{"id":7516,"date":"2009-12-28T05:33:55","date_gmt":"2009-12-28T10:33:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=7516"},"modified":"2009-12-28T05:33:55","modified_gmt":"2009-12-28T10:33:55","slug":"is-your-confidence-boosted","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=7516","title":{"rendered":"Is Your Confidence Boosted?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Janet Napolitano\u00a0says there’s nothing to see here, people.\u00a0 Move along.\u00a0 Don’t ask questions.\u00a0 Just move along<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Napolitano refused to say whether Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab has a connection to al-Qaida, citing the ongoing criminal investigation.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Of course<\/em> he’s not part of any plot that’s on DHS’s radar; he’s not part of any of the groups <\/a>that DHS is <\/a>paying attention<\/a> to.<\/p>\n

Seriously – is Napolitano’s response <\/a>just about the worst confidence-builder you could imagine?<\/p>\n

Under tough questioning by CNN\u2019s Candy Crowley, Napolitano insisted that the failure of the bomb to explode showed that \u201cthe system worked\u201d.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Dear Secretary Napolitano:\u00a0 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.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Great; I’ve probably gotten myself onto a n0-fly list by criticizing Secretary Napolitano.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 Being on defense means the enemy gets to pick the time, place and conditions for the attack.<\/p>\n

Say what you will about Bush; his first instinct was to seize the initiative.\u00a0 Wbatever he and his administration bobbled along the way, at least he had the terrorists reacting to us<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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).<\/p>\n

But hey, look at the bright side: it wasn’t a pro-life protester or returning veteran that did it!\u00a0 Kudos, Secretary Napolitano, for protecting us from those dangerous groups!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Janet Napolitano\u00a0says there’s nothing to see here, people.\u00a0 Move along.\u00a0 Don’t ask questions.\u00a0 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-war-on-terror"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7516"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7516\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7519,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7516\/revisions\/7519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}