Did Political Correctness Prevent Obama Administration from Connecting the Dots Which May Have Prevented Boston Bombings?

There were multiple warnings from Russia about Boston Bombers in advance of attacks. Why was nothing done?

Readers may recall that in the aftermath of the original September 11th attacks there was a steady drumbeat in the media demanding to know why the Bush Administration did not "connect the dots" by sharing and acting on available intelligence information that would have led to the arrest of 19 terrorists who hijacked airplanes on that day. The 9/11 Commission report as well as later government reviews all concluded that lack of information sharing between agencies was a key reason the attacks were not prevented. The primary reason for this was the "Gorelick Wall" named for Clinton Administration Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick.

That Clinton era policy was to treat terrorism as a law enforcement problem with emphasis on protecting the ability to prosecute crimes rather than prevent attacks. The Bush Administration overturned much of that and were successful in preventing any further attacks on American soil following the original September 11th attacks during the remainder of Bush's term.

Then along comes Obama. He can't bring himself to say the words "Muslim" or "Islamic" along with "terrorist" in the same sentence (1,2). In fact, the Boston bombings were the first time he has used the world "terrorist" in connection with what is now the third successful Muslim terrorist attack during his time in office. But he refuses to say that radical Islam has anything to do with it. "No rush to judgment" is what Obama said in the wake of the Boston attack. Yet as columnist Michael Goodwin points out Obama "rushes to judgment only when it suits his worldview."

It's that same mindset that led Obama and other members of his Administration to deny initially that Muslim terrorism was behind the attack on our consulate in Benghazi last fall. It was that You Tube video don't you know! That attack occurred at the same time Obama was running around the country campaigning by saying that "al Queda is on the run." Indeed they are. They're running straight for us.

Obama Administration: Top to Bottom Denial

It's bad enough Obama and his top officials refuse to acknowledge the connection between radical Islam and the increased number of successful attacks. The problem the Obama Administration has in recognizing the true nature of these attacks is far worse. As Andrew McCarthy, the prosecutor who tried the first World Trade Center bombers in 1993, describes we've gone from "willful blindness to coerced silence."

Not only does the Obama regime refuse to call Islamic terrorism by it's name, they are systematically purging any link between radical Islam and terrorism from the entire government including law enforcement and national security agencies charged with preventing attacks.

Two years ago Robert Spencer reported:

The Obama Administration has now placed off-limits any investigation of the beliefs, motives and goals of jihad terrorists.

Dwight C. Holton, former U.S. Attorney for the District of Oregon, emphasized that training materials for the FBI would be purged of everything politically incorrect: “I want to be perfectly clear about this: training materials that portray Islam as a religion of violence or with a tendency towards violence are wrong, they are offensive, and they are contrary to everything that this president, this attorney general and Department of Justice stands for. They will not be tolerated.”

Got that? Any link between Islam and terrorism "will not be tolerated" and that comes from the top down.

So when the U.S. government was repeatedly warned by Russia that the older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was becoming a threat due to radicalized Islamic beliefs the FBI investigated. Did they miss his trips to Dagestan, a hotbed of radical Islam and the connection with radical videos from that region found on Tamerlan's You Tube account? Were agents even allowed to consider the importance of the information they were seeing?

Were blinders put on FBI and other agencies that prevented them from flagging Tamerlan as a potentially dangerous radical? This question, and many more, are being asked. Sadly, what we learned following the Obama Administration two step after the Benghazi attack is that the Administration will simply dodge and weave and wait for the questions to die down. Yet, if we are attacked again, we'll know exactly where to place the blame and it won't be on the Tea Party!