leave unless there was a political accommodation.
What we did and we didn’t responsibly from the day we took office is put that in motion. I have
been to Iraq four times this year, fourteen times already. I have met with every single solitary
one of the players in Iraq–Sunni, Shiate, Kurd, Christian. And we have been able to be a
catalyst for them moving from settling their political differences on boundaries, on territory, on
oil, etcetera, from the battle field to the political arena.

And so, I think, we’ve managed it very, very well. I think we’re going to be able to be out of Iraq,
with all of our combat troops–ninety thousand, by the end of August. I think we’ll be out leaving
behind an electorate that had just put in place a parliament that is viewed as legitimate across
the board. And we’ll be able to get out of Iraq at the end of 2011 leaving behind a stable
government.

Now anybody who tells you, including Dick Cheney, that they knew how they were going to get
there January of last year, I would find it somewhat surprising. I give him– I don’t care who gets
credit. My generic point is–we have managed this very well thus far. The Iraqis have done really
good work. It this works it’ll be a great credit to the Iraqis and a great credit to our military and
civilian leadership that we’ve moved to the point that a nation that was in chaos is now a nation
not needing American forces, having a economic and–

BOB SCHIEFFER (overlapping): Well–

JOE BIDEN: –and political relationship with United States and a democracy.

BOB SCHIEFFER: –do you– do you– do you think also that George Bush would also need little
thanks for that? I mean, does he share in the credit or not?

JOE BIDEN: Well, sure. I– I’m happy to thank George Bush.

He had to be shamed into allowing George Bush partial credit for winning the war, they undermined at every opportunity!

BOB SCHIEFFER (overlapping): Okay.

JOE BIDEN: I like George Bush, but I– I think– the thing– and all the– if you go back and think
about it–

BOB SCHIEFFER: All right.

JOE BIDEN: –we’ve been on so many of your programs, it was constantly–what is their political
plan?

Yes, but of course the Bush administration had a political as well as a military solution, and yes it was predictable that we would have our troops out by the agreed-to timetable. And the Obama administration was not handed “a mess”  in Iraq.

One of the reasons the right wing blogosphere declared November 22, Victory in Iraq Day, back in Nov. 2008, was because we knew the MSM was never going to give President Bush the credit for winning the war:

I don’t think that even the most hardened cynics among us at the time would have guessed that the Obama administration would eventually try to take credit for it.

Just shameless.

Previously:

Biden: Iraq “One of the Great Achievements of this Administration”

Hat tip: Weasel Zippers

Also Blogging:

streiff at Red State: Joe Biden’s Raging Hypocrisy

Sister Toldjah: Scott Brown to Joe Biden: Don’t lecture me on military law

Allahpundit: Video: Time for another “Biden rewrites history on Iraq” clip

Ace: Joe “Full Biden” Biden: “I Never Once Doubted” the Surge Would Do Exactly What I Promised It Could Never Do, EVer

VDH: Bidenism ( a Biden/Iraq War timeline)

Former Occidental College Student Remembers Fellow Marxist, Obama

This interview with former Marxist student, John C. Drew, on his meeting at Occidental College with fellow Marxist Barack Obama is long, but well worth your time.

Dr. Drew gave up his Marxist philosophy in 1984. I don’t get the impression our President ever did.

Here’s a short version of his story, I found on YouTube:

“I met the young Barack Obama during the fall of 1980. I got a chance to see how his mind worked from my conversations with him. He was already an ardent Marxist socialist by the time he was a sophomore at Occidental College. I would be curious to know how and why his beliefs changed…if, indeed, they have changed”.

See Bob McCarty for the full B-Cast interview.

As Suspected: That 190-300 Number of Islamic Terrorists Convicted In Civilian Court – Bogus

I knew the truth about this would come out eventually…

Byron York reported on this growing controversy, last week:

It started back in May 2009, when President Obama gave his famous National Archives speech outlining the plan to close the Guantanamo Bay terrorist detention center. “Bear in mind the following fact,” Obama said. “Nobody has ever escaped from one of our federal ‘supermax’ prisons, which hold hundreds of convicted terrorists.” Although the president did not put a number on it, various figures, ranging up to 300, have been tossed around in the months since.

To Republican Sen. Jon Kyl, something didn’t sound right. Are there really that many convicted terrorists in U.S. prisons? And are they really comparable with the inmates at Guantanamo?

“It’s a disingenuous argument,” says Kyl. “There haven’t been 300 high-profile, dangerous terrorism cases in the United States — if there were, we would have heard about them.”

A few days after the president’s speech, Kyl sent a letter to Holder asking for the names and crimes of the terrorists held in federal prisons. “It is not my understanding that there are ‘hundreds’ of federal inmates who have been convicted of a level of terrorism comparable to that of Guantanamo detainees,” Kyl wrote.

The senator got no response. Then, on June 17, Holder appeared at a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee, of which Kyl is a senior member. Kyl asked again. Holder didn’t have the information at hand, so Kyl sent another written request.

And so on and so forth…at some point the number got whittled down to 190.

Fast forward to today, Bill Burck and Dana Perino at NRO reporting:

We’ve said that this bloated number is not an apples-to-apples comparison, because it sweeps in large numbers of defendants whose crimes — such as supporting terrorism through financial or immigration fraud — are not even remotely comparable to those of the terrorists who are held at Guantanamo Bay (like KSM), or of the underwear bomber, who was caught trying to bomb an airplane as an act of war on behalf of al-Qaeda.

Well, according to PolitiFact.com, based on an analysis by New York University’s Center on Law and Security, the real apples-to-apples number of major Islamist terrorists who have been convicted in civilian courts is . . . less than a dozen, over seven years. Evidently it’s not so routine after all.

And, of course, the number of al-Qaeda terrorists detained by the Bush administration at Guantanamo and elsewhere overseas greatly exceeded the number held in the criminal-justice system. That is for good reason — the Bush administration viewed the vast majority of al-Qaeda terrorists as enemies of the United States, not common criminals.

Hat tip: Weasel Zippers

Obama Losing The Trust Of The American People

I didn’t have time to put up a post before I left town,  today, although I had my eye on several articles premised on the same theme; Obama’s lack of honesty, and trustworthiness. It’s a theme I’m very familiar with because I tried, (God knows I tried!) to warn people about it during the 2008 election.

His latest broken promise is of course; the pledge not to raise taxes on persons making less than $250,000. As if that wasn’t utterly predictable during the 2008 election. Many of us did predict it, but couldn’t prove it of course. What we could prove was that he had no problem saying whatever sounded good to any particular audience at any given time, the truth of which, apparently not a concern because so much of what he said was provably false. It should have raised more flags.

Victor David Hanson put his finger on why Obama’s particular brand of dishonesty is so egregious:

The problem with Obama’s new hedging on taxing those who make below $250,000, or his administration’s taking credit for victory in the Iraq War that they so once fervently tried to abort, or the flip-flop on renditions and tribunals, or the embarrassments over closing Guantanamo and trying KSM in New York or Mirandizing the Christmas Day bomber, or trashing/praising Wall Street grandees, is not that presidents cannot change their minds as circumstances warrant, or even that all politicians are at times hypocritical. No, the rub is that Obama is not merely flipping and triangulating on issues in a desperate attempt to shadow the polls, but he is doing so on matters that he once swore were absolutely central to his entire candidacy and his signature hope-and-change agenda, critical to the future of the U.S., and proof of his opponents’ either ignorance or disingenuousness.

I can only guess that he thinks the American public has too short a memory to notice; that they can be fooled forever and ever. But Lincoln’s famous quote comes to mind: You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.

People are increasingly being not fooled.

Like:

Via Ace: Democratic Senator Jay Rockefeller: Hey, That Obama Feller Is Sort of a Liar, Isn’t He?

Ed Driscoll walks us down that same path with “Four Years Is Enough, Huh?”.

Pundette mused on: Obama’s squandered credibility

And Michelle Malkin, as direct as ever: Read Obama’s lips: Don’t believe anything that passes his lips

iOWNTHEWORLD pile on: Obama Administration Summed Up in One Headline
It’s often been said that Obama’s promises have an expiration date. Every single one of them.

Well guess what? The general public’s trust  in “The One”  has expired, too.

Perfect Storm Will Mean Snow On Ground In All 50 States

While some are relishing the irony, others believe the excessive snows this winter are proof that climate change is occurring. I think it’s  proof that God has a sense of humor:

Patrick Marsh, who works at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration‘s National Severe Storms Laboratory, says a winter storm passing through the southern U.S. Thursday and early Friday is predicted to leave measureable snowfall in the Deep South, including parts of the Florida Panhandle.

This, he believes will leave snow on the ground in all 50 states at the same time, a  weather phenomenon he’s not sure has ever happened before. You can see a map of the snow cover in the United States, here.

Al Gore had better hurry up and say, “Uncle”!

Because more and more people are unimpressed by the “absolutely universal agreement among climatologists” that  believe  AGW climate change is occurring.

Hat tip: Lucianne

“O America”: A Video Tribute To Sarah Palin

Song by one of my faves, Celtic Woman:

Hat tip Frugal Cafe

Biden: Iraq “One of the Great Achievements of this Administration”

Well, this is pretty galling, (skip to around 6:50):

He and Obama are gonna try to take full credit for Iraq after their history of undermining the effort?

This video, via Gateway Pundit exposes the hypocrisy:

Jim Hoft reminds us:

In 2007 candidate Barack Obama said that, “The United States cannot use its military to solve humanitarian problems and that preventing a potential genocide in Iraq isn’t a good enough reason to keep U.S. forces there.”

Obama and Biden were eventually “persuaded” by the fact that the 20,000 troop surge helped win the war. Now they’re taking credit for the outcome?

Bitch, please!

A few more things that jumped out at me in that second video:

Virtually no one else thinks it’s a good idea”…

“Every observer believes”…(with us)…

“I don’t know any expert on the region…” (who agrees with your side)…

When you hear Democrats, and especially Obama use language like that, please be advised that you are being scammed. We’ve heard Obama use it on the economy, (every economist agreed with his stimulus plan), health care (all the experts agree with the Dem plan), etc.

No they didn’t/don’t.

This is why they use astroturfing online, and on the streets as phony grassroots support for their plans. They want to project the idea that their ideas are more popular and accepted than they are.

Another favored Obama rhetorical device: The strawman:

Meet SOTUS: Straw Man Of The United States, ‘Mr. Obama’s Most Trusted Rhetorical Friend’

Thanks, Momma.

SEE ALSO:

Top of the Ticket: Joe Biden update: Iraq one of Obama’s ‘great achievements’

Democrat Slush Fund Pays For Anti-Tea-Party Campaign

This is so typical of liberals, who can do nothing by actual grassroots, because their policies are too unpopular. They demonize their political opponents, and then pretend their own positions are more popular than they are, by using bought and paid for supporters, (astroturf).

Fox News has uncovered the latest scam:

A seemingly grassroots organization that’s mounted an online campaign to counter the tea party movement is actually the front end of an elaborate scheme that funnels funds — including sizable labor union contributions — through the offices of a prominent Democratic party lawyer. A Web site popped up in January dedicated to preventing the tea party’s “radical” and “dangerous” ideas from “gaining legislative traction,” targeting GOP candidates in Illinois for the firing squad.

“This movement is a fad,” proclaims TheTeaPartyIsOver.org, which was established by the American Public Policy Center (APPC), a D.C.-based campaign shop that few people have ever heard of.

But a close look reveals the APPC’s place in a complex network of money flowing from the mountainous coffers of the country’s biggest labor unions into political slush funds for Democratic activists.

Here’s how it works: What appears like a local groundswell is in fact the creation of two men — Craig Varoga and George Rakis, Democratic Party strategists who have set up a number of so-called 527 groups, the non-profit election organizations that hammer on contentious issues (think Swift Boats, for example).

Fox reports that public records show a number of political shops listed at Suite 1102:

…most of which are essentially clones of one another, but all of which have offered money — from measly thousands to game-changing millions — in state-level elections across the country.

***

That means that taxpayer dollars, sent up as union dues, have been going to fund a host of Democratic causes and help quash the tea party movement.

What’s more, Varoga and Rakis are not actually present in Suite 1102. That is the office of their lawyer, Joseph Sandler, a longtime general counsel to the Democratic National Committee.

Jennifer Rubin notes that while legal, the practice is deceitful:

Fox has the list of donors, which comprises a set of interlocking slush-type funds that pay for the anti–Tea Party campaign. The largest of these is the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME,) which has kicked in a total of $9.9M in a single year to two funds that provide the cash for the non-grassroots movement. Yes — government workers’ money is being used to fend off Tea Party protesters.–

It will be amusing to watch the  Democrat astroturf campaign accuse the tea party movement of being an Republican astroturf campaign.

You know it will happen.

John Kerry Determined To Slay ManBearPig

I’d call him a fraud, but that would be an insult to con artists everywhere. This is something lower, and more comical:

Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), who is leading a bipartisan effort to put together a compromise on energy and climate change legislation, has exhorted allies to act with greater urgency.

“I want you to go out there and start knocking on doors and talking to people and telling people, ‘This has to happen!’” Kerry said at a forum hosted by environmentalists last month.

“You know, if Tea Party folks go out there and get angry because they think their taxes are too high, for God’s sakes, a lot of citizens ought to be angry about the fact that they’re being killed and our planet is being injured by what is happening on a daily basis by the way we provide our power and our fuel and by the old practices we have,” Kerry told his allies.

He wants people knocking on doors….to inflame the citizenry about our country’s deadly, planet-injuring practices. That’s…really gonna happen.

Not.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has called moving the bill a “headache.”

Yes, especially in an already tough election year for Democrats.

Hat tip: Krakatoa at AoSHQ, who has all the latest Climategate links.

Team Obama’s Terror Policy: Why The System Isn’t working

What is going on with Team Obama’s terror policy?  His counter-terrorism adviser, John Brennen has been making a string of gaffes in trying to defend the administration’s handling of the Christmas bomber case.  His claim that Republican Congressmen were briefed about the Christmas panty-bomber, Abdulmutallab’s  Miranda rights, prompted the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, Peter Hoekstra to charge that he’s “completely blown his credibility”. And now, Rep. Peter King is calling Brennen an “egomaniac” for his absurd and demeaning assertion that criticism of the administration helps al Qaeda..

Not good:

“An egomaniac” — that’s how Rep. Peter King of New York, the ranking Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee, describes John Brennan, President Obama’s deputy national-security adviser, after reading Brennan’s op-ed in USA Today that says criticism of the administration’s handling of the failed Christmas Day bombing serves the “goals of al-Qaeda.” It is “the most mindless, self-serving, and irresponsible statement that a homeland-security adviser can make,” King says.

It shouldn’t be surprising to Brennen that there would be criticism in the wake of two major intelligence failures in one year; the Ft Hood Massacre and the Christmas Day Bombing. Why are they lashing out?

There is something rotten in the state of Obama, and AJ Strata thinks he knows what it is; a change in the rules of engagement and surveillance methods that loosened scrutiny of what the administration deemed mere “extremists” as opposed to proven al Qaeda terrorists.  His well thought out analysis, based on a speech Brennen made last August,  is well worth a read:

In the case of the of the Ft Hood Massacre, ongoing terrorist task force investigations into Major Hasan were mysteriously shut down around the time a 3rd FIS Court request would be needed by the FBI to ascertain if the man was a threat to America. In the end the administration used some lame excuse to not continue to monitor Hasan – and he went on to kill 13 people and injure 30 more.

In the case of the Christmas Day Bomber on Flight 253, the administration was unable to connect a large number of visible dots, as if some new barrier had been erected that did not allow information to come together so the threat could be detected.

I knew these failures had to do with policies pushed by Holder, Brennan and Obama. All are on record opposing the hair trigger concerns of the Bush administration when alarms went off in the NSA. Their consistent claim was we could protect our nation and our civil liberties – as if we have a false choice between the right to privacy or right to life – and life loses!

But I could not put my finger on what exactly changed, until I went back to an August 2009 speech by the civi liberty ideologue who is pretending to be the President’s national terrorism advisor – John Brennan (H/T Daniel Pipes via Powerline). Last summer Team Obama was putting the final touches on their new and improved strategy to supposedly keep America safe. Including a lame national security plan that put Global Warming right up there with al Qaeda. Brennan was out touting these changes, with no clue about the disasters that were building – disasters they had just taken their eyes off of.

You could almost say “they took their eyes off the ball”. Read the whole thing.

Previously:

Republican Congressmen Deny They Were Told The Pantybomber Was Given Miranda Rights

Video: Senator Kit Bond Slams Obama Administration’s Loose Lips On Intelligence

Was The Intelligence Gained By The Obama Administration From The Xmas Panty Bomber, “Actionable” or “Perishable”?

The Buck Stops With Obama Bush

Where Does The Buck Stop In The Knickerbomber Intelligence Failure?

Janet Napolitano Echoes Obama

Video: Ralph Peters On Deadly Political Correctness

Krauthammer: “Political correctness is not just a moral abomination, it’s a danger”

Obama’s Weird “Shout Out”

How Did The Army Miss All The Red Flags?

Cringe-Inducing: Robert Gibbs Mocks Sarah Palin’s Hand notes

Robert Gibbs is always cringe-inducing, of course,  especially when he’s trying to be funny:

This has to be a new low for the Obama White House. Is this any way for the Press Secretary, a man who represents the President of the United States, to behave?  Can you imagine any White House spokesperson up until now engaging in such puerile behavior?

Did one of Obama’s teen-aged speech writers put him up to it?

What’s worse, Obama had apparently paid today’s press briefing a surprise visit, and called for an end to “petty politics”:

“The people who sent us here expect a seriousness of purpose that transcends petty politics,” Obama said afterward, making a surprise appearance in the White House briefing room.

Actually, a good many of the people who sent you all there are suffering from a serious case of voters’ remorse.

The “Hope and change”  idiocy is the last thing they should be reminding duped voters of.

RELATED:

The American Thinker: I Was A Teenage President

MORE:

Slublog at AoSHQ agrees:

Robert Gibbs Is An Immature, Cartoonish Buffoon:

Sarah Palin may be a public figure, but she is technically a private citizen. It doesn’t matter who is being targeted, this sort of mocking is unbecoming and displays a juvenile mindset on the part of the press secretary that does not reflect well on the president.

The AP also found it to be a bit much:

White House mocks Sarah Palin from podium

Many in the room, where President Barack Obama had spoken just moments before about the need for bipartisanship, groaned at the political shot.

The IPCC’s “Peer Reviewed” Science

I don’t know about you, but whenever I hear the terms, “peer reviewed”, and “consensus”  in the global warming debate,  my BS detector starts twitching.

Now that their techniques have been exposed, the global warmists’ use of  these words  to render all criticisms invalid, falls flat.

Nothing reinforces this notion more  than this story found at WUWT:

Hansen colleague rejected IPCC AR4 ES as having “no scientific merit”, but what does IPCC do?

Signs o’ The Times

A billboard spotted on I-35 in Wyoming, MN:

Yes.

And this mysterious billboard was spotted on I-29 north of Kansas City:

We know…

Both pix via The Corner.

NPR confirms that the first billboard pictured above is not a photoshop. (I wasn’t thinking it was, myself…):

…our friend Bob Collins at Minnesota Public Radio assures us he’s seen it with his own eyes:

There is a billboard along I-35 near Wyoming, Minn., with a huge photo of former president George W. Bush and this question: “Miss Me Yet?”

Now, the push is on to find out who paid to have it put up.

UPDATE:

A new billboard has been spotted!

UPDATE II:

Wet blanket!

UPDATE III:

Mystery solved…(partially).

Captain America Takes On The Tea-Partiers

This is truly disgusting. He started out as a patriotic hero, but in his more recent incarnation, Captain America has apparently become a  moonbat.

Enemies of the State.

You’ll note that one of the signs says, “Teabag the libs before they teabag you”, as if a tea party protester would ever use the liberal media’s insulting and scatological term.

Publius has the storyline:

In preparation for the infiltration, Marvel Comics depicts the two super heroes out of costume and observing from a rooftop a street filled with what can only be described as a Tea Party protest. The scene shows crowds of people in city streets carrying signs that say, “stop the socialists,” “tea bag libs before they tea bag you,” and “no to new taxes.” Naturally, the people in these crowds are depicted as being filled with nothing but white folks.

The black character asks the out of costume Captain, “What the hell is this?” And follows that with, “looks like some kind of anti-tax protest.” The Falcon character then snidely tells his partner the Captain, “So I guess this whole ‘hate the government’ vibe around here isn’t limited to the Watchdogs.”

The two then discuss their plan to infiltrate the subversive group that Marvel comics seems to be linking to the Tea Party movement. This discussion culminates in The Falcon wondering how a black man would do such a thing. “I don’t exactly see a black man from Harlem fitting in with a bunch of angry white folks,” he tells the incognito Captain America.

Now just  take a look at how the tea partiers are depicted in the comic book pictured, above.

Compare and contrast to some real tea partiers.

To pretend that the average Americans who make up the tea party movement are  menacing looking as a group is just plain dishonest.

If you want to see scary, freaky looking mobs, you really have to hearken back to the anti-war protests of the Bush years:

Anti-war protest photos courtesy of Zombietime, who did the work the media never did to expose the ugly underbelly of the movement.

Hat tip: Weasel Zippers

RELATED:

Here is a great companion piece to this story:

Misunderstanding the tea party

By Dr. Zero in the Greenroom.

Just a snippet:

The Tea Party movement is not crazy, hateful, or stupid. Their rallies are disarmingly cheerful affairs, which most certainly do include women and minorities. The movement is still in the process of coalescing, and seeks inspiration and representation, rather than leadership. They know their country is rocketing down the wrong path, and while the current President has a heavy hand on the throttle, the course was set long before he entered politics.

If you seek madness, look for it in the President’s delusional State of the Union speech, or the people who indulge his belief that another three or four trillion piled onto a $14 trillion national debt will get us at least halfway to utopia. If you want to taste hatred, sample the venom directed at Sarah Palin, the only person currently capable of building a bridge between the energy of the Tea Party, and the established resources of the GOP. If you would like stupidity illustrated, witness the spectacle of the Democrats passing off their oily mass of backroom deals and political payoffs as a rational plan for improving health care.

The lack of a comprehensive solution doesn’t make criticism invalid. The point is that comprehensive solutions are inherently inadequate, compared to the creative power of free markets and private industry. Tea Party stalwarts are entirely rational in refusing to submit themselves as raw materials for the next big adventure in central planning. After several lifetimes of watching an increasingly huge federal government fail at almost everything it tries, while displaying increasingly less enthusiasm for the Constitutional duty of national defense that it actually excels at, the middle class demands the freedom and respect to get busy solving its own problems. They’re understandably tired of watching every story in the evening news twisted into another reason the government needs more money, every market fluctuation offered as proof the private sector has too much freedom, and every change in the weather presented as a omen their standard of living is a mortal wound to the Earth.

Read the whole thing.

Republican Congressmen Deny They Were Told The Pantybomber Was Given Miranda Rights

This is to expand upon the information I added to the “related” portion of my last post. There is a mini scandal brewing  regarding now how the pantybomber case was handled, (which was a major scandal, IMO). Now, the Obama administration is attempting  to excuse its actions  by dragging Republican Congressmen into the equation, claiming that they knew that Abdulmutallab was being mirandized, and acquiesced at the time. Counter terrorism chief Brennen made the statements on Meet The Press, and all of the  Republicans involved, (Reps. Boehner and Hoekstra, and Sens. Kit Bond and Mitch McConnell) are denying it.

Byron York of the Washington Examiner, this morning, reports:

A spokesman for McConnell says, “During a brief call from the White House, Sen. McConnell was given a heads up that Abdulmutallab was in custody, but little else. He wasn’t told of the decision to Mirandize Abdulmutallab.”

A spokesman for Boehner says, “On an unclassified/non-secure call to Boehner’s cell phone that was very short, John Brennan informed Boehner that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was in custody. The call imparted no other substantive information and Brennan did not inform Boehner that the administration had read Abdulmutallab his Miranda rights.” And Bond released a statement saying that Brennan “never told me any of plans to Mirandize the Christmas Day bomber — if he had I would told him the administration was making a mistake.”

In a conversation Sunday afternoon, Hoekstra, the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, angrily denied Brennan’s statement. The possibility of Mirandizing Abdulmutallab “never came up” in a call that Hoekstra describes as a “quick update.” Hoekstra recalls Brennan calling between 7:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. on Christmas, which would have been before Abdulmutallab was informed of his rights. “I think I talked to Brennan before they did it,” Hoekstra says. “He could have told me that, and asked me what I felt about it — but he didn’t.”

Hoekstra says if Brennan had brought up the subject of Miranda rights, then he, Hoekstra, would have discussed the issue with legal counsel from the Intelligence Committee. “If Brennan had called and said, ‘Congressman, we’re contemplating a legal strategy here,’” Hoekstra says, “the first thing I would have done is call up…my legal counsel and some other people and said, ‘Hey, is this a sound strategy or not?’ It never came up.”

All the lawmakers describe Brennan’s call as being very short; one recalls it as less than a minute. And all describe it as a heads-up, and not a briefing or an exchange of views. Brennan, however, told another story.

You can read Brennen’s statement at The Examiner. What he seemed to be saying is that the Republicans should have known that Abdulmutallab had been given the Miranda warning, since they had been told that he was in FBI custody, and they didn’t object.

In those short conversations, were they were expected to surmise that we would give an enemy combatant the protections of our Constitution before we had adequately interrogated him?

The Obama administration appears to be in CYA mode.

UPDATE:

Marc Thiessen weighs in at The Corner:

As I point out in Courting Disaster, just a few months earlier, the Obama administration announced that its new FBI-led “High-Value Interrogation Group” (HIG) would not necessarily Mirandize suspects it was questioning.

In its story on the announcement, the Washington Post reported:

Interrogators will not necessarily read detainees their rights before questioning, instead making that decision on a case-by-case basis, officials said. . . . “It’s not going to, certainly, be automatic in any regard that they are going to be Mirandized,” one official said, referring to the practice of reading defendants their rights. “Nor will it be automatic that they are not Mirandized.”

In other words, Republicans were assured by the Obama administration that the decision on reading Miranda rights to captured terrorists would be made a on “case-by-case” basis.

So if Brennan is wondering why the Republicans he spoke with did not just assume Abdumutallab would be automatically Mirandized, it is because the Obama administration told them so.

Another day, another Obama administation lie.

MORE:

That Marc Thiessen has really been on a rampage, lately, hasn’t he? He’s got a book to sell, ya know, #6 on the New York Times best seller list, by the way.

He discussed this issue with Tucker Carlson and Juan Williams on Hannity a few days ago:

RELATED:

Jennifer Rubin:

Holder Under the Bus?

Dude’s become a liability.

MORE:

Wow…

Hoekstra told National Review Online that Brennen has “completely blown his credibility”:

“He never brought this stuff up,” Hoekstra says, adding that the FBI was the natural choice to hold Abdulmutallab until a detainment and interrogation strategy could be settled. “No, I wouldn’t expect the military to be at Detroit Airport waiting to arrest somebody,” Hoekstra adds, but he thought the administration would carefully investigate alternatives and consult with national security principals before moving forward with Miranda rights and other criminal procedures.

***

The guy has completely blown his credibility with Congress,” Hoekstra says of Brennan, who “for all intents and purposes is calling us liars.”“With the advice that he’s given this administration, he has dug this administration into a hole on terrorism. I can understand why he’s fighting back, because they’ve made a series of missteps,” he continued, mentioning unpopular plans to close Guantanamo Bay prison and try 9/11 conspirators in downtown New York, as well as gaffes made by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano in hours after the Christmas Day attacks.

“They’re in trouble, and they know it. So they use the most effective strategy we know of: ‘let’s blame Republicans and call them partisan.’”

Hat tip Hot Air Headlines