President Bush, Integrity; Barack Obama, Floppy Fish
If there was one thing you could always say about President Bush, it is that he always stood on his principles and values. He had an enormous amount of integrity and did not compromise any of those things for political expediency. He firmly believed every move and decision he made was based on what was best for the American people. He did not rely on polling data or popularity statistics. President Bush’s firmly held beliefs in a post 9/11 world are what guided him.
Now President Obama, on the other hand, stands on his teleprompter. As he has “navigated” his way through the first 100 days in the Oval Office, we have yet to really see the characteristics of integrity or doing what is right by the American People. At least two of his cabinet members should have been tossed; Turbo Tax Tim Geithner and Secretary Napolitano, both of whom have embarrassed the Oval Office and outraged the American people. If he really stood on principle and integrity they would have been gone.
President Obama showed signs of this early in the election cycle when he said he would accept public financing of the campaign, but when the primary season was over and he was the nominee, he opted out of the system and continued to collect just shy of 3/4 of a billion dollars, most of which is untraceable. That in itself goes against the Open Government Act by fully disclosing all donors.
President Bush walked his talk after the campaign. He worked with the Democratic leadership, showing bipartisanship on the budget, FISA, immigration and other issues. The only thing he would not compromise on (thank goodness) was a troop withdrawal time table. Democrats tried in vain to force his hand as the Obama backing MSM flooded the evening news night after night with each road side bomb image they could find. Very little attention was paid to the success we were having, only the carnage. This unwavering stance against a timed withdrawal was significant because he did not want give the emboldened insurgency a window in which to “wait it out”, and to prevent these politicians from micromanaging commanders in the field. True, there was pressures to change strategies in order to combat this issue, and the administration did just that; they initiated the “surge”. And guess what, it worked! Now Mr. Obama on the other hand has shown about as much bipartisanship as Iran has shown cooperation with the UN….Uh that would be none! The GOP has been completely shut out of the administration, being told to basically shut up and sit down because “we” (the Dems) won. So much for a new era of cooperation and open government.
What people fail to realize in Iraq, is that not only did we rid the world of a very evil dictator, who’s atrocities are well documented (so in fact there is you weapon of mass destruction), shut down Dr. Germ Rihab Taha (who was identified by UN weapon inspectors specifically), the mission also brought stability to the region as a whole.
If you look back, Moamar Kadafi quickly and quietly ended their rebellious ways and cracked down on terrorists in Libya. Syria also became much more user friendly, and cooperative. So there were broader positive effects.
Mr. Obama who was not a Senator when the Congress initially authorized action in Iraq, on the campaign trail he waved the “No More War” flag like the checker flag at the end of a car race. The election was soundly anti-Bush, and all the rhetoric that goes with that. ‘When he is elected president, we will be out of Iraq in 16 months at the most. There should be no confusion about that’.
Well as you all know, the mission (and I am not complaining about this) remains on target and is, in fact, in a winding down phase. We have consolidated much of our operations to specific areas in Iraq, handed over control and security operations to the Iraqi Army and Police force in many areas, continue to train and equip those forces so when we do leave, there will be stability and peace inside the borders. Mr. Obama’s rhetoric got him into the White House, but the reality of the situation on the ground in Iraq dictated his actions. And if the people who were so hell bent on completely ditching the quote “Bush Doctrine” (as Charlie Gibson tried to nail Sarah Palin with) they would have realized that this notion of up and run out of Iraq was not plausible in the least.
President Bush was thrust into a situation that day in September, unbeknown to America or our intelligence agencies. We went from a 20 plus year time of relative peace and suddenly thrust into war, against an enemy that does not belong to a nation or state, but operates in the shadows among innocent people whom they will sacrifice without any hesitation. Yes, mistakes were made. But this nation was kept safe, and still is, by those policies President Bush put into place.
Now we have a floppy fish in the White House. Yes he was thrust into an economic situation that has not been pretty. However, Mr. Teleprompter as not shown us anything except he is bent on a socialistic agenda and that he changes his word like we change underwear.
Now Mr. Obama wants to openly (yes there is that word open again) and without preconditions, have talks with these nations that simply hate the United States. Iran, who is pursuing nuclear weapons and calling for the destruction of Israel, North Korea, who has nuclear material but can not build a delivery vehicle, Venezuela, who just yesterday seized American Owned and Operated energy sites and equipment, and Cuba, where money can now flow freely without using a 3rd and 4th party intermediary. Oh yes lets not forget Mexico. Yet, another apology from Mr. Obama and Secretary Clinton for causing the drug war along the boarder.
Mr. Obama and his economic team have showered the coffers with billions and billions of dollars in order to prop up the economy. Thus far, nothing. New jobless filings hover around 600K and overall, 6.5 million people are out of work, and counting. Now that Chrysler and GM are making significant cuts, that is going to go up more this year. Not only does that effect line workers in the auto plants, but spills out to the suppliers and peripheral businesses that support them.
Mr. Obama, first week in office broke the most basic of his campaign pledges, saying that the practice of earmarks and pork spending would immediately come to and end. Say what? The first two things he signs into law are pork laden wasteful bills that did nothing. The Stimulus package, which failed to stimulate the American people, was shoved through the congress by the new Dem Majority in the middle of the night in which no one was even able to read. And what was in there (Mr. Dodd)? Bonuses for the executives at AIG, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac!!! Next he signed an Omnibus bill that contained over 9000 earmarks, again pushed through on a Dem freight train in the middle of the night.
Now the administration continues to politicize national security doctrine as the administration stammers on what our evil interrogators did to terror suspects. This emboldens the enemy, teaches them our techniques so now they can prepare for what little we actually do. The September 10th mentality of the administration puts us in jeopardy. Many of the policies that Mr. Obama so vehemently touted against remain in effect. The naval prison at Guantanamo Bay was ordered closed yet remains open as Obama plans where to send its inmates; the president has yet to establish a coherent policy on Iran — following in the Bush administration’s footsteps and while American troops are being removed from Iraq, most will stay in place until 2010.
It is important to note that all the enhanced interrogation tactics that we used actually yielded crucially important intelligence that helped keep this country safe,” with the eight years of safety on the home front since Sept. 11, 2001. Even though congressional leaders claimed to be left out of the loop on these techniques, it was revealed that the same Dem leaders, who bewitched President Bush, were duly informed of those methods. But as Dems, true to color, they pretended to take the moral high road, and were thus outed as hypocrites using this issue for political expediency.
Obama’s own Director of National Intelligence, Dennis Blair, wrote an internal memo last week citing the “high value” information about Al Qaeda’s operations yielded by tactics such as water boarding, but its morality has been called into question by human rights monitors and many others both in and out of the Obama administration.
So therein lays the conflict with this administration. Integrity, direction, political expediency, governing by polling data, and letting Nancy Pelosi write its budget a mere 3 Trillion and some change.
So we as Americans have to wonder, where the transparency, openness, and new era of cooperation is. Yeah, that is right, so sorry, we lost.
Memo: Feds Knew NYC Flyover Would Scare New Yorkers; Cost to Taxpayers $380K
I recently learned that the little jaunt around NYC yesterday cost the taxpayers approximately $330K and I also found the following from CBS News:
An F-16 fighter jet trails a larger military aircraft over Lower Manhattan Monday, April 27, 2009, conducting a photo shoot that panicked thousands of New Yorkers who believed the city was in jeopardy for another terrorist attack.
Dozens of people evacuated outside 17 State Street after military jets were seen escorting a 747 in Manhattan on April 27, 2009.
A furious President Barack Obama ordered an internal review of Monday’s low-flying photo op over the Statue of Liberty.
CBS 2 HD has discovered the feds will have plenty to question.
Federal officials knew that sending two fighter jets and Air Force One to buzz ground zero and Lady Liberty might set off nightmarish fears of a 9/11 replay, but they still ordered the photo-op kept secret from the public.
In a memo obtained by CBS 2 HD the Federal Aviation Administration’s James Johnston said the agency was aware of “the possibility of public concern regarding DOD (Department of Defense) aircraft flying at low altitudes” in an around New York City. But they demanded total secrecy from the NYPD, the Secret Service, the FBI and even the mayor’s office and threatened federal sanctions if the secret got out.
This doesn’t make sense — clearly we’re still only getting garbled bits and pieces of the story. The FAA isn’t in the business of giving a crap about secrecy of DoD flights — it simply follows orders re DoD flights. Only the DoD would issue a directive requiring secrecy re a planned flight. The “they” referred to in the above paragraph therefore isn’t the FAA — if any party “demanded total secrecy” it would have been DoD (and possibly also the Secret Service, which may be involved in any use of either of the Air Force One planes). The notion that anyone in the FAA “demanded total secrecy . . . from the Secret Service” re an AF1 flight is too ludicrous for words. Anything that emanated from the FAA to that effect was just a DoD directive being passed along.
And the headline is simply false, at least based on what follows. “Possibility of public concern” is a long, long way from mass panic and building evacuations on the scale of the New York Mercantile Exchange and other large financial businesses. “Possibility of public concern” applies every time a fighter jet passes over the city at an altitude that can be detected by a paranoid citizen with a pair of binoculars. It’s perfectly reasonable not to announce such things to the public, and to instruct 911 operators to reassure callers that it’s “an authorized military flight”.
There are many things that random nervous people call 911 over, that don’t warrant advance public announcements. There’s no evidence (yet, at least) that anyone involved in planning this flight and related communications had a clue that it would result in mass panic and full evacuations of large buildings by sensible people. And THAT is what we should be really worried about. Because either the people planning the flight are incredibly clueless (and thus shouldn’t have authority over any aircraft bigger than a remote-controlled toy model airplane), or there was a serious breakdown in communications between the people involved in planning and the people involved in executing an unusual training mission involving an Air Force One craft and escorting F-16s (and that’s a pretty scary concept too, given that these would be the same people planning and executing “real” missions involving Air Force One & POTUS and escorting fighter jets).
Although it appears that those involved did not realize that there could possibly be a mass panic shows just how self-centered and disconnected the new Administration is. There is no way that one of the Air Force One planes was used without the consent of someone in the Obama administration and possibly even himself. It doesn’t add up that it was his plane and he has one of, if not the, highest security clearances in the land.
Nancy Pelosi Lied, Terrorists Cried…
Nancy Pelosi is one of the most contemptible personalities in existence today. She must be one of the most immoral characters as well. She is now lying about the harsh interrogation methods used on terrorists and detainees in Gitmo.
She was briefed along with several other colleagues back in 2002 after the 9/11 attacks and after a legal team and the CIA put together techniques that could be used but would not be considered torture under international treaties/law. One of those techniques is called waterboarding; something Nancy Pelosi says she didn’t know about, or at least did not know that the technique would actually be used on a detainee.
I already posted on the fact that Pelosi was made privy to all of this information back in 2002 and was even shown waterboarding. Those who attended the meeting even asked whether or not these techniques would be harsh enough. She now has the audacity to sit there and lie to the public about what she knew. She has the gall to lie to us and treat the public like morons by stating she did not realize those techniques would actually be used on the detainees! Are you kidding me Nancy?
Pelosi says she was briefed by Bush administration officials on the legal justification for using waterboarding — but that they never followed through on promises to inform her when they actually began using “enhanced” interrogation techniques
“In that or any other briefing…we were not, and I repeat, were not told that waterboarding or any of these other enhanced interrogation techniques were used. What they did tell us is that they had some legislative counsel … opinions that they could be used,” she told reporters today.
Earlier, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) criticized Pelosi and other Democratic leaders for backing probes into the use of waterboarding — after reportedly failing to raise objections during a briefing on its potential use in 2002.
“Well, yesterday I saw a partial list of the number of members of the House and Senate, Democrats and Republicans, who were briefed on these interrogation methods and not a word was raised at the time, not one word,” Boehner told reporters at his weekly news availability.
“And I think you’re going to hear more and more about the bigger picture here, that what — the war on terror after 9/11 was done in a bipartisan basis on lots of fronts. And that bigger story will be coming out,” he added.
Pelosi says members who receive classified intelligence briefings are powerless to act on them — or even discuss them with staff — due to confidentiality requirements.
As a consequence, some members simply skip classified briefings to avoid being “hamstrung” by requirements they keep silent on the topics discussed.
So Nancy, just how stupid do you think we are? Or put another way, just how stupid do we now believe you are?
In the immediate post-9/11 atmosphere, did you really think the Intelligence community was only going to just “talk” about using enhanced interrogation techniques on captured high-level personnel? Nancy, are you really that stupid as to believe that? You believe the Intel types went to all the trouble of researching the techniques, getting legal opinions that ok’d their use…and then what? Let these masterminds of terror sit there in their cells getting three squares a day on our dime?
Nancy, if you really are that stupid and dim-witted, then you have no business whatsoever being in a governing, leadership position (You could still be in the government with those qualifications but definitely not Speaker of the House). You should resign immediately. If you’re not that dim-witted, then you are an obvious liar that holds the average citizen’s intelligence in contempt. Again, you should resign immediately. Either way, Nancy, your response to this issue has tested you and found you completely lacking in integrity, honesty, and leadership. You don’t belong in DC, please leave and DLTDHYOTAOTWO.
Obama May Release Detainee Photos, Holder Politicizes the ‘Truth Commission’
We may see the new Gitmo set up in Montana – wonder how the citizens of the state will like that?
On another note, Obama has stated that he may release detainee “abuse” photos. Obama continues to kowtow to his far left fringe base who want this prosecution persecution to go forward. He has started to politicize this monstrosity along with his Attorney General, Holder, the same guy who helped enable the 9/11 attacks in the first place. This entire charade will most likely come back to haunt Obama and bite him on the ass in the long run.
Holder, much like Obama, is playing the “I don’t know” card by stating that he hasn’t seen or read the memos and doesn’t know about the sections Cheney discusses, which provided us invaluable information about future attacks on our soil. This is becoming a political show trial just like O’Reilly has said. I find it amusing that Obama and Holder both say they don’t know. Read more
South Park Would be So Proud, Janet Napolitano Regarding 9/11 Says: “Blame Canada”
I figure that Janet is either completely inept or she has been kicking back too many cocktails while getting pointers from Joe Biden. We may come to find out that Joe and Janet are competing for the 2009 White House Superlative of “Most likely to make a tactless comment.” I would prefer to see a tiara on Joe Biden’s head for Ms. Gaffetastic 2009, but I will also settle for Janet.
Janet just can’t seem to keep her mouth shut these days or at least phrase things to be diplomatic and professional. She has supported and allowed the release of a shoddy DHS report that specifically calls out veterans as being susceptible to “right-wing extremism,” and conservatives being possible domestic terrorists. She has also decided to call terrorism and acts thereof, man-made disasters, instead of just simply calling it what it is. Let’s also not forget that we no longer have the War on Terror, but the Overseas Contingency Operation. This woman is a laugh riot! I hope she’s going to be at the D.C. Improv soon, I’m getting fairly tired of Kevin Nealon. Read more
