Nothing worked. All the stupid and humiliating airport security procedures, all the little baggies for toothpaste and shampoo, all the padding through the security scanner in stocking feet, didn't work. All the concerted efforts by the State Department and DHS to ignore the jihad doctrine and reach out to people they deemed to be "moderate Muslims" didn't work. All the aid programs based on the assumption that poverty caused terrorism and that money for schools and roads and hospitals would win over Muslim hearts and minds didn't work. For an affluent and educated Muslim was able to bring explosive materials onto a plane, and the only thing that kept him from committing mass murder was his own ineptitude and the valor of other passengers on the plane.
What's more, the jihadi's father warned American officials about his son, who was being watched already. And still nothing was done to keep him from boarding the plane.
As far as the DHS and Janet Napolitano are concerned, the incident is a massive and unmitigated disaster, showing the complete and abject failure of their anti-terror policies across the board. But rather than have the decency to admit the truth, the DHS chief is putting on a brave face and pretending that up is down and down is up. "Homeland security head: The security system worked," from AP, December 27 (thanks to Mackie):
(AP) -- WASHINGTON - Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano says investigators did not have enough information to keep a terror suspect from boarding a flight bound for Detroit and that the system worked as it should have.The father of the man accused of attempting to blow up the jetliner told U.S. officials in Nigeria he was concerned about his son's extreme religious views. However, Napolitano says there was no specific information to place Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab on a no-fly list....
Pamela has video.
Now is the time for a man on a horse.
The source of the problem is the communication to the White House. Obama is surrounded by people like Dalia Mogehed and CAIR people. He sees everything through their distorted reality. This is also echoed in most of the media.
People need to demand their safety!
To Janet Napolitano - read my lips.. the security system DID NOT work!! The only reason the folks on that 253 flight landed in Detroit on Xmas day because the detonator malfunctioned. Otherwise we would have had one of the very serious disaster on our shores. In my view, JN is totally incapable of understanding the dangers fo Jihad attacks.
This jihadi also shows that our rationale for expending billions of dollars and hundreds of lives in Afganistan is also ridiculous. Ostensibly, we are fighting in Afganistan so that terrorists cannot set up camp there and go on to harm Westerners. Even if we secured every square inch of that desolate country, does our moronic politicians not understand there are hundreds of other places for terrorists to learn their trade - like Yemen or Somalia or even the UK.
"Brownie, you're doing a heckuva job"
Our current approach to airport security is a stupendous waste of resources because it treats all of us as potential terrorists. Instead of screening a million people a day for less than a couple onces of fluids that may or may not make up a bomb, we need to start doing the unpopular but far more effective & effecient measure of profiling.
I heard some boob on Larry King last night (I was trapped in a room with CNN on TV) say that the "only thing" we can do is to increase scanning technologies at airports. That is NOT the only thing we can do. We can start using our brains about who are the likeliest suspects based on their name, country of origin, and yes, religion.
It's time the debate about "Can muslims really denounce the duty of jihad" be open to the public.
There is no getting around that question.
It's time the debate about "Can muslims really denounce the duty of jihad" be open to the public.
There is no getting around that question.
I would hate to think what a failure would be?
I know, the bomb would have gone off at about 1000 to 500 feet just before landing. All would have died on board along with untold numbers on the ground. Max death, that is what they look for.
Just remember they are taking credit for things they have no control over. It is in the hands of God that we did not see this tragedy turn out the way it could have. Give thanks to Him instead of the self inflated alleged political leaders.
At least it was good to see representative Peter Hoekstra and Senator Joe Lieberman come on with Fox's Chris Wallace this morning and define the Obama Administration as a unmitigated disaster in itself when it comes to Homeland security.
Hoekstra pointed to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano's order to refer to terrorist acts as " man made disasters" and both he and Lieberman said they should be called what they are; Islamic terrorist attacks, or Islamist attacks rather than continuing to try and remove it from the reality of what it is.
We need to shake these political correct hacks out of our most important positions-- that of protecting and defending this from enemies foreign and within. We must not give them any quarter.
I still think another Manzinar may end up being in order if not the answer if this continues--political correctness be dammed! Because it is going to get us killed.
And all the security gang is suggesting is more rules: no operating laptops or cell phones during flight, no using the toilets during the last hour of the flight, no getting up from one's seat during the last hour, no access to the overhead bins during the last hour. Somewhere I must have missed the first Iron Law of Terrorism, blindly obeyed by all terrorists everywhere: "Planes can only be blown up during the last hour of their flight."
Not one of these new rules would have done anything to stop this guy.
As it was, the existing rules were not observed: he was allowed to board without a passport, and his name was on a watchlist, but he was not thoroughly searched.
She is indeed a brave woman, to let the whole world know, on camera, how naive she is. But what is really stupid is she must have thought ordinary Joe would buy her utterly stupid and dishonest statement. And furthermore, she's the protectorate of the US Homeland. Now that's soothing.
I was only able to stomach up to 1:30 of the video.
These people are INSANE.
High office has plenty of perks
Like announcing that "The system works!"
But the bomb on that flight
Has brought it to light
That the system's in fact led by jerks!
"The system worked." In a way, what she said is understandable. Here's how I'd guess she, and many other government officials, are thinking:
"If you try to raise security levels much higher than they already are, the whole transport system could grind to a halt. Waiting times at airports are already long, and security costs are already high. Even if we invest huge new sums in new security technologies for every airport, there will always be weak points that determined people will exploit. At some point, the money cost, the time cost, the cost in the loss of freedom all become prohibitive. Therefore, people will have to learn to live with some insecurity, because banishing all insecurity is impossible, and impractical. You simply can't plug every hole. The law of diminishing returns says that if you keep throwing more and more money and effort at a problem, the benefits you gain do not increase forever at the same rate, but fall off and diminish. Therefore, when we talk to the people, we must lower their expectations of having perfect security. We must tell them 'the system worked,' and we must get them to accept the system more or less as it is, or with reasonable ongoing improvements, because the airline and transport system simply can't bear the weight of major new costs and logjams."
None of that considers, of course, how one might approach a fix for the problem by somehow demanding a reform within Islam, or how one might place restrictions, including immigration blocks, on Muslims who refuse to sign a statement rejecting Islamic law and jihad. None of that considers whether Muslims should pay the extra costs of air travel because of Islam's aggressively totalitarian core texts, such as one finds in Sahih Bukhari, the most canonical of hadith collections, where Muhammad said,
In other words, if you are not a Muslim, Muhammad says your blood and property will not be safe from Muslims.
Or there is Qur'an Chapter 8, Verse 12:
And also in Sahih Bukhari, Muhammad said, "Whoever changed his Islamic religion, then kill him."
Qur'an verses and hadiths such as these are the problem. Not just security procedures.
High office has plenty of perks
Like announcing that "The system works!"
But the bomb on that flight
Has brought it to light
That the system's in fact led by jerks!
Wow, Janet Napolitano, is even stupider than I thought she was.
How I wish the only nightmarish thing about that video were the fashion sense.
I heard that the Bomber got screened only once on his trip. And that was in Africa. I'm shure he got screened real good there. lol! When he was in Amsterdam he stayed in the post screening area before boarding the flight to Detroit, so no rescreen.
Here's how I believe the system works.
It's all about money.
The government (local, state, and/or federal) says that each American citizen is considered to be worth only so much money. Each year, "X" number of Americans are expected to die or become too disabled to work from a variety of accidental, criminal or occupational causes. Therefore, the government can predict the relative value of various safety proposals.
When the cost of safety improvements exceeds the anticipated losses to the tax base or GDP, the improvements are deemed unnecessary. When so many people are dying or disabled that the loss to the tax base/GDP is greater than the cost of the proposed measures, the government mandates the improvements.
A good example is the fact that seat belts are required in cars but not in school buses. Properly used seat belts in cars save thousands of lives each year because there are hundreds of thousands of car accidents each year. Even so, we still lose perhaps 50,000 per year in car wrecks. There are very few fatal school bus accidents each year, so the financial cost of retrofitting seat belts in all those buses is greater than the loss of a few children each year.
I guess that works well enough for most people as long as it isn't your kid, or you don't have to pry the mangled little bodies out of the wreckage.
I would not blame them too much. President Obama chooses to surround himself with such people and solicits their advise. It does not seem to occur to him that such people might be pursuing interests different from his. Does anyone believe that the smiling rug merchant has the customer's best interests at heart? President Obama is comfortable with an advisor who will confirm his personal prejudices, rather than challenge them. You can see how marginal Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and CIA Director Leon Panetta are in his entourage. These subordinates were probably too challenging in private and insufficiently effusive in public to satisfy him. In contrast, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has managed to avoid termination after some serious missteps, due to her sycophancy. President Obama is similar to his predecessor in this way.
I would think twice before committing myself to the idea that Napolitano is as crazy or a stupid as she might appear, given the idiocies she is announcing.
I think it is far more likely that she regards her responsibility as being to contain and calm the potentially dangerous American public, and is lying, consciously and deliberately, toward that end.
Far too many people underestimated the German Nazis back when, and dismissed them as stupid or crazy as they ascended to power.
Apparent irrationality is not necessarily proof of mental deficiency. It is just as likely, if not more likely to be evidence of unexpected goals and/or moral corruption.
I think the real question here is whether Napolitano is incompetent or is she doing exactly what Obama says?
When the President takes a 'mea culpa' attitude and supining position towards the Islamic world, the rest of his secretaries and czars will mirror such attitude. The problem is with the President!
America needs and deserves a Churchill...but, alas it has a Chamberlain!
They will increase their "pat downs" of 80 year old white women in wheelchairs, but forget the towel heads, that would be racial profiling. It's only a matter of time before they start bombing Amtrack, with little or no security at best. Texas and secession are sounding better by the minute!!!! Or maybe a nice non-muslim airline.
Assuming, joeblough, you are correct and Napolitano is trying to allay fears by commenting as she did, I would contend that she is still stupid because this kind of allaying of fears is not rooted in true reason and proper concern for one's country. Understand, I'm not criticizing you. You proffered a valid hypothesis, but even if you are right about the true purpose of Napolitano's statement, stupidity still surrounds it.
Well, you do have a point.
I'm wobbling between stupid and plain bold-as-brass impertinent indifference.
One of the problems in the encounter with evil is that -- evil and irrationality being twins -- it is frequently difficult to differentiate between madness, stupidity and malice.
But you do have a good point.