'Obama's Worst Day'

That’s how Patrick Poole, writing at the Tatler, describes yesterday, and it’s tough to argue with him:

It’s hard to overstate how bad February 10, 2011 will rank among the worst days of Barack Obama’s administration. Earlier today CIA Director Leon Panetta told Congress that Mubarak would announce his departure today. That didn’t happen. Now our intelligence agencies are scrambling to understand what all this means. This catastrophic intelligence failure is the worst since 9/11 (rivaling even the 2007 Iran National Intelligence Estimate).

Then Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said in response to a question by Rep. Sue Myrick (R-NC) that the Muslim Brotherhood was “largely secular“, despite the fact that the Muslim Brotherhood lists as its two “key pillars” the imposition of sharia law and the reestablishment of the global caliphate – in English on the Muslim Brotherhood’s official website. This is the same organization that has as its credo, “Allah is our goal. The Quran is our constitution. The Prophet is our model. Jihad is our way. And dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.” A bastion of secularism, apparently. (Brian Fairchild has more of the Muslim Brotherhood’s “largely secular” greatest hits.) Understandably, Clapper’s media flacks are now trying to walk back his statement.

Yesterday, Rush Limbaugh caught this exchange between Andrea Mitchell and a foreign correspondent of NBC’s, Richard Engel:

MITCHELL: James Clapper, who says that it is, quote, “largely secular.”

ENGEL: That is terrifying. It’s not A-Qaeda, it’s not the Taliban, but it is not secular. And that is a wild misreading of this organization.

But then, Mitchell has her own issues with the Muslim Brotherhood, as The Blaze noted yesterday: “Implausible Deniability: MSNBC’s Mitchell is Warned by Ex Muslim Brotherhood Member [Ayaan Hirsi Ali] They Want Sharia Law The Next Day Mitchell Says Brotherhood Not Extremists:”

[youtube 0ETzOClvQZc]

Well, fortunately, it’s not like America’s top-ranking intelligence officials get their information from cable TV or anything.

(Incidentally, remember how much grief Bush got in 2003 from journalists when he told Brit Hume he didn’t rely on newspapers for his information?)