Graham: Terrorism will dominate as 2010 issue

The issue of terrorism is likely to dominate as an issue during the 2010 election year, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) asserted Thursday.

Several weeks after an attempted terrorist bombing of a Northwest Airlines flight on Christmas Day, Graham said that the U.S. efforts against terrorism would dominate U.S. dialogue in the coming year, to President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats' detriment.

"I think in 2010, there's going to be a public backlash against the Obama administration," Graham said during an interview on WVOC radio in South Carolina.

"I think that in 2010, terrorism is going to come back to the forefront of the public's thinking, and we're going to have a backlash against this criminalization of the war by the Obama administration," Graham said.

The South Carolina conservative has been among those critical of the Obama administration's response to the attempted bombing of the flight, en route to Detroit from Amsterdam. Republicans have claimed that the president has approached terrorist threats as a criminal, rather than military, matter, pointing to the administration's decision to hold the suspect in the bombing, Umar Farouk Abdulmutalib, as a criminal defendant, rather than as an enemy combatant.

Graham said that Congress would be loath to follow through on closing the terrorist detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba as long as suspects there were sent to the U.s. for civilian trial.

"Congress is not going to vote to close Gitmo as long as we're putting these guys in federal court," Graham said. "I hope in 2010 the American people will speak up and insist the Obama administration go to war with these people, because they're at war with us."

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