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.”Really?Let’s look at the headlines.First this:

Faisal Shahzad was allegedly able to train with terrorists in Pakistan, return to the United States to assemble a car bomb in Connecticut and park it in Times Square without anyone in the nation’s vast counterterrorism apparatus knowing anything about it.

Then this:

The no-fly list failed to keep the Times Square suspect off the plane. Faisal Shahzad had boarded a jetliner bound for the United Arab Emirates Monday night before federal authorities pulled him back.

Then consider this.

Janet Napolitano twice suggested that the attempted attack in Times Square was a “one-off” event

As many as eight other individuals have been arrested, including several in Pakistan.

Within hours of the shooting at Fort Hood, Texas, with the base still on lockdown, an FBI official told Fox News a link to terrorism “was not being discussed.” When reports surfaced that the shooter, Nidal Malik Hasan, had been in contact with al Qaeda recruiter Anwar al Awlaki, the FBI claimed that email traffic between the two was “benign.” When media outlets printed excerpts of those emails that were anything but benign, the FBI claimed that they were consistent with Hasan’s research.

Six weeks later, Obama administration and law enforcement officials followed the same playbook with Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. Napolitano and White House press secretary Robert Gibbs first tried to claim that “the system worked” in stopping Abdulmutallab. Three days after the attack, President Obama called Abdulmutallab “an isolated extremist,” despite the fact that the bomber had acknowledged in interviews with FBI agents that he had trained with al Qaeda in Yemen. Why does the Obama administration — and its allies on the left — go to such lengths to portray these kinds of attacks as the work of isolated extremists?

Does Steny Hoyer really want to go there?