Collins: Obama has terror 'blind spot'

WASHINGTON, Jan. 30 (UPI) -- U.S. President Barack Obama has a "blind spot" when it comes to the "war on terrorism," a Republican Party spokeswoman said Saturday.

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, speaking during the GOP's weekly radio and Internet address, criticized the Obama administration for treating terror suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab as "an ordinary criminal" rather than as an enemy combatant, thus showing "a blind spot when it comes to the war on terrorism."

Collins, a member of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, blasted what she had was a decision by Abdulmutallab's interrogators to read him his Miranda rights shortly after being arrested for allegedly trying to ignite a bomb aboard a Christmas Day Northwest Airlines flight. She said Abdulmutallab, who had been talking to investigators for 50 minutes up until that point, wouldn't talk afterward.

"Because of that blindness, this administration cannot see a foreign terrorist even when he stands right in front of them, fresh from an attempt to blow a plane out of the sky on Christmas Day," she said.

"There's no other way to explain the irresponsible, indeed dangerous, decision on Abdulmutallab's interrogation. There's no other way to explain the inconceivable treatment of him as if he were a common criminal."