Obama: U.S. will never bow to ‘siege mentality’

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama suggested Thursday he would not fire anyone for the attempted Christmas airline attack, saying it appears the security lapses that led to the near-disaster were not the fault of a single individual or institution. “Ultimately the buck stops with me,” said the commander in chief.

He declared anew that the government had the information to prevent the botched attack but failed to piece it together. He announced a range of changes designed to fix that, including wider and quicker distribution of intelligence reports, stronger analysis of them and new terror watch list rules.

But, added Obama, “When the system fails, it is my responsibility.”

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Obama: U.S. will never bow to ‘siege mentality’

So, no firings huh? Everyone stays in place and systemic failure is Obama’s fault? I guess that means there’s not a chance that he’s going to fire himself then? No? I didn’t think so.

He spoke from the State Dining Room, his remarks delayed twice as officials scrambled to declassify a report on the failures. That report was released immediately after he spoke.

Let me take a stab at clarifying this last paragraph a bit. I am guessing it went something like this:

Speech writer 1, “OK, here’s the final story, the POTUS can sell this.”

Speech writer 2, “Man, are you out of your mind? There’s WAY too much truth, we can’t have Obama standing up there telling it like it REALLY is…”

Speech writer 1, “You’re right, what the hell was I thinking? Let’s see if we can make Barack look like the *good guy* here, you know, all responsible and junk!”

Speech writer 3, “You guys are rank amateurs, just put some words on the prompter, let him read it and blow it off man. Nobody believes what he says anyway, just do what we’ve been doing since the campaign, LIE damn it, LIE!”

And so it came to pass, the great ‘I am Barack, hear me roar, see me accept blame, watch as I say things like human errors, shortcomings, responsibility, siege mentality and all the things that fooled the weak-minded Dems and got me elected” speech…

In an interview published Thursday by USA Today, national security adviser Gen. James Jones said people who read the report will feel “a certain shock.”

Elaborating, Jones said, “The man on the street … will be surprised that these correlations weren’t made” between clues pointing toward a threat from Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. Even though the 23-year-old Nigerian man was in a database of possible terrorists, he managed to fly from Nigeria through Amsterdam to Detroit with an explosive concealed on his body.

I’m surprised, and I am NOT the man on the street. I have a little bit of knowledge and insight where this Intel stuff is concerned. I did, after all, stay at a Holiday Inn last night.

I am pretty sure what Gen. Jones was trying to say was this, ‘Obama is going to feed America a line of crap and they’re going to take it, hook, line and sinker.’

Probably so, at least the 50% of America that is still intoxicated from the Obama Party Punch.

Abdulmutallab was indicted Wednesday on charges of attempted murder and other crimes for trying to blow up an airliner.

This part really bugs me. Is it our government in general? Our President individually?

Who has come up with the bright idea of charging this guy with attempted murder and not acts of terrorism? Is this nation SO wussified that we’re completely afraid to address the TERROR issue? You have to wonder, had Obama been President on 9-11, would he have called the attackers criminals or do you think that maybe, just maybe, he would have broken down and called them exactly what they were? Terrorists!

No, I don’t think so either…

The president blistered the intelligence community earlier this week, saying flatly that the government had enough information to uncover the plot and disrupt the attack. “It was a failure to integrate and understand the intelligence that we already had,” Obama said.

Charlie Allen, the former head of collection at CIA, said the government suffers from a shortage of experienced intelligence analysts.

Ol’ Charlie is right you know. Sad to say, but there is a terrific shortage of experienced analysts.

What is more sad is this fact; even if the government had an over-abundance of well trained and highly qualified analysts, there’s just so much they can do. They are, after all, offering up their carefully considered opinion. Once that opinion is spoken, that’s it, the President is going to hear what he wants to hear and act on the intelligence he chooses to act upon.

Just ask George W. Bush how much Intel a POTUS actually listens to before he decides to do whatever it is that HE wants to do.

Think Iraq…