How Did Shahzad Escape Homeland Security’s Notice?

Faisal Shahzad (AP/Orkut.com)

That’s the question people are asking, today. Captain Ed notes that:

He quit his job in June of last year and let his house get foreclosed.  Then he traveled to Pakistan for five months before suddenly returning in February, without a job but apparently flush with cash.  Apparently our intelligence services didn’t pick up on the fact that Shahzad had traveled to Peshawar, an area known for its terrorist networks, or had inexplicably gotten wealthier on his return to the US.

Granted, many people travel abroad, and DHS can’t track them all.  But how many Americans travel to Pakistan each year?  Return home after five months in Pakistan?  Start doing nothing but cash business despite not having a job and losing their home?  And all of this within just months of becoming naturalized, apparently through marriage?

After 7 straight years of no successful terrorist attacks in US soil after 9/11, we’ve had a string of attacks that should have gotten stopped before they had any chance of succeeding.

We’ve had two successful attacks: the fatal shooting of one soldier and the critical injury of another at a Little Rock, Ark. recruiting office by suspect, Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad and the Fort Hood shooting in which  Nidal Malik Hasan opened fire at a military base in Texas, killing 13 people and wounding 28.

and two near misses: The Christmas Day attack on flight 253 by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab that was only foiled by his ineptly constructed underwear bomb, and the May 1 failed Times Square bombing attempt by Faisal Shahzad, again foiled only by his own inept bomb-making skills.

AJ Strata has been reporting for months about the Obama administration’s rollback of Bush era counterterrorism policies and investigations,  which have been allowing these attacks to get as far as they have. He’s asking: Did President Obama & Eric Holder Suspend Another Bush Era Terrorist Investigation?:

We all know AG Eric Holder’s ‘Justice’ Department (sort of a oxymoron these days) closed down Bush era terrorist investigations into Major Nidal Hasan (killer in the Ft Hood Massacre) and probably also into radical US-born cleric al Aulaqi (see here, here and here for details). It is pretty obvious that shutting down the surveillance of these American traitors working with our enemies also gave Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab an opening to nearly bring down a plane full of passengers on Christmas Day as it landed in Detroit, MI.

It is now known, per this NYTs article that Shahzad had been under surveillance by the Bush administration.  And Strata doubts it was ever suspended under President Bush given this:

Mr. Shahzad apparently went back and forth to Pakistan often, returning most recently in February after what he said was five months visiting his family, prosecutors said. A Pakistani intelligence official who spoke on condition of anonymity said Mr. Shahzad had traveled with three passports, two from Pakistan and one from the United States; he last secured a Pakistani passport in 2000, describing his nationality as “Kashmiri.”

Yet it was only his own bomb making incompetence that prevented him from killing lots of people?

There is now a clear pattern of failure and incompetence in the Obama administration’s “law enforcement” approach to counterterrorism. We can’t expect every would be bomber to as incompetent as the last two – the next one could be very skillful at what he does….and there will be a next time, unless the Obama administration starts doing things differently.

See also:

Obama Administration Suffers Another Near-Miss Disaster From Islamo Facists

RELATED:

Erick Erickson: Steny Hoyer Gives the Democrats a Headache

Steny Hoyer is causing a conversation he does not want to really have. In trying to turn up the political rhetoric on terrorism, Hoyer, the House Majority Leader, said, ““We’re tough on terrorists, that’s our policy, that’s our performance and in fact we’ve been more successful.”

Michelle Malkin: The jihadists’ deadly path to citizenship

Jihadists have knowingly and deliberately exploited our lax immigration and entrance policies to secure the rights and benefits of American citizenship while they plot mass murder — and we haven’t done a damned thing to stop them.

DC Trawler: If you want to know how ObamaCareBomber* Faisal Shahzad was able to get on a plane, don’t ask Janet Napolitano

Linked by Michelle Malkin, Buzzworthy, thanks!