A White House spokesman alerted the public to a speech in which President Obama would urge America to learn from the recent attempt to blow up an airliner over detroit. Reuters quoting White House spokesman Bill Burton reported that “He believes it is critical we learn from this incident and take the necessary measures to prevent future acts of terrorism, and he will reference the fact that we need to keep up the pressure on those who would attack our country.” He announced a series of reviews to identity the weaknesses in the security system and said:
“This incident demonstrates that an alert and courageous citizenry are far more resilient than an isolated extremist. As a nation, we will do everything in our power to protect our country. As Americans, we will never give in to fear or division. We will be guided by our hopes, our unity and our deeply held values. That’s who we are as Americans.”
Meanwhile, al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for the actions of this isolated extremist. CNN reports that “Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula claimed responsibility for the attempted Christmas Day terrorist attack on a plane about to land in the United States, saying it was in retaliation for alleged U.S. strikes on Yemeni soil.”
In the statement, published on radical Islamist Web sites, the group hailed the “brother” who carried out the “heroic attack.” The group said it tested a “new kind of explosives” in the attack, and hailed the fact that the explosives “passed through security.”
The Online Times reports that Mutallab says he was just “the first of many” who will be sent to attack US targets.
A global search for accomplices in the Detroit airliner plot was under way yesterday after an al-Qaeda group based in Yemen claimed responsibility for the operation and the would-be bomber was reported to have said that more attacks were being planned.
Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, a terrorist cell led by a former personal secretary to Osama bin Laden, issued a statement saying that the failed attack by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was a response to American-backed airstrikes on the group in Yemen this month. …
The fresh-faced engineering graduate was transferred yesterday from hospital in Detroit to a federal prison in Milan, Michigan, where agents questioning him said he told them that he was one of many bombers being groomed by the Yemeni alQaeda affiliate to attack American-bound aircraft, according to ABC News. …
The disclosures came as Alan Johnson, the Home Secretary, said he doubted that Mr Abdulmutallab had acted alone, and Dutch military police announced that they were investigating a witness’s description of an accomplice who may have helped the young Nigerian to board the aircraft in Amsterdam.
Mutallab wasn’t so isolated. Maybe that’s lesson number one. Lesson number two may be that the President should take the enemy at their word when they say they have declared war on America; that they intend to kill all who stand in the way of their cause. It’s possible they mean it.
Tip Jar or Subscribe for $5
This would be hysterically funny if it weren’t so serious. President Obama, whose legislative proposals are taking power away from individuals and centering them in the government, says that it is individual initiative that keeps us safe.
“This incident demonstrates that an alert and courageous citizenry are far more resilient than an isolated extremist. As a nation, we will do everything in our power to protect our country. As Americans, we will never give in to fear or division. We will be guided by our hopes, our unity and our deeply held values. That’s who we are as Americans.”
First of all, an alert and courageous citizenry is indeed far more resilient than an ISOLATED extremist. To that end more citizens should be able to carry arms.
Second, the danger is not that an isolated extremist now and then incompetently tries to blow up the odd airplane and murder the odd three hundred or so people. The danger is that there is an ideology that actively promotes such extremism and has initiated who knows how many thwarted plots and too many successful ones against us.
Third, hopes will not be sufficient to keep us safe. Churchill said that wishful thinking is never a good strategy.
It is jaw dropping to hear that this is the most our Commander-in-Chief has to offer. I can just see the SNL script now. A gunman is holding hundreds hostage on a huge airplane while his accomplice, after murdering the crew, is about to light an explosive device. Suddenly a Superhero bounds into the scene carrying a teleprompter with the word “Hope” on the screen. The terrorists are so amazed and dazzled that they immediately drop their weapons and surrender.
Yep, that’s what this speech was all about.
The stakes have been raised. Note Obama’s description of the little burning man being “an isolated extremist.”
AQ’s response indicates that he wasn’t isolated at all. As long as he was a deranged loner then the problem has been solved. Obama’s worst fear has come to pass–he’s not allowed to pretend any more. The arrogant child with his plastic sword WILL get an opportunity to go out against a real lion and attempt to slay it–and he’ll have to because the real lion is charging straight towards him.
The “Light Worker” will soon have an opportunity to demonstrate whether he is indeed the Messiah or merely a cheap fraud.
President Obama proposes to keep us safe with speeches. Only speeches.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071853/quotes
“French Soldier: No, now go away or I shall taunt you a second time.”
Should we learn that talking doesn’t solve problems?
4. exhelodrvr
Should we learn that talking doesn’t solve problems?
The political class has as much chance of accepting that as the Pope does of believing that Jesus Christ was a myth. It isn’t going to happen.
I caught the “isolated” nonsense as well. As to an alert citizenry, two things: 1) I didn’t realize that the ‘Flying Dutchman’ was an American citizen, and 2) When you cow the citizenry into compliance to all sorts of government edicts, and force them into a state of dependency, it kind of knocks the wind out of their initiative sails, doesn’t it? Treat Americans like full-fledged citizens, and you can expect them to stay proactive and corageous.
I still have the question – would the system this guy had work, if done right, or was it bogus from the start?
If it will work, a second try will probably be successful.
If not, then the failure may have been intended to have just the effects it is having, nuisance, irritation and debilitation. But that would be clever, and I don’t really see Al Qaeda as having that sort of black humor.
Obama is proving such an oaf, but it just doesn’t seem to matter, not to the media, not to the average citizen, or his approval ratings would be down below 40%. Most people seem more put off by his pseudointellectualism (or even real intellectualism!) than by his chronic failures to engage or succeed. In my pop sociology, success is no longer a popular criterion. Making Obama just about the leader we deserve.
I wanted to take just a few minutes . . .
And I spoke again this morning . . .
I asked them to keep . . .
Since I was first notified of this incident, I’ve ordered . . .
First, I directed . . .
Second, I’ve ordered . . .
So I have ordered . . .
Third, I’ve directed . . .
Before I leave, let me also briefly address . . .
As I said in Oslo,
And I’m confident that history will be on the side of those who seek justice.
Transcript of Obama speech
Perhaps the US [and the UK and EU] needs to extend its security and immigration controls into major foreign airports and prevent direct access from the rest.
The ‘open skies’ network that has evolved since the mid-60s has been subverted as an personal IED delivery service.
I should like to say that this traitor could not think that we are stupider, but I at the moment cannot even conceive of him as an American, a “citizen of the West” or even a human being. He seems more a hologram than anything else–it is hard to think of him as living creature who lives on this earth.
This is the response of the POTUS? When taken along side the bizarre comment about “bearing witness” in Iran, I do not know why there is not at this very minute a mob of 10 million descending on the WH demanding his resignation.
I feel as if I am in a faculty meeting of a tiny community college somewhere in New England where some 40 year old “political science” professo” is reading aloud her “memoir” about her days as a “freedom rider”, and must bear the glares in the the akward pause that follows as it is pointed out that this could not in the least be possible, followed by a quick and emotional resumption of the reading. Do not laugh, such things have happened. Surreal? We have rendered the word meaningless this year.
We are not being ruled even by the faculty of Harvard but by the TA’s of the University of Vermont.
One is reels now with the idiocy on display in our nation today.
I wonder if we can make it though January, let alone the next three years.
Obama: ‘We will not rest’ until air terror plotters caught…
Adjusts large belt buckle and Stetson.
The ‘open skies’ network that has evolved since the mid-60s has been subverted as an personal IED delivery service.
What are the main lessons learned from tackling the IED problem in Iraq and Afghanistan?
1. Defense measures (armor, electronics etc) can help, but not that much. The difficulty is that when you get to the stage when you are nearing the IED, it becomes a point-defense problem. Those are bad problems to solve.
2. The real payoff comes from hunting down the bombmakers. Disrupting the pipeline. Targeting the core experts.
None of this is new. Back in ’45, John Thatch, the originator of the Thatch Weave, created a system called the Big Blue Blanket as a defense against kamikazes. It relied on two things. Depth and interdiction.
These are exactly the principles that any successful defense against U-boats or IEDs or airplane bombers must have. That’s one of the reasons why I think this law enforcement-prosecution model of fighting terrorism is somewhat defective. It would be like putting lawyers in charge of defending the Pacific fleet off Okinawa. If the Navy had done it then we would have thought they were crazy.
And here we are in 2009 doing the crazy thing. Data trash cans, lagging analysis capacity, etc. And what do we learn from it?
It’s an answer to some question, though God only knows what that is; but it’s not the answer to the right question.
Normally I agree with much of what you say Mongoose but when you say: We are not being ruled even by the faculty of Harvard but by the TA’s of the University of Vermont. I think you are praising our ruling class with faint damnation.
Well ok, the crazy, drunk spinster aunts of the TA’s of the University of Vermont then, if that make you feel any better.
14. Mongoose:
Well ok, the crazy, drunk spinster aunts of the TA’s of the University of Vermont then, if that make you feel any better.
Actually it doesn’t unless you include “thorazine-addled” between the words drunk and spinster.
Then it works for me.
Batman #1:
My thoughts exactly. Obama, of all people, comes out with something sounding like a editorial in American Rifleman magazine from the NRA.
And then tosses in “isolated extremist.” I can just hear the Glenn Beck Show “Just another isolated incident” music playing right now.
“I’m always worried about using the word ‘victory,’ because, you know, it invokes this notion of Emperor Hirohito coming down and signing a surrender to MacArthur,” — 07/23/09
We will continue to use every element of our national power to disrupt, to dismantle and defeat the violent extremists who threaten us, whether they are from Afghanistan or Pakistan, Yemen or Somalia, or anywhere where they are plotting attacks against the U.S. homeland. — 12/28/09
elements of national power – ALL the means that are available for employment in the pursuit of national objectives.
As you insist.
It isn’t what Obama said that rankles. It wasn’t untrue on its face. The problem was that the words were being delivered by someone of demonstrated disingenuousness and calculated insincerity. He had his opportunity to connect emotionally with people and he just couldn’t do it. He only cares about those who he knows personally. He knows persons but not people, human beings per se are just numbers, not people but The People. A news flash says that he used his motorcade to speed an injured child of a friend to a hospital. Commendable but what if it wasn’t the child of a friend?
“an isolated extremist.”
Yes engaging in incendiary auto castration will tend to limit your social life. Will the government propose a program to meet the emotional needs of traumatized castrati? Nancy Pelosi’s caucus needs to know.
In the speech, he took a page right out of the GW Bush playbook.
“Those plotting against us seek not only to undermine our security, but also the open society and the values that we cherish as Americans.” You mean, the hate us for who we are???
Perhaps he is starting to realize that Bush was on to something…
IED’s are a tough problem when you avoid the problem.
The problem isn’t this guy being aboard a plane. Sure it’s a problem, like running over an IED is a problem.
Who is making them? Who is funding it? What mosque, Imam, is recruiting? Where? Does the CIA or anyone have people in there, or have they all quit and lawyered up? Or given up passing the information forward since it will either be 1. used in a way that compromises the operation, or 2. ignored?
There is no way to run a defensive operation against this type of attack, or against IED’s. Just like the kamikaze example, you make it hard for them to get off the ground. Then the defenses can work, maybe, against those who get through. And to really fix the problem you destroy their will.
I think the US has done some of these things, but the real gains are on the margins, the longshots, the stick your neck out risks by operators. Of course, that type of activity is discouraged or punished within a bureaucracy.
Especially when you are no longer at war.
Derek
Could not agree more with those (Wretchard @12 and DKite @ 21) who want to change the initiative in the fight. As I believe Wretchard said on another recent thread, defense is expensive. And he who defends everything, defends nothing. So instead of waiting to get hit, hit them first. Hard. Often. And without being too painfully and publicly scrupulous.
I do not agree that the current US policy is one of defense only nor is it a strictly law based offense.
Our drone fleet is not just some video game. The big hits come from the ground up and less said about it the better. In plain terms this is assasination taken to a high degree. They never hear it coming.
We have much bigger stuff.
Is that a plan by itself? Of course not.
Good start though.
This attack against you and I failed. According to what I have read this should have just went ka-boom before anyone could react. Now the idiot rich-boy with his balls burned near off is in our capture. Heh.
Instead of total panic the passengers and crew, ordinary citizens, did better than our entire mega-buck airline security.
AQ made its biggest mistake ever on 9/11. You didnt screw with our government, religion, or any of that – you screwed with us.
Spindok
I wonder if the underware bomber will cause the Attorney General to abort his investigation of CIA torture?
As if we needed any more clues to Obama & Co.’s view of Muslim terror, in his speech Obama used phrases which clearly take this latest foiled atrocity firmly out of the WAR camp and place it squarely into the CRIME camp:
“a passenger allegedly tried to ignite an explosive device…”
“the suspect was immediately subdued…”
“the suspect is now in custody and has been charged with attempting to destroy an aircraft …” (what about MURDER 300 people, Mr. Obama?)
“a full investigation has been launched into this act of terrorism, and we will not rest until we find all who were involved, and hold them accountable…” (does that include killing, or only arresting and hauling off to NY courts, Mr. Obama?)
“had the suspect succeeded…”
“we’re working closely in this country, Federal, State, and local law enforcement with our international partners…”
Toward the end of this limp speech Obama assures “As a nation, we will do everything in our power to protect our country…” but is that really true? Certainly we pull our punches when the Saudis or other Gulf Arabs who are baldly shown again and again to be the financial engine behind most terror in the world (allegations that Iran is the to exporter of terrorism notwithstanding) and that Muslim nations and individuals across the globe are up to their necks involved with paying for terrorism through bogus charities, paying for Imams espousing terror, paying for and supporting the mosques in the West in which Muslims are recruited, trained, and supported in myriad other ways in order to wage terror.
Last I checked, the Saudi peninsula remain unbombed by American forces. Mecca and Medina are completely intact, and for the moment remain off limits. Riyad is safe, nestled in the bosom of Hatred’s Kingdom. Those Mosques ALL remain open. Those Imams ALL remain in situ to foment more sinister slaughter, and to conduct other various Jihad ops which lay the groundwork for more successful attacks. Those ops continue apace, like the “dry runs” on planes which seemed to spike earlier this year, or to run interference for the jackboots of Islam through treasonous lawfare, massive media disinformation ops run by outfits like CAIR, ISNA, MSA, (again, ALL paid for by Saudis and other Arabs) and a whole alphabet soup of Muslim insurrection front groups which are up to God knows what.
Everything in our power? I think not. There’s oh so much more we could do, Mr. President. We’ve barely scratched the surface of “everything in our power”, Mr. Barack Obama.
More trouble for you righties
ABC news is reporting that
1)The Bush administration set free the two AQs who were apparently the backers behind the airplane terrorist attack
AND
Other news organizations are Reporting that Jim Dement has kept a hold on the Obama administrations NOMINEE to head the TSA
So it GETS more complicated
Morton Doodslag;
These terms are used; “allegedly” and “suspect” because, should legal trial happen, there is defense based on prior prejudice. What the Prez says is presumed to be legal record and everyone should have heard it…than try and prosecute.
Nobody wants to be cited for testimony unless that is what they intended.
This guy will get a trial. There is no other choice here. He is now in open official custody.
This does not reflect on motive or politics. It does not matter about health care , the climate, or any of that.
Work time now. Lets get these f*rs.
Spindok
More trouble for you righties
ABC news is reporting that
1)The Bush administration set free the two AQs who were apparently the backers behind the airplane terrorist attack
Get real little girl. The idea that you little lefties would have done anything different when it comes to letting terrorists go is ridiculous. Oh yes, you might have made them go to a mandatory class on anger management first, and that, of course, would have made all the difference in the strange world that you call reality.
And, little girl, Bush is no longer President. Look to teh Won. Look to teh Won. If you can blame Bush for everything that went wrong while he was President I and anyone else am surely entitled to blame any malady that happens now on teh Won.
Payback is a bitch, isn’t it?
Why am I not impressed? Because, just like the terrorists, I know that Obambi is like a deer caught in the headlights of an incoming car not knowing which way to move until it is too late. The clock is ticking and our luck is about to run out. If is now when. And when innocent American blood is spilled by some “isolated extremist” the blame will squarely fall on the shoulders of one Barrack Hussein Obama. Even then he will be as clueless as ever. God save the Republic.
spindok, as the security experts said today: for all intents and purposes this attack succeeded. Only by the grace of God there aren’t funerals ongoing right now for three hundred plus souls. The big stick only works if the enemy KNOWS you’ll use it. Obambi convinces no one when he talks tough.
TomDem55, nice try. Peddle your wares elsewhere. We ain’t buying.
I do not agree that the current US policy is one of defense only nor is it a strictly law based offense.
Our drone fleet is not just some video game. The big hits come from the ground up and less said about it the better. In plain terms this is assasination taken to a high degree. They never hear it coming.
We have much bigger stuff.
Is that a plan by itself? Of course not.
Good start though.
Agreed. The US is stopping a lot of stuff. The paradox is that the political leadership is almost embarassed of the activities it is doing that works. But they do it anyway from necessity, like a man who likes meat, but doesn’t want to think about where it comes from.
This can cause problems in the long run because if leadership doesn’t build political support for what works it runs a “secret war”. Secret prisons, black ops, etc. You may get a split level policy, where you play Mr. Politically Correct on the world stage to get the Left to clap, then you go and do what needs to be done. Then when someone gets caught doing “what needs to be done” you throw to the wolves.
I think to some extent all administrations are caught by this dilemma. But probably the Obama administration because it has to satisfy its political constituency, is going to be plagued the worst by it. It promised its constituency things it couldn’t do, so they will have to do it somewhere offstage or on a low profile basis.
TomDem55@26:
It seems to this old dirt farmer that the Democrats rode to power with promises to fix all the problems caused by the previous administration. So how is that working out for you?
You (the brilliant liberals) are supposed to be improving everthing, but in my opinion, benighted soul that I am, it looks like everything you guys touch is turning to crap. Course, maybe it suits you fine, but I would kind of feel better if things were getting better, instead of worse, and better in this case is kind of like art in that I may not know what is art, but I know what I like and I sure as heck don’t like what is happening. And from everybody I talk to these days, to include several liberal buds that put up with my neanderthal ways because I put up with their effete snobbery, there ain’t a whole lot of people happy with the current administration. Course, you probably like it, so they’ve got at least one vote.
Thanks Tcobb, but we did NOT let any go,
we caught them (the first attack on the WTC) and we prosecuted them and they are jailed for life
2) The news reports are on MSM sites, so either they are true or not
3) The doofus who burned his nads got his US visa during the administration of George Bush
thanks for playing
Thanks Programmer, hello to you too
1) How long does it take to turn around the worst recession since the great depression?
2) Why would you think I would want everything to turn to crap? Did not want it during President Bushs’ administration, don’t want it now!
3) as for Art, MY wife knows what it is, me I like more traditional art, not so much the abstract stuff
4)There used to be a saying that if both sides are angry at you then you are probably doing something right
thanks for playing
Spindok #27:
“This guy will get a trial. There is no other choice here.”
Wrong. You seem to misunderstand the distinction I’m making between Obama’s determination to treat Muslim terrorism as a war action vs a crime. It is a pure political decision — he is not obligated to handle Muslim terror on US soil (or Afghanistan for that matter) as a crime. For context and contrast between the two approaches available under US legal precedent you should google “Operation Pastorius” and “Duquesne Spy Ring”.
In the first incident, the government discovered a band of German saboteurs landed by U-Boat. They were tasked with demolishing US infrastructure and causing mayhem and terror in the American homeland. They were tried by Military Tribunal, and most of them were executed.
In the second incident, German spies were discovered on American territory before WW2 to have infiltrated many positions in the US. The government was fully within its legal rights to take the men out and execute them on the spot, or to give them military tribunals, or send them to stand trial in US court. But the government chose to exploit the discovery and utilize this spy ring to discover those areas which Germany was interested in. Through the dramatic use of a double agent, this spy ring was allowed to operate on American soil for two years until it was rolled up. The government, perhaps because these spies were known and stage managed by handlers, chose not to try them under standard methods (military tribunal) and chose US courts to try the spies. They were convicted under US law to prison terms.
The political fiasco of Guantanamo began under Bush when he bought hook line and sinker our enemy’s (both on the Left, in Europe, and al Qaeda) propaganda about the unacceptability of the Guantanamo “Gulag”. The fiasco went critical when Obama substantiated the Leftist anti-American al-Qaeda depiction of Guantanamo “Gulag” and promised to close it within a year of his inauguration. This sickening act of appeasement was virtually the FIRST act he took as POTUS. In Bush’s blunder, and Obama’s compounding of that blunder, America willingly dismantled one of our best tools to fight the battle once Jihadis fall into our hands. Military tribunals are appropriate for handling Muslim terrorists, whether they be foreign Muslims or domestic. You will learn amply the utter folly of treating terror as a legal matter. The upcoming KSM trial will be a circus of the absurd, and there’s even the chance the f*r will be acquitted. In an idiotic attempt to “prove” the merits of the US legal system, Obama and Holder will give our most precious rights to monsters who would annihilate those rights, and enact an obscene theater event designed to prove the wonderfulness of “American Justice”. The KSM trial is nothing but a show trial. If convicted, the world will think the fix was in. If he’s exonerated, then remanded back to the military, the world will know that “American Justice” as Obama plays it is a pure political sham. In any event, terrorists should not earn American rights in their efforts to annihilate those rights and the people who hold them dear. They should be consigned to the darkest dungeons, or better yet, lined up against a wall and have their brains splattered on said wall.
Indeed there are important lessons to learn from this attack. I have learned that the Obama Administration will not take terrorism seriously and is grossly incompetent when it comes to protecting us. It is both foolish and dangerous to expect otherwise. Sadly, for the next few years, we are left with the options of avoiding airline travel entirely or becoming hyper-vigilant/paranoid on any flight that includes suspicious passengers.
32. TomDem55
Please–there were times when high level terrorists were within the sights of missiles that could have wiped them out but the soldiers in charge had to wait to see if doing so was “legal” under “international law.”
I’m sorry but I have a hard time ascribing credibility or good faith in arguments to anyone who fits your profile.
And no, I’m not playing, but it seems that you are. I don’t know if its true or not, but supposedly it makes you go blind. Considering this, I understand you better and better.
I expect we will all soon be required to shuffle from check-in to departure gate with our pants around our ankles.
Airline ad agency copywriters have begun drinking heavily.
Hey!
Thanks Tcobb, like the time the Bush administration let the warlords take up the pursuit of Bin Laden? When he held back the
Seals and Deltas???
Something like that?
thanks again for playing
Oh, and #35 Tom, nice to meet you, by grossly incompetent you mean 9/11?
or by grossly incompetnet you mean the Bush Administration GAVE the now nutsack free terrorist a VISA?
That kind of gross incompetence??
#38
Let’s not forget how our first Affirmative Action president has done. Do you remember how he was going to get Osama Ben Ladin, no matter what?
How well has that gone?
Federal bureaucracies making mistakes under Bush? You are 100% right. My remedy would be to start firing those bureaucrats left and right, each and every, all and singular. In fact I would fire about 80% of the “government workers” period.
This is what has TomDem55 in a tizzy:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/president_obama_job_approval-1044.html
Hence the full-court BS press. Tom, your guy Obama is stepping on his crank on multiple fronts and I feel your pain. Wish I did not, but he’s my President, too. But in any event, thanks for playing.
“1)The Bush administration set free the two AQs who were apparently the backers behind the airplane terrorist attack”
Against the advice of lion-hearted leftists such as yourself, right?
Bush didn’t inherit Clinton’s recession, but it was his incompetence that nonetheless lead to 9/11. Gotcha.
Again, thanks for playing.
Josh
Would the system work? I think the concept completely flawed. Surreptitious assembly was too complex and it completely rejected the stresses of slow motion suicide. One of the first rules of demolition work has always been assemble most of the charge in advance, keep only a few items separate. My guess is he had to smuggle all the components separately and then assemble them like you’d build a ship in a bottle. Then you had to hope they trigger a sympathetic detonation in the fuel tanks.
My guess is it was a bit harebrained. It put too much of a burden on the bomber. I think it had to be assembled and then detonated through a complex set of procedures that were a little hard for a fumble-fingered bomber thinking “is this going to hurt or isn’t it?”
Kamikazes got a party. They didn’t have to hide their intent from anyone, they took off in a plane all by themselves, they were kept aware of their importance by by hostile gunners who were shooting at them, and all they had to do was aim at something large. Like riding a bicycle really. Little more than an hours duration.
No small motor dexterity required.
No wondering if people were looking at your crotch.
You could scream in the cockpit and release all that pent up anxiety.
This poor dolt had to ride a plane for hours, with tedious stopovers, being stroked by overnice atttendants, shoulder to shoulder with people who really wouldn’t have approved…and they didn’t.
When it came down to it, the guy’s brain was toast by the time everyone was putting their seat in an upright position.
That underwear bomb takes balls!
Or more properly, takes your balls!
When he gets to heaven, he’ll have trail mix,
toasted nuts and raisins.
TomDem55 always says
TomDhimmicrat, we ain’t playing. ‘This ain’t no game, this ain’t no disco, this ain’t no foolin’ around…..’
You sir, are beyond stupid and crass. Get back under your bridge or wherever you came from.
This old soldier wants to know why. when I travel by mass transit (air, rail, bus etc) in the USA (and my home of Oz)…
1. I may be examined (sniffed) by dog teams for the carriages of illicit mind altering substances?
2. I may be examined (sniffed) by dog teams for the carriages of fruit across state’s borders?
BUT…
3. I’m NOT examined (sniffed) for the carriage of firearms or explosive materiel by dog teams?
This is DISSONANT and dangerous!
I am unable to fathom a logic that does this. Wacky backy and straight bananas never brought down an aircraft, but Semtex and C4 have been quite successful. So, we won’t sniff for explosives, only the silly smokes and bananas!?
Do we pay these politicians?
If they were volunteers you might forgive them for painting the bathroom a bad colour, but this???????
TomDem wrote:
“or by grossly incompetnet you mean the Bush Administration GAVE the now nutsack free terrorist a VISA?”
**
And when did the 9/11 attackers get their VISAs? During the Clinton administration, if you want to play that game.
Nobody could write this comedy. A terrorist tries to set off a bomb in his underwear and fails only because his fellow passengers pounce on him; the Secretary of Homeland Security declares that “the system worked;” and the President celebrates the value of individual initiative while doing everything in his power to diminish it. The TSA’s solution is to prohibit anyone from peeing or reading during the last hour of a flight. (The reading I can understand; people might get ideas).
On the bright side, at least the terrorist wins a Darwin Award without actually dying. That may be a first.
Who can respect this man, Obama? It seems few can. I can’t. He’s rubbed every foreign power the wrong way, from bungling the Churchill statue on loan from the Brits during his first week till the embarrasment with the Chinese in Copenhagen.
The man is insufferable, and here he comes along with another “teachable moment” regarding the latest terrorist attack. We just got attacked again, and this is his response? To lecture us about blather? To redefine “deeply held values”?
Sorry, that’s not what a sensible man would do when his house got attacked. He doesn’t gather the kiddies and hold forth like this. Rather, he defends his house. It is really that elementary.
What a stupendous prig. This behavior is only possible from pedicured Western intellectuals who are, quite possibly, the most useless and overpaid class of human beings who ever lived.
There has been outrage expressed about the restrictions during the last hour of a flight. If we use a little logic and don’t assume that everything that comes from TSA is pure bloody mindedness we may find a reason. If a plane is destroyed in mid flight it is a tragedy but the odds are that the casualties will be confined to the people on the plane. Think of the 4th plane on 9-11 that went down in rural Pennsylvania. The plan in the Detroit case was to bring the plane down over a populated urban area or at the airport by initiating the explosive when the pilot announced that they were 10 minutes from landing. That would have served the terrorists purpose of creating a spectacular public event. This is at best a stopgap response.
To be blogged under the title “Keep Seated.”
Lifeof,
I do not recall how many were killed on the ground at Lockerbie, but am certain it was far fewer than the number killed on Long Island when the Airbus lost it’s tail and augered in.
Detroit would have been similar, in that it was in a low altitude, low speed condition to avoid disintegration and dispersal as was the case @ Lockerbie.
(just wait ’til the gear is down, clever)
Much more disasterous when all that fuel and metal comes down in a smaller area, touching off a mini Tokyo firebombing event.
All this “up there” or “down here” debate is missing the point as much as political administrators in whichever White House.
Dogs inspecting luggage and passengers can stop any threat. But we do not use them for this, instead, for drugs or other olfactory input!
Such cognitive dissonance is more properly rewarded by a rubber room!!
No more debate needed.
Sapper,
Just a discussion of the quality of the plan of attack.
Stupidity and self-loathing of our leaders, and incompetence of federal employees is to be assumed, unless and until.
And right now I’m not holding my breath.
Obama’s pre-golf course speech reeked of weakness and unpreparedness. Obama is quickly dissipating what respect the world had for America.
Obama doesn’t belong in the White House. He should resign his position as CinC and take up permanent residence in Hawaii.
Over the past two years the Joint IED Task Force has consumed $20 billion, and not one detection dog deployed!
Where do we get these drones? Its not just the White House, its also West Point as an institution serving an industry focussed on function buttons. And a Congress without the intellect to ask the searching questions necessary, and a media that can only report what it is told and hence incapable of analysis .
Do we deserve to win? As an ex professional soldier and officer I’m reminded of General Percy Hobart; “Pace is protection, rapidity means surprise… Increased mobility and range entails great calls not only on endurance…but on intelligence and initiative in all ranks…A new sort of discipline is required. The ‘You’re not required to think’ variety is obsolete.”
Then (ex RE) LtCol Percy Hobart, KBE CB DSO MC, RTC tactics lecturer, Quetta – 1926 in ‘Light Division of the Future.’
Heard on the radio yesterday that the USA is a preferred target because some legislation was passed in the last few years banning screening machines as an invasion of your privacy.
…for a worthless TSA troll to see the outline of your bod.
Europe, not so concerned about that, thus a less attractive target.
As Sapper and the Aussie say, sniffers would be nice.
Not exactly as intrusive as a crotch rub.
Thanks Doug,
For a window on the olfactory sensitivity of the dog browse:
http://pinestreetfoundation.org/2009/05/17/canine-scent-detection-breast-and-lung-cancer/
Much more efficient than an airport security grope!
Those who know me from my ramblings in here know that my admiration for our 4 footed friends and their educable noses knows no bounds. Unfortunately it isn’t a workable answer. A detection dog can only be in search mode for 20 minutes before they have to take a break. They have a better union than their handlers do. The cost of training enough teams to clear the traffic at a even a Category II mid-size airport would be prohibitive. For a Cat X hub like any of the NY airports, fuhgedaboutit. Given that the threat keeps evolving, dogs aren’t trained to detect peroxide, we would still need the mechanical inspection systems. Dogs have their uses, primary screening of passengers and carry on baggage is not among them.
To be blogged under the title “The Nose Knows.”
If we do not lose our courage, if we take back our freedoms and our government from these fools, then a thousand years from now, if history is still being written, the scholars will write of the Obama administration that it “demonstrated that an alert and courageous citizenry were far more resilient than an isolated extremist.”
Life @#48
Agree completely that the plan was to send the jet crashing into the homes and freeways below the airport. Makes the act a two-fer.
One thing I keep tripping over is, if we’ll all just send our minds back to the Reagan years, we’ll be forced to recall that one of the Democrat’s “gotta-have’s” was the regulation of the airline industry (“gay marriage” and “global warming” and “the uninsured” and “global test” were still on the tastemakers’ work benches and not yet ready for roll-out). Well, as legend goes, Reagan held the line, and even routed the Dem’s union-proxies from their bunkers in the nation’s airport “control” towers.
Reagan obviously won a few battles…but did he win the war?
Now flip back to today and look around: by awarding unionized government employees the lions’ rolls of gatekeeper, doorman and security guard, all charged to “govern,” sphincter-like, clients’ access to private airlines’ services, the Democrats have consolidated the government’s role as the primary mediator in an airline’s business plan (already airlines’ business plans must contend with fluctuations in gov’t tax, labor and energy policy). Now, by dictating the industry’s clients’ wait-times, the contents of their luggage, and even their in-cabin composure, the Democrats have rendered the boards of proud private, competitive airline companies like NW, AA, SouthWest, et al, have been made effective subsidiaries of the Federal Government.
I think Reagan lost the war.
Even if you ignore Sen. Chuck Schumer-(D, NY)’s latest attempts at legislating the airline industry’s customer-liabilities for weather delays or “stranded” customers, or whatever (as if the Senate didn’t have more important things to poke its nose in right now), and if you just focus instead on comparing the Dem’s regulatory agenda during Reagan’s terms to the gains they have secured on the ground today, you will notice a deliberate trail of political “bread-crumbs” marking the way.
Crumpled, torn bits of manufactured rhetorica like “Star Wars,” “back-alley-abortions,” “Read-my-lips…,” “counteveryvote,” “gay-marriage,” and “Cooked-up in Texas” – each one nothing but a cheap riff when viewed alone, but, when grouped with its neighbors, definitiv – together they trace the stealthy pathway that the Democrats’ took to skirt the legislative defeats that they suffered in the 1980′s.
Typo Alert:
I meant to write:
“Now, by dictating the industry’s clients’ wait-times, the contents of their luggage, and even their in-cabin composure, the Democrats have rendered the boards of proud private, competitive airline companies like NW, AA, SouthWest, et al, subsidiary to the Federal Government.
Score one for the American Baathists! Fear works.
Two words: Voight-Kampff.
Follow me here, I would like feedback…
1. Israel has the best security.
2. Israel profiles intelligently, but more than that, Israel has top talent people giving every flyer a shake – a quick and dirty psych eval – and seeing what falls out (the shaky get more look-see).
3. Therefore, to have the best security, the US and the West should profile and “shake.” The danger is not the weapon, it’s the man.
4. But the shake for 30,000 daily flights or more would consume the services of tens of thousands of people who are needed for SOF, CIA, NYPD, FBI, USSS, etc. Cost the earth, and who’s catching the bad guys?
5. The US likes and is good with tech solutions.
therefore:
6. We need a tech shake. At least to weed the masses and get the numbers for a deep, human shake down to a manageable level.
7. Enter the Voight-Kampff. A construct of the immortal Philip K. Dick, as seen in the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and subsequently in the movie Blade Runner, the Voight-Kampff test is used to determine whether a test subject is human, or a “replicant” (android), not by cutting into its flesh, but by analying emotional responses.
8. V-K in the book relied on pupillary expansion and contraction to determine emotional response, which replicants were incapable of (but not the better ones, it took longer to detect them and eventually might have been impossible).
To illustrate: you expose them to a moral dilemma, say someone is drowning and you can save them, but don’t; or show them pornography or images of violence. A normal human reacts, a replicant doesn’t.
I don’t know that we’d have to reply on the pupils; we have polygraph gear, we have PET scans, etc. But:
9. Everyone boarding a flight goes in front of a machine scanning setup and is asked an interactively determined pseudorandom series of questions. Maybe one or two, maybe two dozen. Let your imaginations roam free with the appropriate questions or statements – from “who packed your bags” to “Mohammed was a child molester” to “Are you being held hostage to carry a bomb on board? Nobody can see you now, don’t worry about being watched. Blink twice for yes and we’ll get you some help, don’t worry, we’ll rescue your loved ones.”
Either you get factual information – say, they have suspicious connections – or at least you get a read that something smells.
10. Perfectibility: while this may not be 100% on a James Bond level sleeper, I have not seen anything to suggest that any of these threat types are James Bond level people. JB types probably do not go on suicide runs. I doubt Mohammed Atta, Richard Reid or this new guy the Weeniebomber could have passed such screening. Maybe OBL or Khamenei could, but I doubt even that.
Thoughts? Just imagine, maybe we could keep our shoes on.
Airports Slow to Receive Whole-Body Imaging Scanners
This article says whole body scanning legislation has only been proposed, not passed.
TomDem55, I’ll risk the condemnation of other contributors by throwing the troll a scrap. Yes,the terrorist received his visa under the Bush administration. But it was not recalled or canceled after his father notified THIS administration’s agents (via the embassy) his son had been radicalized, disappeared in Yemen and feared he was intent on terrorist activity. After 11 months in charge, it is still the previous administration’s fault? So what has this administration actually done? (Aside from doubling down on Bush’s mistake of TARP?) When you apply for and get the job, you take on the responsibilities that come with it. No excuses.
Obama needs to grow up.
(Cue the music: Mr. Cellophane from Chicago)
Nichevo, only one flaw I see. The statement, “Mohamed was a child molester” may not cause a reaction since it is a true statement. Other than that, rock on.
Bush was joined on TARP by a majority of distinguished politicians, including Senator Barrack Hussein Obama.
I’m a bit puzzled as to why so many took TomDem55′s bait of assuming that this was a strictly partisan site. The differences between Bush and Obama are a matter of degree (albeit a very substantial degree of difference). Bush was indeed much more forthright, aggressive, and effective in his policies, but he did pull some punches, and Tora Bora was one of those, as was the first Fallujah. His admin also insisted that Islam was the ‘religion of peace,’ and a number of Gitmo detainees were released on his watch. TomDem is, of course, engaging in the impotent posturing of the left with his notions that the likes of Kerry or Gore would have gone after Bin Laden more effectively, but the overarching environment of American warfighting policy is governed by handicapping restrictions no matter which side of the establishment power structure is governing.
When it comes to whether Americans will learn from this attempted atrocity, the answer is simple.
Yes we can.
The question is whether the Obama administration has learned anything, and specifically whether the Obama administration will learn to trust the initiative of a free people more than layers of its own red tape.
Don Rodrigo #67 and Speakeasy #65 both make excellent points about the provocateur troll and his delusional dogmatic BS.
Back in the aftermath of 9/11, when the Feds would up the threat level the police handlers of the drug-sniffing dogs at ORD would get orders to redeploy and pretend they were bomb-sniffing dogs.
The obama administration isn’t interested in learning anything. It’s their business to convince the rest of the world that they’re wonderful. The ‘isolated extremist’ remark demonstrates that. They look at the world through bureaucratic, hierarchical eyes. They do not believe in initative, let alone free people. ‘Isolated’ in this sense should read ‘distributed’, and of course a distributed threat requires a distibuted response. But he tendency of the bureaucrat to solve problems with ever more red tape severely limits the scope of ‘everything in our power’, and gives the motivated islamist all the freedom, and a definite corner on initiative. Here again obama speaks, says nothing.
If AQ were to make an all-out war effort on US civil aviation, I doubt that it can be defended in an economic sense. Aircraft are extremely vulnerable, both in the air, and on the ground, and expensive. If Mudtallab had succeeded then AQ’s cost would be a few dollars worth of chemicals and an airplane ticket-but the US economic cost would have been perhaps 100,000 times worse. This war will not be won by defensive measures, they have the resources, to launch multiple cheap attacks, which could scare patrons away from flying. They will learn how to do it better, and surely there are numerous ways to cause terror.
Example: Fully fueled, and loaded jet at terminal about to depart gets hit by laser guided missile with say 5kg Semtex, destroying aircraft, igniting fuel, and maybe terminal. Variant-”sleeper”, airport worker drives explosives laden truck to achieve same result-like McVeigh.
Example: Suicide bomber on airliner ignites clothing which gives off toxic chemicals. Variant: Releases anthrax or Nerve gas.
Example: Figure a few out for yourself-there must be a huge number.
The TSA react to each attack by changing procedures to guard against the last attack.
They probably recognise most of the possibilities, but understand their inability to implement an effective defence.
The US has a large ethnic group many of whom are actively disloyal, open borders, limited ability to “interrogate” suspects, and is at war with homicidal fanatics-what can go wrong?
The sad thing is that in this case when Obama blames Bush he is in part right.
Ultimately of course he is wrong because he has had over a year to fix the mistakes of the Bush administration, but they were indeed mistakes. And of course it was Obama’s embassy staff that the terrorist’s dad talked to about a month ago. It wasn’t Bush there a month ago. It was Obama.
But 2007 was still under Bush’s watch and 2007 was when the Bush Administration let two terrorists out of Gitmo who then went on to plan this most recent attack.
Conservatives should not get defensive when Obama attacks Bush like this. Instead we should BEAT OBAMA TO THE PUNCH. We should say that indeed Obama is repeating the mistakes of the Bush adminstration. The American people would appreciate our honesty.
George W. Bush was one of the worse presidents in US history. Sure Obama is even worse but that doesn’t erase the fact that George W. Bush was bad in his own right. Until we admit this we will never be able to move forward.
Again, Obama is in control now so blaming Bush for stuff that he should have corrected doesn’t fly. But it would totally take the sails out of Obama for us to first blame Bush and blame Obama for continuing down the same path at an accelerated rate.
@Lifeofthemind
“The cost of training enough teams to clear the traffic at a even a Category II mid-size airport would be prohibitive.”
$20 billion in the last two years against IEDs just for the joint Task Force, and nothing to show for it. Such a sum would place sufficient animal teams in major airports?
“A detection dog can only be in search mode for 20 minutes before they have to take a break.”
Urban myth old Mate. In the early 70s I cleared 28,000 m2 of primary jungle in six hours of non-stop detection with one dog! Far from ideal, but the 20 mins rumour is similarly flawed. The first Australian 747 clearance was by one dog in one hour for 100% detection, against a team of trained police officers for six hours and 60% detection!
In this domain, to be so negative as to dismiss without evidence is just what is expected of a suited and skirted bureaucracy, but NOT the armed forces.
Lets try it, then buy it…
Morton Dooslag brings up important points concerning the handling of our captive Al-Queda terrorist.
Without bringing up my own prefences about how he should be handled, he is in the hands of those who must follow law. The legals are not to be trifled with. They still hold power and I hate to think what might happen if they did not.
I think there are red dots all over Yemen right now. Maybe not, what do I know?
Spindok
1) No matter what Mary Matlin says, the 9/11 tragedy took place on President Bush’s watch
2) I WOULD like President Obama’s polling to be above 50%, but what matters in the end is that his policies place us in a better direction than the previous administration
3) No President Bush did not keep us safe after 9/11, remember the shoe bomber and the lefties who were mailed ANTHRAX?
4) Well for one, President Obama has worked to get the economy back in shape, with no help from the Republicans, he hastried to force the congrescritters to reform our medical insurance industry, and (read the news) already upped the ante in Afghanistan by increasing Special Forces to find and track down Bin Laden (yes he has had 11 months, how does that stack up to President Bushs’ 8 years?) (Sorry I missed the whole cash for clunkers which added to the economy!
(and no fair crying defecit remember McConnell just admitted that they did it all the time under President Bush.
5) Well YES I assumed this was a right wing site DUH
6) CAN somebody tell me WHICH freedoms have been lost since President Obama was elected?
thanks for playing
p.s. A Troll is somebody who insults folk on the blog, and who engages in personal attacks on public persons they dislike, who lives in a fact free environment