#48 Right Wing Realist:
While WND is not always the most reliable of sources [not totally crazy, just that they sometimes go with a story before it is ready to go]; I have seen these separately at other more reputable sources.
We are forced into whipping out Occam’s Razor.
If it is a multiple failure of security, at all points up and down the line; the regime’s entire theoretical construct of events collapses into ruin. It would be a ruin so vast that even the media working as hard as it could would not be able to cover the gluteal musculature of so many people of such girth at one time. How many times in our history has the government lied to people “for their own good”. They may be rationalizing that it is “to prevent panic” or to “prevent the racists of flyover country from committing genocide on innocent people in this country”; but there is the larger motive of political self-preservation that must be taken strongly into account in the calculations.
Countering that, we have the testimony of a number of people who are known to have been in a position to be eyewitnesses to what they claim to have seen. We have them speaking up despite opposition from the Federal government. I have heard that the FBI tried to coerce the witnesses into retracting their statements about the attempt to get the man aboard the plane without a passport. We have them speaking up despite the fact that making statements that may blow the covers of Jihadi‘s identities and tactics may expose them and their families to fatal retaliation. And they do so in the knowledge that the US government will do absolutely nothing to protect them in such a case. There is no immediate personal gain apparent for these witnesses to put themselves on the line over this.
In the absence of detailed follow up by unbiased investigators, of the statements of the eyewitnesses, the fact that the Federal investigators were not in a position to have first hand knowledge of what happened at Schipol Airport OR on board the plane, and using the classic parser of truth, Cui Bono?, I think that Occam’s Razor slices so as to give the balance of the benefit of the doubt to the eyewitnesses.
It is subject to further investigation and proof or disproof; but the investment that the regime has in keeping the belief that a) we are really not at war, b) those who attack us are either loners or incompetent cave dwellers, c) that the regime is competent to protect us and therefore needs to be trusted and supported in this and all things, and d) “LOOK! Squirrel!” being a successful part of their basic methodology [movie reference that] as a viable position to hold means that I will give credence to a conditional assumption that we are in fact being lied to by the government.
This is reinforced by the incident on the same flight two days later where another as yet unidentified Nigerian “businessman” reprised many of the “Undie-bomber’s” actions, causing a security alert and emergency landing and isolation of the plane. After the alert, he fell into a media black hole; which itself is atypical. I have discussed that here before on another thread.
How dumb do they think we are? Pretty dumb, and they are depending on it.
This is going to be an interesting year, in Chinese terms; and a whole lot of carefully constructed and maintained pleasant fantasies that the Left has used to guide their lives and control ours may come tumbling down.
Subotai Bahadur
