As these videos at Breitbart.tv illustrate, she’s two, two, two Homeland Security Secretaries in one:
- Yesterday: “‘System Worked’: DHS Secretary Defends Response to Flight 253 Attack”
- Today: “Napolitano Now Says Terror Prevention System ‘Failed Miserably’”
As Victor Davis Hanson writes:
1) We will begin to hear ever so insidiously mention again of the “war on terror”; some quiet memo will go out to cool all the talk of ‘man-made disasters’ and ‘overseas contingency operations’.
2) Either shortly or soon next year, Homeland Security Secretary Napolitano will resign. [Update: Or be pushed, Jonah Goldberg writes — Ed.] I don’t see how the nation’s point woman on domestic terrorism can claim that the system worked like “clockwork” (she has since backtracked) when the Nigerian terrorist’s own father contacted American authorities long ago to warn us about the proclivities of his own son, who came within seconds of blowing apart a transcontinental jet. The system worked only at the 11th hour thanks to a courageous Dutch tourist who took matters into his hands.
Meanwhile, the system’s working equally well at both the State Department, and on a local level, also.
Update: Jules Crittenden rounds up the reaction on both side of the Blogosphere to Janet’s solid B+ performance.
Update: Just added Chris Muir’s report from the cartoon kingdom to the top of this post. Since the PC-obsessed Obama administration may well want to replace Napolitano with a woman of the same gender, I nominate Day By Day’s Sam. Sure, she’s not real, but you can’t have everything, to paraphrase the line in Woody Allen’s The Purple Rose of Cairo.
Update: After tossing plenty of (staggeringly well deserved) snark at Napolitano, Ace concludes:
This is the Major Hassan problem all over again. What is the real rule for handling potential terrorists? Is it “act aggressively and decisively to protect American citizens, and worry about the consequences of being wrong later?”
No. That is the horsesh*t they tell you is the real rule for PR purposes. The real rule is Make no waves; make sure no one can ever accuse you of anti-Muslim bias; it’s better to have 100 people die in a plane detonation than for one innocent (well, not that innocent, either) man get his friggin’ visa application revoked.”
And just for fun, Abdulmutallab wants you to know that “more like me” are coming.
This is a dreadful circumstance. Al Qaeda has long had a fascination with big, spectacular, blow-your-mind attacks. The trouble is, they’re really difficult to pull off.
What many have been worrying about — me among them — is the day they figure out that big spectacular attacks are too difficult, and it’s far easier to just do a series of small attacks. Blowing up one plane. Walking into one mall and opening fire.
Napolitano had better realize that she can’t rely on terrorist incompetence to save us forever or else her own gross incompetence will soon have a bodycount starting in the dozens and perhaps even the hundreds.
Meanwhile, Jonah Goldberg compares and contrasts John Ashcroft and Napolitano and finds the latter very much wanting in comparison.
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