Assessing the President

The Real War

Had he not proven incompetent to detonate his lap bomb, Umar Farouk Abdulmullatab would have carried off an air massacre to rival Lockerbie. We would all have ended Christmas day watching TV footage of 300 mangled bodies being picked up around Detroit.
    
The system breakdown was total. His father had reported to the U.S. embassy that Umar had gone extremist, disowned his family and vanished in Yemen. Though the 23-year-old Nigerian had been put on a U.S. terrorist watch list and denied a visa to enter Britain, his U.S. visa was not revoked.

Though he had been in Yemen for months, bought his plane ticket in cash and boarded without luggage, he was neither red-flagged nor screened or body-searched.

We were spared the horrible consequences of our incompetence, only because of his incompetence. The episode raises questions not only about airline security, but about how we are fighting the real war we are in.

Defeating al Qaeda calls for ways and means different from dealing with domestic crime families like the Gottis or Gambinos.

Organized crime is the province of police and prosecutors.

Crime bosses are read their rights and granted access to a lawyer. They come into court in suits to undergo a fair and equal contest to ascertain guilt or innocence. If acquitted, they walk free.

This 23-year-old Nigerian is an enemy combatant whose way of war is mass murder. Under the rules of war, he may be shot. The immediate imperative was not to read him his Miranda rights or to phone Ron Kuby. It was to subject Abdulmullatab to intense and hostile interrogation so that U.S. forces can quickly find, fix, attack and kill his comrades and camp followers.

Unlike the war on crime, or the war on drugs, this is not a metaphorical war. There is no presumption of innocence, rather a presumption that Umar is a terrorist and did not act alone.

The questions he should have been asked as soon as he was pulled off the plane and hauled to a prison hospital are these:

Who taught you to detonate a bomb? Who sewed the underwear in which you concealed the components? Who was with you in Yemen? What are the names of those you trained with? Who helped you get on that plane? Who did you stay with on your visits to the U.S.? Who gave you cash? Who paid your bills? Where is your computer? And if you want pain medicine for those burns, you will tell us.

A question arises after the lackadaisical way the administration first dealt with this potential horror. Are we governed by serious people? A second question is raised by the ideological journey of this 23-year-old from devout Muslim to extremist to terrorist, and by his sojourn from Nigeria to London to Yemen to America.

In Omar Bradley's comment on Korea, are we fighting the wrong war, in the wrong place, at the wrong time, with the wrong enemy?

Obama just ordered 30,000 more troops into Afghanistan. Yet, even if Gens. David Petraeus and Stanley McChrystal pull it off and pacify Kandahar, how does that protect the American homeland from suicide bombers hell-bent on blowing up airliners?

How does turning the tide in Afghanistan stop radical Muslim youth in Africa or Arabia from being trained to board planes with bombs and blow them up over the Atlantic? How do 130,000 U.S. soldiers in Iraq make us more safe from an al Qaeda that has moved into Waziristan, Baluchistan, Yemen, Somalia and North Africa?
    
The Sept. 11 massacre may have been decided upon in Afghanistan. But the perpetrators were Saudis and Egyptians who plotted, planned and trained in Germany, Boston, Delray Beach and Northern Virginia.

How has occupying two nations at a cost of 5,000 dead, 35,000 wounded and a trillion dollars made us safer from an enemy that more resembles the Apache of Geronimo than the panzers of Rommel?

If protection of the homeland against another Sept. 11 is the goal of this war, how relevant to that goal is the building of clinics and schools in Kabul and keeping the Taliban at bay in Helmand?

Are we fighting other people's wars, rather than our own war?

We Americans are today widely hated in the Arab and Islamic world by scores of millions, out of whom al Qaeda need but recruit a few hundred suicide bombers to wreak havoc on our country.
    
Does having 200,000 U.S. troops in their part of the world, fighting and killing Muslims, make our country more secure than defending our borders, keeping radicals out, running al Qaeda down, and tracking and killing them where they are?
    
To win the war we are in, we have to fight the war we are in, not the war we prefer to fight because no one else is so good at it.

Americans are giving Barack Obama a split decision on his first year in office, according to a new national poll. Forty-eight percent of people questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Tuesday say Obama’s presidency has been a failure so far, with 47 percent saying Obama has been a success. The poll’s January 12 release comes just 8 days before Obama marks one year in the White House.
 
The survey indicates that Obama’s approval rating as president stands at 51 percent, down 3 points from last month, with 48 percent disapproving, up 4 points from December.
 
(Excerpt) Read more at hotair.com 

kennedyseat.com: Boston Herald endorses Scott Brown in Republican primary for Senate.

Update:

Amazing: Scott Brown about to raise $1 million for the day; Update: Done!

His site’s not loading at the moment, but as of 9:20 ET he was at $984,000 and change. It’s a done deal; he’s about to double his targeted fundraising amount for this push. Mind-blowing.

http://hotair.com/archives/2010/01/11/amazing-scott-brown-about-to-raise-1-million-for-the-day/

just came in.....ok charlie.......   get out !!!!! 

 ..God bless........nanadee 

More than any other candidate, your future senator, Marco Rubio, has the guts and fortitude to STAND UP AGAINST the Obama bandwagon. He speaks out against an overtly government-controlled United States of America wherever he goes. He openly speaks out against President Obama and his nation-threatening expenditures, left-wing ideas, and socialistic appointments (his czars).

Current Florida Governor Charley Crist has stood right with Barack Obama, in open support of the Obama socialist agenda, ready to receive "Florida's share" of the pork-laden, so-called economic "stimulus". You know, the trillion bill that your children and grandchildren will be paying back, for decades!!

Every step of the way, at every town hall meeting, he has communicated his winning strategy for a more united Florida. Marco Rubio has brought together various Florida factions to oppose the socialist leadings of the Obama Administration.

Unlike Mr. Obama and Charley Crist, Marco Rubio was not born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He is the son of Cuban exiles. He totally understands the meaning of freedom---firsthand. As he passionately relates, "My parents came to this country to free themselves and their children from a dictator who is the prime example of ‘excessive government control'---called communism."

He has forcefully opposed "excessive government control"--- in other words, the agenda of Barack Hussein Obama! By the way, Marco has already shown his birth credentials for running, unlike the example of Mr. Obama!!

Being from Florida, you are already well aware of Mr. Rubio's stellar political dealings in the Florida House (from Majority Whip to Majority Leader, to Speaker). His legislative prowess and skills speak for themselves.

Most Americans have now heard about Senate Majority Leader Reid's outrageous, racially charged comments about King Obama. What most American's don't know is that this is the kind of behavior we have come to expect from him. Liberals in Washington have overlooked, covered for, and glossed over Harry Reid's behavior because they need his power for their radical, left-wing agenda.

The double standard that liberals so often apply is taken to new heights for their leader. Besides the latest racial comments about King Obama, Reid compared opponents of his government take-over of health care to supporters of slavery, called tea party activists "evil-mongers," and even said taxpayers visiting the U.S. Capitol "smell." In 2007, with our soldiers and troops in harms way, Harry Reid said the surge in Iraq would "fail" and that the war was "lost."

Harry Reid doesn't respect the American people. His words but more importantly his actions prove it. It is time to kick Harry Reid out of the Senate.

If Harry Reid respected the American people he would allow the C-Span cameras in to let us see the strong-arming, bribing, and deal-making necessary to force passage of his government take-over of health care. If Harry Reid respected the American people he would actually hold town hall meetings to hear from taxpayers and answer our questions. If Harry Reid respected America's taxpayers he would apologize to every one of us who has attended a tea party rally or town hall meeting for calling us "evil-mongers."

We know Harry Reid won't do any of those things though. For him, the power he covets so much isn't derived from the American people, it's derived from the liberal special-interests that helped make him the Democrat's Senate Majority Leader. Despite Reid's entrenched liberal Washington allies, we can and will kick him out of the U.S. Senate.

Harry Reid is the Senate's Homer Simpson

So now we learn that back in 2008, Harry Reid told someone in private that even though Barack Obama might be black, he did not have a "Negro dialect" and he was "light skinned." The apparent implication was that Obama could therefore be elected.
What are we to make of this? That Reid is a racist? Almost surely not. Just that his word choice again demonstrates the sensitivity of a brick.
Once, when I was writing a column mentioning the Senate majority leader, I found myself writing "Homer Reid," immediately caught the mistake, asked myself why I made it, and realized it was because I had momentarily confused him in my mind with Homer Simpson, the affable, bumbling cartoon character seen on TV.
It's almost as if good, old Homer leaped from the TV screen, got himself elected to the Senate and just happened to be exactly what the Democrats wanted in a leader.
Get Homer Simpson in this job, and next thing you know he'll be saying tea party protesters are "evil mongers," that you can "smell" Washington tourists in the summer, that the Iraq war "is lost," that he "can't stand John McCain," that George W. Bush is "a loser," that Ted Kennedy's death is "going to help" the Democrats and that former Federal Reserve boss Alan Greenspan was a "political hack," along with some of the other notable Reid gaffes I found on an Internet reminder list.
If Homer were the big cheese in the Senate at this moment, it's easy to imagine his falling in love with a health bill that could help ruin the country economically, that would make it that much more the sort of welfare state much of Western Europe is trying to escape and that would accomplish virtually nothing it promises.
Republicans have caught on to this charade? Why then, Homer, why don't you stand up in the Senate and give a speech saying they're just like those 19th century Southerners who wanted to preserve slavery of blacks? No difference. None. Same thing.
Republicans have caught on to this charade? Why then, Homer, why don't you stand up in the Senate and give a speech saying they're just like those 19th century Southerners who wanted to preserve slavery of blacks? No difference. None. Same thing.
Want more of analysis of this stripe? Well, Senate Majority Leader Simpson will say, opposing this bill is like opposing giving women the vote. So there!
We viewers tend to forgive Homer his trespasses because we're aware he seldom quite gets it, and so if he decides to buy votes in service of this health bill monstrosity, the country may forgive the corruption. And after all, it's not the first time we've had morally barren leaders who just got through pretending to be morally superior.
Enough, Homer and Harry. Go away. Leave us alone.
Homer, you get back into cartoon fiction and stay there, and Harry, well, we know where he is headed this fall -- very likely to electoral defeat at the hands of Nevada voters who seem to have caught on to him. Those who tell posters they approve of him add up to 32 percent of the population, while those who say they disapprove come to 52 percent. Likely opponents score better.
And oh, even if Reid's Obama remarks weren't racist -- that they were seems a stretch to me -- his remarks some years back calling Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas "an embarrassment" and saying his opinions are "poorly written" may be a different story, especially since some of us think Thomas is extraordinarily lucid in his prose. A couple of commentators I've run across have wondered whether Reid wasn't engaging in a stereotype -- you know, the kind that says those folks aren't usually all that literate.
I think that's just possibly the case.

American Patriot,

     OHHHH MYYYYYYY!!! I have heard that a picture is worth a thousand words. What a picture this is !!!

His IQ number!!!  What a waste of air space.