The chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee said today he opposes any efforts to profile passengers in the wake of a failed plane bombing.
“You pat down every person who’s suspicious. I don’t think you have to target people,” Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), told MSNBC. “This Swedish grandmother could just as well be a part of a terrorist plot as anyone else. So I think we have to be very careful when we try to target people.”
Thompson also said the financial concerns could hold up efforts to get full-body scanners in airports.
“It’s a matter of money. You know, security is an issue, but as we struggle with this economy, there’s only so much money we can dedicate to this particular issue,” he said.
I put a lot of effort into my previous post on Democrats and National Security. Please take a look.
Consider Janet Napolitano, Barack Obama’s pick for the head of the Department of Homeland Security.
According to a report produced in April 2009 by the DHS, conservative Americans who are pro-life and pro-marriage, and who believe in the Constitution, federalism and the rule of law are potential terrorists.
Here’s a refresher of what the report was about from US News & World Report.
… Napolitano’s department prepared a report for state and local police officials titled “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment.” Little more than a nine-page screed against phantoms, the report purports to address potential threats from religious and racial hate groups as well as “those that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely.” The report also singles out for special consideration anti-abortion activists, gun owners, immigration opponents and… returning veterans.
Here she is on CNN talking about how returning Iraq war veterans are potential terrorists.
And consider this story where she refuses to say the word terrorism in her remarks to Congress.
Excerpt:
Napolitano is the first homeland security secretary to drop the term “terror” and “vulnerability” from remarks prepared for delivery to the House Homeland Security Committee, according to a copy obtained by The Associated Press.
Tom Ridge, who headed the agency when it was launched in 2003, mentioned terrorism 11 times in his prepared statement at his debut before the oversight committee in 2003. And in 2005 Michael Chertoff, the second secretary, mentioned terrorism seven times, according to an AP analysis of the prepared testimonies.
Does she strike you as grounded in reality? Or ideology?
And now she says that “the system worked”
I’ve posted all this background to introduce Napolitano’s latest comments of the recent terrorist attack, that Al-Quaeda is taking reponsibility for, and that the DHS failed to prevent.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has created controversy over her remarks that “The system worked” on CNN’s “State of the Union”. She was referring to the terrorist attack on Northwest Airlines flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit.
“The system worked”, she says. This, in spite of the following facts:
The terrorist’s name, Abdul Farouk Abdulmutallab, was on the tied list of potential terrorists.
Abdulmutallab’s father reported his son had been recruited and trained by al Qaida to the United States Embassy in Lagos, Nigeria.
Abdulmutallab is not permitted into the UK because of terrorist concerns.
Abdulmutallab may have been allowed on board without a passport. Witnesses in the gate area allege he was introduced by a well-dressed man as a Sudanese refugee seeking sanction in the United States.
Homeland Security cleared the passenger list before NW253 departed.
But “the system worked”!
Maybe the system is only designed to prevent terrorist attacks from”right-wing extremists”? I really don’t know. What I do know is that the DHS will not be effective if they believe in an alternate “Michael Moore” parallel universe, where Rush Limbaugh is actually responsible for the 9/11 attacks instead of Osama Bin Laden.
Two of the four leaders allegedly behind the al Qaeda plot to blow up a Northwest Airlines passenger jet over Detroit were released by the U.S. from the Guantanamo prison in November, 2007, according to American officials and Department of Defense documents.
[…]American officials agreed to send the two terrorists from Guantanamo to Saudi Arabia where they entered into an “art therapy rehabilitation program” and were set free, according to U.S. and Saudi officials.
Elections matter, so let’s remember Janet Napolitano the next time we have to vote in 2010. The only way to deal with Napolitano is by voting Democrats out and putting some grown-ups in to handle things like the economy, health care, and national security.
Extremist Muslims who force vulnerable teenage girls to convert to Islam are being targeted by police, Met chief Sir Ian Blair has revealed.
Police are working with universities to clamp down on “aggressive conversions” during which girls are beaten up and forced to abandon university courses.
The Hindu Forum of Britain claims hundreds of mostly Sikh and Hindu girls have been intimidated by Muslim men who take them out on dates before terrorising them until they convert.
I am curious what sense the phrase “aggressive conversion” has. Obviously there are using a different definition of conversion than Christians use, since for us, it is something you do when you are convinced by arguments and evidence, not being beaten up. Jesus didn’t beat people up so they would accept his authority.
WINTERY KNIGHT 