Is Your Confidence Boosted?
By Mitch Berg
Janet Napolitano says there’s nothing to see here, people. Move along. Don’t ask questions. Just move along:
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano says there is no indication that the man who attempted to destroy an airliner in Detroit on Christmas Day is part of a larger terrorist plot.
Napolitano refused to say whether Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab has a connection to al-Qaida, citing the ongoing criminal investigation.
Of course he’s not part of any plot that’s on DHS’s radar; he’s not part of any of the groups that DHS is paying attention to.
Seriously – is Napolitano’s response just about the worst confidence-builder you could imagine?
Under tough questioning by CNN’s Candy Crowley, Napolitano insisted that the failure of the bomb to explode showed that “the system worked”.
Dear Secretary Napolitano: Unless “the System” has involved getting them to train incompetent agents and give them dud loads of Semtex, this episode shows that the system is crap, and that Dutch filmmakers are doing your work for you.
Great; I’ve probably gotten myself onto a n0-fly list by criticizing Secretary Napolitano.
Indeed, Secretary Napolitano, if the Obama Administration continues its current course – which is fundamentally reactive and defensive (even the few offensive actions, like the surge-let in Afghanistan, have expiration dates on them) – the enemy will be able to take back the initiative. Being on defense means the enemy gets to pick the time, place and conditions for the attack.
Say what you will about Bush; his first instinct was to seize the initiative. Wbatever he and his administration bobbled along the way, at least he had the terrorists reacting to us.
And to the extent that the failure of the Flight 253 attack was due to the alleged terrorist’s incompetence, that’s also at least in part due to the fact that our aggressive approach to terror over the past eight years meant it was hard for Al Quaeda to train people (whether they had more volunteers or not).
But hey, look at the bright side: it wasn’t a pro-life protester or returning veteran that did it! Kudos, Secretary Napolitano, for protecting us from those dangerous groups!
December 28th, 2009 at 7:37 am
You’re pointing at the goal: Napolitano is trying to reassure people, not accurately — because she can’t; it didn’t — point to how the system worked in this case. It’s supposed to keep bombs off of airplanes, after all; it didn’t, in this case.
Absent the failure of the detonator, the heroism of the passenger who jumped on the terrorist — after he’d tried to detonate his bomb — would have been too late: it would have gone off.
To belabor the obvious: if the fear of airplane bombings causes enough people to give up enough flying, that’s a win for the terrorists.
I wish she’d come up with a more persuasive argument, though. Then again, that’d have been a lot easier if she’d had a more persuasive argument.
December 28th, 2009 at 10:56 am
You know, considering the trouble the MSM goes through to portray her as a witless dolt every time Michele Bachmann says anything, where are they when the genuine article comes along?
December 28th, 2009 at 11:19 am
“Boosted”. Interestingly that is also slang for “Stolen”.
December 28th, 2009 at 11:42 am
This nonsense started with Bush. After 9/11 he could have cleaned house in the FBI & CIA. Instead he passed out medals and set up the TSA.
At least you guys on the mainland have a choice about flying. You can drive or take the train. You can’t get from Hawaii to the mainland without taking a plane. Their is no regular passenger ship service to & from the West coast, or even between islands.
December 28th, 2009 at 2:35 pm
This morning, Napolitano went on the morning shows to recant; see http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/12/28/politics/politicalhotsheet/entry6029976.shtml ; she’s now saying that the system didn’t work.
December 28th, 2009 at 6:36 pm
“You can’t get from Hawaii to the mainland without taking a plane. Their is no regular passenger ship service to & from the West coast, or even between islands.”
Yeah, well you can thank the environmentalists in your moonbat courts for that Terry….they killed the “Super ferry” (the kind that floats on water, not the streets of San Francisco) because it might have upset the tasty Humuhumunukunukuapua’a’ or some such lunacy.
December 28th, 2009 at 8:38 pm
Yep, Swiftee the Superferry was killed by a couple of dozen potheads on surfboards who ‘protested’ the first Kauai arrival by paddling out into the harbor & stopping it from landing. The Superferry cost the investors $70 million. It bankrupted them. They can’t even afford to pay the harbor fees for the boat’s storage. The ‘environmentalists’ stopped the Superferry specifically because it would encourage travel between the islands. Backward asshats won’t be happy ’til we’re back in the Dark Ages.
I am amazed that the TMT (Thirty Meter Telescope) folks decided to build on Mauna Kea. All it will take is one lawyer, one plaintiff, and one compliant judge and that $600 million dollar project will come to a halt, regardless of the fact that they complied with every state & federal reg to get a permit to build.
December 29th, 2009 at 12:10 am
Also the Hawaii Supreme Court ruled that Superferry had to file an environmental impact statement before it could operate. But I’m sure that “couple dozen potheads” explanation works for you wingnut types.
Of course if those stoner surfers were protesting a tax on billionaires or somesuch, you wingnuts would call ’em patriots.
December 29th, 2009 at 1:32 am
Clown, you have no freakin’ idea how the State of Hawaii operates. So shut up, m’kay?
December 29th, 2009 at 1:50 am
And for those of you that aren’t brain dead, the Hawaii state legislature passed an exemption from the EIS for the Superferry. The investors thought that that actually exempted them from an EIS! What fools they were!
Way to encourage investment.
Angry Clown is a moron.
December 29th, 2009 at 8:34 am
Janet N spoke truthfully when she said The System worked. She just has a different idea of what The System is supposed to do than we have.
In her mind, The System is meant to apprehend suspected criminals, read their Miranda rights, and bring them to court for a fair trial. The System is meant to identify risks and adopt rules to minimize them. In that light, things went swimmingly – the underpants bomber is in custody and new lap rules are in place.
There is no organization devoted to world domination under one single religious leader, only a few nuts acting in isolated incidents which occasionally cause property damage and possibly injury or in rare cases, loss of life on a very small scale. That’s not a matter of national survival, it’s a law enforcement problem.
Unfortunately, there are a great many ignorant people who don’t understand this. The government needs to do something to look as if it is addressing their concerns, to keep them pacified.
The System is not intended, designed or operated to actually stop bombs being brought on airplanes, only to LOOK as if it’s stopping bombs being brought on airplanes. In that light, it’s a howling success.
.
December 29th, 2009 at 11:19 pm
Terry bleated: “Clown, you have no freakin’ idea how the State of Hawaii operates.”
Haha, yeah, I guess you’re right Terry. In Hawaii – oops, “Hawai`i,” right, numbnuts? – the top level of legal appeal is to “a couple of dozen potheads on surfboards,” not the state supreme court.
Angryclown laughs at your failure to understand the U.S. legal system!