Buried deep in the Washington Post account of the Obama administration’s  intelligence failures regarding the Christmas Day terror attack is this nugget:

Abdulmutallab remains in a Detroit area prison and, after initial debriefings by the FBI, has restricted his cooperation since securing a defense attorney, according to federal officials.

And why has he clammed up, sitting uncooperatively while the Obami scramble around trying to put the pieces together surrounding the not-at-all isolated extremist? Because Obama has declared we will treat these incidents as criminal-justice matters. He is arrested, Mirandized, lawyered up, and now mute. This is, of course, madness. Rather than subject Abdulmutallab to serious and, if need be, enhanced interrogation that might uncover the extent of the plot, other plotters, the identities of those assisting him, the extent of the Yemen operation that supplied him with the explosive, and other life-saving information, we have defaulted to the pre-9/11 criminal-justice mode. We are reduced to “hoping” he will co-operate. This is what our anti-terror policies have brought us. And when the next attack or the attack after that occurs and we wonder why we didn’t have better intelligence, someone might recall that intelligence is gathered by more than hope.