Uninformed White House.
Janet Napolitano's performance on the Sunday shows was frightful enough to require her to perform a do-over on the Monday morning shows where she reversed her "system worked" statement. Meanwhile POTUS has delayed his statement until today. The explanation from the White House message team is that POTUS believed that any immediate comment would elevate the status of the attack and invite copycats. This spin is bottomlessly uninformed and the product of a political brain trust that does not heed what we have learned after two decades at war with Al Q and its state sponsors. In war, the first three reports are wrong. Therefore the White House is wise to assume the very worst about the incident and to respond gravely. POTUS was silent. Also, B Raman reasoned to me Sunday 27 that it is wise to assume that all terror attacks launched against the US homeland are authored and directed by the Al Q high command now camped in North Waziristan. This was an Al Q attack on the US national security on Christmas Day over the city that has more Moslems than any other in the USA. In a plane loaded with tourists and Americans on holiday adventures, therefore maximizing the terror multiple worldwide. Also, they used the conduit of one of the best airports in the EU, making clear that nothing that has been constructed since 9/11 could prevent the bomb and bomber getting to the delivery point. Al Q has a literary streak. Neat, cunning, bloody-minded package for the holidays. POTUS statement late in the day was painted by his usual passive and vague language, as if he is faking a brief to a client: Memo to POTUS, you are trying to kill Al Q in North Wazristan, and that crowd just tried to splash people all over Detroit. The important names are Bin Laden and Al Zawahiri, not "those."
"Those who would slaughter innocent men, women and children must know that the U.S. will do more than to simply strengthen our defenses."
Long Time Plan.
B. Raman also reasons that this operation was a long time plan that was started at least as early as mid 2008 when Abdulmutallab acquired his US Visa at the US embassy in London. Once the bomber had the entry point in hand, he was then moved to Yemen for training (indoctrination, preaching). The date chosen for the attack was the final element of many steps and many people preparing the way. The scouting with videotaping, the intelligence gathering, the bomb builder, the and the facts so far point to a decision to launch prior to December 24. It is not far-fetched to reason that the strike has a follow-on operation with a completely different team. There is reporting that two of the Al Q ops who handled Abdulmutallab in Yemen were released to Saudi Arabia in 2007 where they were entered into an art therapy session for rehabilitation and were then released. (You cannot make this stuff up.)
Lagos, Nigeria
Spoke to Vincent Nwanma, Bloomberg, at Lagos, who reports that the Abdulmutallab story has been big new in Nigeria since the first day because Muttallab's father is a major financial figure and this is a very prominent family. The family is offering cooperation, including traveling to Detroit.
This is not exactly related to Abdulmutallab, but it certainly speaks to where this White House stands. Has Batchelor covered Obama's recent amendment to Executive Order 12425 at all? http://threatswatch.org/analysis/2009/12/wither-sovereignty/. ThreatsWatch concludes:
"In light of what we know and can observe, it is our logical conclusion that President Obama's Executive Order amending President Ronald Reagans' 1983 EO 12425 and placing INTERPOL above the United States Constitution and beyond the legal reach of our own top law enforcement is a precursor to more damaging moves."
The mainstream media obviously aren't covering this.
It's obvious that this was not a lone wolf, as the White House wants us to believe. There were many people involved and lots of planning. To believe anything else is delusional. It's basically a death franchise and we are the target. If Abdulmutallab had been caught before he got on the plane, we would never have heard about it, perpetuating the fiction - started under Bush - that today's Islam is a peaceful religion.
I would expect that during the Bush administration many such attempts were thwarted - and we never got to know about the danger we're in. It gave us a false sense of security. On the other hand, it is conceivable that if Bush had publicly listed his victories in this regard, the press would have claimed he was lying. If you’ll remember, nothing that Bush did – whether it was making the largest contribution of funds ever to fight AIDS in Africa, to keeping the country safe from Islamist attacks – was lauded or even appreciated. It might well be that he simply thought, “The hell with it. I’ll simply do the job I was elected to do without talking about it. Talking always gets me in trouble anyway.”
Barack Hussein Obama ran on the platform that he was different from Bush. I suppose that means we can now be attacked with impunity. We’ll de-claw ourselves; we won’t fight back. Instead, we'll give them money. How can we, morally fight back; when we’re at fault in the first place anyway? (as Obama repeatedly claims) Mark Steyn, writing for NRO, summed it up best, perhaps:
“This was a failed terror plot. But with failures like this who needs victories… pretty soon we’ll have to sit in isolation for the full seven or eight hours (of a flight). Another couple of attempted takedowns and they might as well ship us freight.”
http://peterkoelliker.blogspot.com/
The point is to overwhelm us with so much stuff; we can't possibly keep track of it all. It's both a macro and micro strategy on the part of the Obama administration. There are all these voluminous bills that no one has the time to read before voting on them; then, there's the sheer volume of issues to crush our attention. It's classic Alinsky. Good catch on this one, JR. It definitely could develop into a huge problem. But with alligators all around us, who’ll ever know?
JB, please look into/comment on this Interpol mess...I have read everything JR pointed us to and I keep hearing "Impeach him!" in my head.
Peter K:
Totally agree with you that JR is on to something, and that Obama and his minions are throwing so much stuff at us in order to confuse and overwhelm. This "stuff," of course, includes words, words, words, a veritable blizzard of words and sound bites, many of which are in themselves meaningless but serve to deflect attention from, or cover up, what's really going on. That's why it doesn't seem to matter that these words are often mutually contradictory. For example, take Obama's pathetic statement on the Christmas bombing attempt. On the one hand, he insists that Abdulmuttalab is a lone nutcase, then he at least by implication places him amongst "those" who want to kill Americans -- like Al Quaeda -- and against whom he, POTUS, will take strong measures (probably more words). Mr. President, is Abdulmuttalab a "lone" or a "those?" You cannot have it both ways, sir, just by sheer logic, which I realize counts for little down in Chicago-on-the-Potomac.
Have no fear, BHO is "monitoring the situation". Most likely to vote "Present" on a course of action.
On the other hand, we must have done some good targeting in Yemen.
Next would be a search and destroy for Somali Pirates.
vsk
The President who votes Present.
I flew out of Detroit yesterday, and from the Northwest terminal. Media led me to expect a massive mess at security so I got their (uncharacteristically) early. I must admit I was a bit shocked to find there was no line at security at all (although the handlers did say they've been getting crowds in waves). The TSA people were searching bags more, checking passports more, and doing more pat downs, but nothing which made the experience unusually horrific. On the flight (2.5 hrs to NYC), there was no noticeable change in procedure, all as before. I did hear that international outbound flights were having significant delays...it's an eyewitness anecdote from the scene for you, for what it's worth.
We keep meeting the enemy and he keeps proving to be both Them (Islamist fanatics) and Us (Political Correctness). I've wondered how our left-wingers can be so sympathetic towards Islamists who want to force shariah law on the whole world when they loudly advocate for feminism, homosexual rights, abortion, sexual promiscuity, etc., all positions that can get them beheaded by their Islamist buddies.
I must agree with Ralph Peters that the solution to this conundrum is that the Islamists and our PC crowd are mirror images of each other -- spoiled-rotten rich kids like Bill Ayers was and Adullahmuttalab is who hate the world as it exists because it won't jump to their particular tune, won't privilege them sufficiently (in their eyes) or recognize their supposed superiority, and may even expect them to get a real job. And all these so-called "grievances" sooner or later feed into rabid anti-American and anti-Semitic demonology and, at some point, the embrace of some allegedly higher truth as an omnibus excuse -- "social justice" for our PC crowd and radical Islam for the al Qaeda types. Which means that the PCs and the Islamists understand one another at a deeper level than mainstream Americans (boo!) can attain. No wonder the Obama Administration from top to bottom refuses to condemn our Islamist enemies as exactly that, at most characterizing them as mentally ill, benighted, "isolated" nutcases who really need therapy and, of course, due process. Of course, this PC garbage infested the Bush Administration, too -- witness the Gitmo detainees released to "art therapy" programs in Saudi Arabia in 2007 who may now have masterminded the attempted Christmas bombing -- but while that POTUS did not seem to understand the menace of PC, our present POTUS is himself as PC as they come.
Now it turns out that the CIA, still deep in the Obama doghouse, has been tracking Adbulmuttalab as a likely al Qaeda operative since August. But no info exchanged, no dots connected, the Jamie Gorelick Memorial Wall effectively re-erected, and back in the 9/10 world that "worked perfectly," too, as we all remember. POTUS is trying desperately to get ahead of the Christmas bombing story with more words-words-words, but Obama sounds increasingly to the American people like the meaningless "wah-wah-wah" that represents the irrelevant adults in the Charlie Brown cartoons. In fact, Obama never will catch up to this story because he, like all PC leftists, is light years behind the curve on Islamist terror in general, and his posturings are obviously politically self-serving baloney. All in all, the attempted Christmas bombing is shaping up as the Obama Administration's Katrina, complete with a detached, late-to-the-dance POTUS; hopeless bureaucratic snarl, screwup, and irrelevance; and even a Brownie avatar in Janet Incompetano. Just as Katrina's flood waters steadily rose against the levies, can anyone doubt that even more embarrassing intelligence revelations are on the way?
There is good news that comes with these awful situations--BHO and Friends are given more and more opp's to demo their total incompetence. We need for them to be outed soon, quickly, in time for the "independents" who gave us this mess can switch sides to the GOP. I see more and more ridicule coming out re BHO and Friends. It's just too friggin obvious how much they suck--I hope.
Did anybody notice, nobody has been talking about health care for the past couple of days?
"Did anybody notice, nobody has been talking about health care for the past couple of days?"
I really don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing. Does it give them cover to craft something nasty in the conference committee? Or when they do bring it up, does it make them look like out-of-touch fools because everyone is concerned about national security and foreign policy?
I do think it's fair to say that the Ft. Hood shooting and this latest incident have thrown a monkey wrench into the domestic agenda, because security trumps all, and if POTUS fails at that, he fails, period.
I've been talking health care, but
(1) I'm kind of a nobody, so it doesn't really disprove your point at all, and
(2) I'm kind of making a New Years' resolution not to spend 6-7 hours a day on Politico or reading all the editorials on Realclearpolitics. I already know exactly what they are going to say; they already know exactly what I'm going to say. It's boiled down to the following distillate:
You just wait till November, 2010!
Oh yeah?
Yeah!
Oh yeah?
Yeah!
Oh YEAH?
YEAH!!
........
Gerald Celente predicted another terror incident this year....he's one helluva trend forecaster, and seems to have a handle on where this is all going.
Another Ft. Hood is due to happen again.....a good friend who worked as a nurse "patching up" returning soldiers stateside told me that there are more of these type "imbedded" in today's army.
You can thank Political Correctness for that.
Points to consider:
1.Was the underwear bomber allowed to pass security with no passport:
(a) By forces intent upon undermining Obama's Administration..or...
(b)To further detract us from what the Democrat/Socialists/United Nations are up to?
Or (c) to send us all running back to Big Gov't for more protection/enslavement?
2. Was this whole scenario a "cluster-f**k", meaning that the underwear bomber was supposed to succeed?
Also, there's a pattern developing;
1:An incident occurs.
2:POTUS sends forth one of his people to comment via press conference
(they usually say something incredibly dumb or lie through their teeth)
3:POTUS appears, and while speaking in very academic tones he:
(a) Says something utterly inappropriate or stupid
(b) Lies through his teeth.
I, for one, will be listening to the Randy Newman song:Let's Drop the Big One( and see what happens).....good night JB.
One more point to consider:
Was this whole scenario set-up to stress test Obama's and Eric Holder's current policy of putting enemy combatants on trial in a Civil Court instead of a Military Tribunal/Firing Squad?
.....Let's bring back public hanging.
Good Night!
"I do think it's fair to say that the Ft. Hood shooting and this latest incident have thrown a monkey wrench into the domestic agenda, because security trumps all, and if POTUS fails at that, he fails, period."
I don't agree, Obama, Pelosi, Reed and company have shown the ability to laser focus on their objective regardless of what is happening around them. In fact, they have shown the propensity to use world events as distractions in order to advance their goals.
They have also shown throughout the last 11 months that they have been ready to sacrifice their positions in government (reelection) in order to see their ideology forced upon the rest of us. Suicide (physical or professional) seems to be a hallmark of fundamentalists wherever you find them.
Re: Any suggestions that this whole thing was staged.
I remember hearing from many sources, particularly taxi drivers (I have the worst luck with Bozo taxi drivers), that there was evidence that Bush planned 9/11. After a while I would just assume that the lights were on but nobody was home, and avoid further conversation; but when I first heard it, I would argue: "Why would he do that? He was already President; he was popular at the time; he had never shown any tendencies to hate, mame or kill average Americans, and furthermore, you liberals all claim he has the IQ of a squirrel, so how could he have masterminded this elaborate plot and gotten away with it?"
As I said, after a while I just figured the people who seriously believed this were out to lunch.
Remember what the birth certificate fiasco has done to our credibility in the media; let's not further tarnish it by getting all paranoid. Remember that rule, never attribute to malice what can easily be explained by stupidity.
Besides, I still want to know who shot JFK?
> ...never attribute to malice what can easily be explained by stupidity.
The two are not the same. One is many times more dangerous than the other. Stupidity still gives you a chance. Whereas malice won't give up. It's always out there gunning for you. It could be a matter of survival at this point.
On the other hand, a malicious parasite keeps the host alive to assure a constant food source in the future. A stupid parasite kills the host.
Another, more obvious point: if the Administration really had staged this, they would have done a dress rehearsal for Napolitano's presser so she would say her lines properly; you can't fake getting caught with your pants down that convincingly (sorry for the awful visual).
"Besides, I still want to know who shot JFK?
I once knew this profane old drunk that ran a Chevron gas station on the edge of town who, after he knocked back a couple of forties, would swear that the CIA hired him to be the second gunman on the grassy knoll. Nobody believed him, of course, and that annoyed him to no end. When he died a little bit of color left this world.
Of course it's absurd to suggest that the Obama Administration planned the Christmas bombing. The real question to ask with this lot is what kind of political advantage they will try to gain in the aftermath. Perhaps Rahm Emmanuel and Co. might consider this terrorist bombing one more crisis too good to waste, in which case we need not fear the grassy knoll but the smoke-filled room.
Cathy thats me screaming. Impeach him.