So says the Obama administration’s Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano.  This, of course, after she previously said that the system worked just fine.  Kind of a variation on the old John Kerry “It worked before it didn’t work” type of logic.

The newly exposed shortcomings in airline security became woefully apparent on Christmas Day when a Nigerian terrorist was allowed to board a plane bound for the United States carrying an explosive mixture concealed on his person and attempted to blow up himself and the passenger filled airliner as it landed in Detroit.  This even though his name was on at least some of the “no fly” warning lists available to both airlines and foreign security forces.  

Airlines and TSA inspectors are now redoubling their efforts at domestic airports in a show of increased security.  Airlines have taken to forcing their passengers to remain in their seats for the final hour of some flights and are not allowing anyone access to their carryon luggage during that time. TSA inspectors are increasing inspection of carryon bags as well as the passengers themselves.   The problem is, of course, this is all just for show.  These new measures will make getting through the airport more time consuming, boarding the plane more frustrating and flying on one even more inconvenient, but they will do absolutely nothing to improve security.  That’s because the problem is not with the inspection process but rather with the security administration management and the incredibly naïve, passive mindset of the Obama administration.

This neophyte community activist qua president still does not believe, or at least does not understand, that there are actually people whose only goal in life is to kill Americans.  While Obama vowed this past week to “do everything that we can to keep America safe” it took him nine months before he even nominated anyone to head up the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) or the Customs and Border Protection Agency.  Both positions remain vacant almost a year into his presidency because neither of these nominations have even been scheduled for review hearings by Congress.  Both the House and Senate have been so completely consumed and single focused on ramming through the ObamaCare healthcare debacle that they have had time for nothing else.  Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead

Much like the Fort Hood tragedy, the Obama administration is now even questioning whether this was indeed an act of terrorism in the broad sense or just the act of a lone misfit.  Further complicating their refusal to accept reality is the fact that an Al Qaeda spinoff group in Yemen is claiming responsibility for the attempted bombing.  This terrorist group harbored in Yemen is led by two jihadists that were released from the Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility and sent to Saudi Arabia to be rehabilitated.  They apparently didn’t take well to the rehabilitation and have gone back to doing what got them sent to Guantanamo in the first place.  Furthermore the unsuccessful bomber onboard the Northwest Airlines flight has been in communication with the same Imam as the Fort Hood shooter.

I have no doubt that the next explanation for these terrorist acts will be to blame the Bush administration for locking up these poor misunderstood Muslims in the first place.

All I know is that this is the second major act of Muslim terrorism carried out on American soil within the last three months under the administration of a president who said he would resolve these issues through dialog and opening the lines of communication.  If Obama was looking for a response to his impassioned plea to Muslims I think it’s safe to say he got it.  Could it be that Dick Cheney, the whipping boy of the Democrat Party, knows what the hell he’s talking about?

I wonder if ObamaCare covers getting blown up on an airplane?

Obama went during his speech to denigrate all efforts made by the Bush administration to rein in terrorists after 9-11. He said “After 9-11 we knew that we had entered a new era, that enemies who did not abide by any law of war would present new challenges to our application of the law…… unfortunately faced with an uncertain threat our government made a series of hasty decisions. And I believe that these decisions were motivated by a sincere desire to protect the American people. But I also believe that too often our government made decisions based on fear rather than foresight, and too often trimmed facts and evidence to fit ideological predispositions.” He went on to say that the Bush administration had used techniques that were illegal, having “failed to rely on our legal traditions and time tested institutions”.

All pretty impressive sounding stuff, huh? The problem is that it is once again completely and utterly untrue and meaningless.

The assertion that Bush lied is getting pretty old. He lied about this and he lied about that. The problem is that if anybody had actual proof that he lied wouldn’t that have come out by now. I’m talking proof, not innuendo to cover their own asses. The entire congress was kept abreast every step of the way on the war in Iraq, the taking of prisoners and the opening of Guantanamo Bay. It was by congressional approval not presidential edict that these actions were carried out. Even the level and harshness of techniques in the interrogation of prisoners was made abundantly clear to congressional leaders.

And while there may have been fear of another attack, fear did not dictate actions. Results dictated action. Results that this president is now trying desperately to hide from the American public.

Waterboarding has become the newest tool of the Democrats in their attempts to keep the public focused on the evils of Bush. Memos describing the technique in graphic detail were released to the eager press for publication. But strangely enough the results of those interrogations have remained secret.

As Dick Cheney explained in his speech across town “You’ve heard endlessly about waterboarding. It happened to three terrorists. One of them was Khalid Sheik Muhammed- the mastermind of 9-11.” Cheney also said “By presidential decision, last month we saw the selective release of documents relating to enhanced interrogations. This is held up as a bold exercise in open government, honoring the public’s right to know. We’re informed as well that there was much agonizing over the decision. Yet somehow, when the soul-searching was done and the veil was lifted on the policies of the Bush administration, the pubic was given less than half the truth. The released memos were carefully redacted to leave out references to what our government learned through the methods in question. Other memos, laying out specific terrorist plots that were averted, apparently were not even considered for release. For reasons the administration has yet to explain, they believe the public has the right to know the method of the questions, but not the content of the answers.”

Back on the other side of DC the words of Obama were still ringing in the halls when he said “I released the memos because there was no overriding reason to protect them.” He went on to say “I ran for President promising transparency, and I meant what I said. That is why, whenever possible, we will make information available to the American people so they can make informed judgments…….”

After damning the Bush administration and presidentially banning the use of extreme, but legal, harsh interrogation tactics wouldn’t it be in the best interest of the people, and the best way to prove your position beyond any doubt, to release the results garnered from the harsh techniques employed on the three most dangerous terrorists housed at Guantanamo Bay? After all this hoopla that this is an open administration and that the tactics used were unconstitutional, a claim which has no basis, and unnecessary, another claim without merit, and unsuccessful, I would think that the perfect example to prove this point is to release the memos of what we found out.

The only possible reason for these results to be withheld is that they completely obliterate the president’s unfounded premise.

In an almost comical closing the president, who had just spent the last 20 minutes pejoratively sniping at the Bush administration said “I understand that it is no secret that there is a tendency in Washington to point fingers at one another. And our media culture feeds the impulses that lead to a good fight. Nothing will contribute more to that than a re-litigation of the last eight years. Already we have seen how that kind of effort only leads those in Washington to different sides laying blame, and can distract us focusing our time, our effort, and our politics on the challenges of the future.” But then only two paragraphs down in his text he deepened his sanctimony by saying “I can stand here today as President of the United States and say without exception or equivocation that we do not torture………..Make no mistake; if we fail to turn the page on the approach that was taken over the past eight years, then I will not be able to say that as President. And if we cannot stand for those core values, then we are not keeping faith with the documents that are enshrined in this hall.”

What a truly cheap shot. The truth is that Barack Hussein Obama is a man of great and unshakable faith. Unfortunately that faith is in Barack Hussein Obama. A man with no experience in dealing with the level of terror and evil that is lurking, planning, waiting for an opportunity to strike again. He is a man who is convinced that if we get attacked again it’s because we had it coming. He is a man who would intentionally mislead the American public to further his completely unrealistic approach to national security. If that is not true, then let him release the memos.

I prefer to end with the closing of statements of Dick Cheney who said “For all that we’ve lost in this conflict, the United States has never lost its moral bearings. And when the moral reckoning turns to the men known as high-value terrorists, I can assure you, they were neither innocent nor victims. As for those that asked them questions and got answers, they did the right thing, they made the country safer, and a lot of Americans are alive today because of them…………I will always admire them and wish them well. And I am confident that this nation will never take their work, their dedication, or their achievements for granted.”

I know I won’t.

If I ruled the world, every man would be as free as a bird
Every voice would be a voice to be heard
Take my word, we would treasure each day that occurred

My world would be a beautiful place
Where we would weave such wonderful dreams
My world would have a smile on its face
Like the man in the moon has when the moon beams

If I ruled the world, every man would say the world was his friend
There’d be happiness that no man could end
No my friend, not if I ruled the world

Every head would be held up high
There’d be sunshine in everyone’s sky
If the day ever dawned when I ruled the world.

While this may sound very much like a Barack Obama campaign speech, it is of course the lyrics to the popular song “If I Ruled the World” by Leslie Bricusse and Cyril Ornadel from the play Pickwick. The euphoric message is both heartwarming and encouraging. It inspires faith in brighter days to come and in the one who will make it all happen. The problem in real life comes when the campaign is over and the guy who made the promises really does rule the world. At that point folks tend to expect a little more than a new set of promises. Such is the case of the battling speeches given by Barack Obama and Dick Cheney.

Cheney’s speech was direct and fact laden. Obama’s speech, as always, was lyrical in its choice of words and dramatic in its presentation against the backdrop of the U.S. Constitution, but when it was over created more questions than it answered. Cheney gave the speech of a man who has succeeded in his mission and has no further political ambitions to cloud his connotation. Obama gave the speech of a consummate campaigner not a president. The two speeches emphasized the stark contrasts in mindsets between someone who has spent a lifetime in service to the protection of the United States and a liberal community activist who believes wishing will make it so. It detailed the harsh realities of someone who has fought against those whose sole mission in life is to kill Americans and bring down the Great Satan United States and someone who is a political obfuscation, who contemplates the image on each piece of the puzzle independently without seeing how they all fit together.

I don’t know if the Obama administration had an advanced copy of Cheney’s text but they rushed the president to the podium days earlier than originally planned to try to mollify the impact of Cheney’s comments. It was obvious that the Obama administration had heard the calls from the liberal left to step away from what is now being called the “Bush/Obama” policy on national security.

Obama opened his comments with the same whiney lament that he has used repeatedly over the past several months. “There is no shortage of work to be done, or responsibilities to bear” he said, almost as if he was surprised by the degree of responsibility the office of president holds and trying to hide the fact that he is in way over his head and just looking to take a breath. “It’s like drinking from a fire hose” Karl Rove counseled prior to Obama taking office. But I doubt BHO would ever actually listen to Karl Rove.

“We know that al Qaeda is actively planning to attack us again. We know that this threat will be with us for a long time, and that we must use all the elements of our power to defeat it” Obama said, sounding as if he was in tune with the real threat against us. He then went on to say “Already we have taken steps to achieve that goal. For the first time since 2002, we are providing the necessary resources and strategic direction to take the fight to the extremists who attacked us on 9/11 in Afghanistan and Pakistan” proving once again that no topic is too important to politicize and intentionally misrepresent.

In his speech Dick Cheney said “Our administration always faced its share of criticism, and from some quarters it was always intense. That was especially so in the later years of our term, when the dangers were as real as ever, but the sense of general alarm after 9/11 was a fading memory. Part of our responsibility, as we saw it, was not to forget the terrible harm that had been done to America…and not to let 9/11 become the prelude to something much bigger and far worse.” Cheney went on to describe the numerous attacks carried out against Americans and American interests all over the globe and culminating in the attack on 9/11. He explained that this was not just one incident and one well defined and contained enemy. “9/11 caused everyone to take a serious look at threats that had been gathering for a while, and enemies whose plans were getting bolder and more sophisticated” said Cheney. He went on to caution the foolishness of tunnel vision and directing attention to a single point and dealing with it like a law enforcement case “with everything handled after the fact….crime scene, arrests, indictments, convictions, prison sentences, case closed.”

Obama went on to say that he has launched an effort to secure all loose nuclear materials within the next 4 years, has increased protections at our borders, is increasing preparedness for future attacks(and then downplayed that by including preparedness for natural disasters as well) and is building new partnerships around the world to defeat al Qaeda. “We have renewed American diplomacy so that we can once again have strength and standing and truly lead the world”. What he did not explain were any of the actual measures taken or plans proposed or any tangible results. He also failed to explain how diplomacy will strengthen or improve our national security. In his blatant criticism of the Bush administration for including Iraq as a threat rather than focusing solely on Afghanistan he conveniently forgot that every intelligence agency in the world reported that Iraq was working on developing weapons of mass destruction and that they were in fact dealing with extreme terrorist factions, if not directly involved in 9/11, certainly capable of carrying out their own similarly deadly attacks.

Obama went on to call attention to his surroundings by saying “ I believe with every fiber of my being that in the long run we also cannot keep this country safe unless we enlist the power of our most fundamental values. The documents we hold in this very hall – the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights – are not simply words written onto aging parchment. They are the foundation of liberty and justice in this country, and a light that shines for all who seek freedom, fairness, equality and dignity in the world. I stand here today as someone whose own life was made possible by these documents……”

I agree with the president’s ebullient description of our founding charters, but I must add that none of these hallowed documents is a suicide pact. They are indeed the foundation of liberty and justice for all who seek it but they are not and were never meant to be a pacifistic protection for those who would destroy their significance.

And by the way, the life of every American standing in that hall, and for that matter anywhere in the world, was made possible not only by those documents but by the brave men and women who gave their all to defend it. We are not free because some people developed a set of ideals and signed a piece of paper, we are free because some of America’s finest chose sacrifice and service to their country defending it.

Throughout our history Americans have proven their mettle. The question is, what is this president prepared to do.

More tomorrow.

In other words, in order to have faith in something we must first possess the ability to have faith. Some people claim to have great faith and some people claim to have none. The reality is we all have faith, we’re born with it. The question is where we place it.

I personally think it takes a lot more faith to believe in the non-scientific theory that some way, somehow, a particular combination of elements came together in just the right quantities and at just the right time and temperature to create life. The theory claims that this life form then “evolved” into every living thing that has ever inhabited the planet. It’s never been proven or duplicated and by the way Darwin never even came close to hypothesizing it. But yet people, who have never even opened Darwin’s book “The Origins of Life”, hang his name on it as if that makes it undeniable proof and proceed to call it science.

In this case they take the results, that fact that we exist, and devise a theory to match those results. They tell people like me who chose to believe in God’s creation that our faith is out of touch with scientific reality. But in fact reality doesn’t match their theory, a fact even Darwin admitted in his study of flowers. Reality doesn’t allow me to believe that the DNA and life force of everything that has ever lived evolved somehow from a single nondescript living cell. If you’re looking for scientific proof, it’s just not there.

The flip side to altering the theory to match the results is when you have faith in something or someone regardless of the results. It is equally misguided and often the result of simply wanting something to be correct so badly that we are willing to ignore all the evidence to the contrary. Unfortunately in the real world wishing and wanting don’t make it so.

Such is the case we currently face in Washington, when the President of Hope and Change is willing to abandon all that has been proven effective for a misguided faith in systems and policies that have been proven ineffective. While this president claims to be a seeker of common ground his actions are anything but conciliatory. To the contrary, what he is claiming as truth is anything but and what he is claiming as a solution is dangerously close to the policies that allowed foreign terrorists to train and carry out the most lethal attack within the United States in our history.

There were two distinctively different speeches last week in Washington DC, one by President Barack Obama at the National Archives Museum and one by immediate past Vice President Dick Cheney at the American Enterprise Institute. Cheney’s speech had been scheduled for several months. Obama’s speech was moved up several days in an attempt to eclipse the former VP. Obama’s speech ended literally minutes before Cheney’s began and his attempt to get out in front of Cheney’s comments was a complete and utter failure.

Cheney spoke facts. Obama, as always, spoke in terms of hopes and dreams. Even congressional Democrats, who have been yearning for definitive direction from this White House, could only feign enthusiasm for yet another Obama speech that was long on criticism of his predecessor but completely devoid of any firm plans or policies of his own. Obama had hoped that his controlled public image and strong rebukes of Bush era policies would sway House and Senate Democrats to support his closing of Guantanamo Bay Detention Center without having a plan of his own as to what to do with the dangerous terrorists housed there. Much like his attempt to quash Cheney he was completely unsuccessful with his own party lawmakers as well.

I plan to detail some of the stark contrasts in these two speeches using their own words and comparing them to actual facts. I invite you to read again tomorrow for what should be a lesson for us all on faith.

By the way, Darwin never used the term “evolution” either.