My New Foreign Policy

Let me ask you something. What, exactly, is this country's stance on terrorism and/or terroristic acts that are taken against us? Because from what I can tell, it's an awfully pansy-assed stance at best.

Let's just take a look back at what Hillary Clinton said on 60 Minutes this past Sunday. According to Fox News (well, and 60 Minutes), Mrs. Clinton was asked questions about our stance on Pakistan. Now, look, we all know that Pakistan can't be trusted. But for some reason, we felt the need to help them with their nuclear reactor research program back in 1960. Hard to say exactly what the reasoning was behind that, but what's done is done (apparently). It's also hard to say what's behind her Florence Henderson hairdo there, but I guess what's done is done in that regard as well.

When asked about Pakistan's commitment, Mrs. Clinton came across as saying that "...she did not want to meddle and alienate the Pakistani government at a time when the country's military is complementing U.S. efforts across the border in Afghanistan." Hmm. I don't know. I'm thinking that when it comes to anything having to do with Pakistan, I think there's always room for meddling. It wouldn't have to be a big meddle. Perhaps just a teensy meddle. But whatever it is, for cryin' out loud, don't let those guys just figure out on their own what to do and what's going on. Remember? We don't trust them.

Actually, her quote was "I have to stand up for the efforts the Pakistani government is taking." Aren't we the most powerful country in the world? What say you tell them what stands to take else wise we blow them forward into the Stone Age? What? Too harsh? I'm sick of this stuff, can you tell? There are reasons why we have bombs. One of those reasons is compliance. The other reason is to keep me from getting a headache every time I have to keep reading about the same thing over and over and over. Enough already. Let's get a little bomb-y and speed things up, all right?

Yeah, I'm pretty much the only one who takes that stance these days. I'm over it. We're too soft as a country. Don't believe me? Let's look at what Fox News called Hillary Clinton's "...stern warning in reference to the Times Square case."

She said, "We've made it very clear that, if, heaven forbid, that an attack like this, if we can trace back to Pakistan, were to have been successful, there would be very severe consequences. " Uh, wait a minute. What now?

So let me get this straight. TRY and attack us all you want?! But it's only if it is SUCCESSFUL that we're going to do anything?! What in the hell kind of a position to take is THAT?! Why are there not consequences for TRYING to blow us up? Why are we telling the terrorists that "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again"? It's already sounding like this Times Square moron and his evil (not to mention extremely inept) plan can be traced back to Pakistan (where their bomb making instruction seems to have waned a bit). So, there aren't severe consequences for THAT?! Why in the world not?? Anyone? Anyone? Great.

We're doomed. We are a pansy assed country who thinks that sternly worded memos are going to get other countries of this world to keep themselves in line. We can't have a policy that only inflicts a consequence for an attack that is successful. We need to be bombing the bejeezus out of anywhere that terror plots are financed from. I know that sounds harsh, but I prefer to be able to go about my business in my own country without having to worry about being blown to bits by a weird beard from one of the sand lands. I have no beef with anyone...right up until they come over here and start trying to get all 'slpode-y with us. That's when I get angry. And if I'm in charge, that's when I start bombing. It's very simple. Leave us alone.

The information about the debacle that took place on Northwest Flight 253 on Christmas Day, known by some as the Christmas Crotchfire Incident, keeps trickling out and it keeps getting worse and worse. From what I can tell, and you're not going to like this anymore than I do, your chances of getting blown out of the sky by al-Qaida are about 50-50 if you're coming from one of the "countries of interest".

Listen, I don't have a problem with the system. From what I can tell (and it's not like I have access to all of the classified stuff because if I did, I'd probably hang myself), the system works just fine. It's a matter of finding competent and capable individuals that can work the system so that it does what it's supposed to do.

Let's start with Michael Leiter and John Brennan. Michael Leiter is the head of the NCTC. (NCTC stands for National Counterterrorism Center. I'm not sure why they threw in the "T" when it's not beginning the word, but I'm guessing that if you're going to be fighting terrorism, you have to have the initial in the acronym.) According to New York Daily News, Leiter was supposed to go on a "...ski vacation right after the Christmas Day bomber nearly blew up an airliner." Well, bummer that some guy with explosives strapped to his scrotum got in the way of that plan, eh? No one likes to change vacation plans, especially for Christmas, right? Well, right, but not so fast.

See, according to John Brennan, who is the top counterterror adviser, "Mike Leiter raised with me that he was in fact scheduled to go on leave to meet his son, and he asked me whether or not he should cancel that trip.And I said, 'Mike, no, you deserve this vacation. You need to be with your son.' " Wait a minute. What now?

The guy who is in charge of the anti-terrorism deal was given the OK to go off and go skiing right after this atrocity started to unfold? Are you kidding me? This is the guy who is leading the group, the NCTC, who are the ones who missed the gazillion clues that this guy was dangerous in the first place. And so since things clearly run so smoothly with him at the helm, there should be no problem in letting him take off for a few days of swooshing down the slopes while the rest of the Obama administration sorts through this mess, right?

Not only should that guy not have gone on his vacation, he shouldn't have asked if he could go. He should have just realized that one of the things about terrorism is that it is rather unpredictable and that your plans, even on Christmas, might get disrupted from time to time by some numbskull who can't set his groin on fire properly in order to take down a commercial jetliner. If this guy isn't going to stick around and deal with stuff when it happens, should he really be in that post? I think not. And the guy who told him he needed to go on vacation? Well, he is clearly incompetent and hasn't the slightest clue as to the meaning of the word "priority". Both of them should have been fired yesterday. At the latest.

Next up on the list of things that make me wonder how we've avoided another terrorist attack for as long as we have is the discovery that the Grundle Bomber was aboard Northwest Flight 253. Back to our friends at the NY Daily News for the information that "Homeland Security officials say they had flagged the suspect in the Christmas Day airline bombing attempt as someone who should go through additional security when he landed in the United States." Wow. Is that level of optimism common through all departments of Homeland Security? I was just wondering because that sentence makes it seem as if they assumed that he would land in the United States and would do so in tact (not in the bazillion little pieces scattered all over Detroit as he was planning).

Apparently, the way the system works is that the "Customs and Border Protection officials screen passengers against terrorist watch lists before international flights leave for the U.S." That seems reasonable. But then they "...check names against a different database while the flight is in the air." Um, wait. What is this second database and why is it different than the first? What good does it do anyone to check that second one when they're in the friggin' air already?! What say you check that first one and you check that second one before anyone gets on the plane? I don't get that at all. And of course "It was during this second check that officials flagged the alleged bomber."

Let's say that this nitwit had gotten away with this and had managed to set his loins aflame. How comforting do you think that would have been to the families of people on that plane to know that the guy was flagged while he was in the air? I'm guessing "not very". Not very comforting at all. That just seems (and I don't use this word very often) incredibly stupid.

And finally, as part of the changes that are going to be made after this incident, the LA Times informs us that "Obama also ordered the State Department to revoke visas when questions arise and to make it more difficult for people showing up in terrorism-related databases to receive visas." Wait, wait, WAIT! What is going on here?! Is everyone stupid?!

Let me get this straight. You're going to start revoking visas when there are questions?! You don't already do that?! Why in the bloody hell not? But before that gets answered, let's move on to the next one. Rather than not handing out visas when there are questions about people that show up, and I quote, "in terrorism-related databases" you're just going to make it "more difficult"? What does that mean? Only ask them the $2000 questions from Jeopardy! or something? These are people that are in, and I quote again in case you missed it the first three times I screeched about it, "terrorism-related databases" and all you're going to do is make it "more difficult". Not impossible; just difficult. I think we've finally come completely off the rails here.

That same article in the times (that I linked to above) also mentions in regard to the CIA that "...the agency gave itself a new 48-hour deadline for disseminating information on suspected extremists." A 48-hour deadline? To spread out the information? How in the hell long could the possibly need? And what, pray tell, what the "deadline" before this new rule? I can go into a Barnes & Noble bookstore and give them my phone number to receive my member discount and they can pull up in their database every damn book that I have bought from them since the beginning of time. Do you know how long it takes them to do that? Once the rhesus monkey working the register can get the phone number entered correctly (usually on the third try), I believe it takes approximately a third of a second for that information to pop up on their screen. That's at freaking Barnes & Noble. They're able to disseminate the information in their database rather rapidly, yet the CIA needs to put themselves on a strict 48-hour deadline when dealing with, not recently purchased reading materials, but terrorists. We are doomed.

I listen to this local, Northern California morning radio talk show called Armstrong and Getty. You'd like 'em. Trust me. (Download their podcast over yonder there at iTunes and check them out. They're hilarious and brilliant.) There's a term that they have coined which is a combination of being screwed and being doomed at the same time. They call it "scroomed". I am here to tell you that if this is how things are working in the intelligence departments and the counterterrorism departments around this country, we are all scroomed. Scroomed and scroomed hard.

Point and Fire, Please

There still seems to be a lot of talk about the whole Christmas Day attempted bombing debacle that went on that Northwest flight over Detroit. The thing is that with all of the talk that is going on, the one thing that I don't hear being talked about is who is going to be fired and when. Clearly, this is an incident that has firing potential, isn't it? Shouldn't someone have been fired by now? (Or at the very least, had their head placed on a pike of some sort? Oh, wait. That wouldn't really be the "least", but probably rather the "most", wouldn't it?)

Since no one has been fired yet, I was at least hoping for things to evolve to the point where someone would be fired. After all, how many people lost their jobs after the September 11 attacks? Heads had to have rolled then, right? So how many was it? 50? 100? 10? Oh, that's right. None. ::: sigh ::: Am I supposed to expect that this is going to be any different? I think I'm supposed to expect that, but tell you what...I don't think that I'm going to expect that. Just for kicks. Just this once. Just this once I'm not going to expect anything and then I'll see how that works for me. I'm guessing it's going to work pretty well.

Here's what President Barry had to say in his little press conference dealio about the whole Undiebomber ordeal:

"I will accept that intelligence, by its nature, is imperfect. But it is increasingly clear that intelligence was not fully analyzed or fully leveraged. That's not acceptable and I will not tolerate it. The information was there. Agencies and analysts who needed it had access to it. And our professionals were trained to look for it and to bring it all together. The US government had sufficient information to have uncovered this plot and to potentially disrupt the Christmas day attack, but our intelligence community failed to connect those dots. We have to do better, and we will do better, and we have to do it quickly. American lives are on the line."

First of all, are there "dots", plural? It seems to me like there might just be "dot" singular. I mean, what more do you need to act on than the guy's Dad going to a US embassy and saying that his son is a radical nutjob who wants to attack the United States? That seems like a dot. I don't know that you need another dot to connect it to, really. It's not even a very small dot. Seems like a pretty big dot to me.

Second, the part about having to do better and having to do better quickly. Um, since September 11, 2001, haven't we been spending so much money on this that it would make your head spin and never stop spinning? (Nancy Pelosi is excluded from answering that question, as I'm pretty sure that her head spins around on a fairly regular basis.) We've been spending money on this and trying to get good at this for over eight years! What exactly does he mean by "quickly" in the sense that he used it in? I would have thought that they'd have it down by now, but apparently, not so much.

Some other highlights of President Barry's response to this matter include: "While there will be a tendency for finger pointing, I will not tolerate it." Huh. See, I for one, I would like to see a little finger pointing. I could tolerate that. Because in reality, someone screwed up. And if you ask one person who screwed up and they point to someone else and say that they are the screw up, then you check that out. Maybe the person screwed up and maybe they didn't, but you have to follow the direction that the finger is pointing in to get some sort of an idea as to who was the incompetent moron who let this guy on a plane with a load of explosive strapped to his grundle, don't you? I think you do!

Fine, you don't want to point fingers? How about some head nodding? Just nod your head in the guy's general direction and we'll know what you mean.

Robert Gibbs, the usually snarky and sarcastic (he's snarkastic) press secretary said something along those same lines when he said Tuesday that "The president will not find acceptable a response where everybody gets in a circle and points at someone else. The American people won’t accept that.” Uh, Gibbsey? Yeah, as one of those American people that you mention there, I should tell you that I will accept finger pointing, but I will not accept men with TNT-laden genitals on board my aircraft. That's what I won't accept. Point all the fingers you want, but just keep guys with explosive laden genitalia off of the planes. OK. Thanks.

Oh! I almost forgot the other highlight of President Barry's talk (which had the "I'm deeply disappointed in you" tone that you received from your parents when you screwed up as a teenager). He said "In the days ahead, I will announce further steps to disrupt attacks, including better integration of information and enhanced passenger screening for air travel." Enhanced passenger screening for air travel? Good Lord, man. Now what?! Seriously. We already have it to a point where we practically have to disrobe completely in order to make it through airport security. We can't carry anything that resembles a gel or a liquid or a concentrate. At any given point in the process we're made to stand shoeless, beltless, scarfless, and hatless. And for the purpose of what? Because let me just remind folks of something. All of this passenger screening that we're doing right now has never caught and thwarted an attack. Surprise!

Think about it. Has there been anything that has come out of having us do all of that? No, there hasn't. No one has been stopped at security because they were made to take off their hat and there was a ticking time bomb underneath it. (And to think that in that scenario, they would have made it through if it weren't for those meddling security screeners!) That's never happened. No one has ever had their evil plan thwarted at the security checkpoints. I don't know what that means, but it means something. Feel free to let me know what that is if you happen to know.

President Barry can say whatever he wants to about making sure that we do better and that we're going to do better, but I don't think that I am going to feel better unless someone (and I'm thinking more than one someone) gets fired. The guy's dad told us that his son was a lunatic who wanted to attack the US. THAT isn't enough to get the guy on a no-fly list or at least on some sort of watch list? (I have NO idea what the watch list does, by the way. What are we watching them for, exactly? Sudden movements? Loins full of gunpowder? I don't get it.) Whoever it was that took that message, I want that person fired. Whoever it was that didn't do anything about it, I want that person fired. I kind of want Janet Napolitano fired for saying "The system worked" after all of this had first gone down. (The system didn't "work". The system didn't do anything, you pinhead.) Once I see some finger pointing, some head nodding and some people getting fired, then we can talk about how safe we are. Because until the same people (who were responsible for allowing all of the puzzle pieces to fall into place in order to almost doom nearly 300 people to a bomb-y death over God-forsaken Detroit) are fired and are not allowed to continue to do their job in the most crappy manner possible, no one is safe. Besides, why wouldn't you want to fire them?

The Day After Christmas Craziness

Wow. The day after Christmas and suddenly things are just running amok everywhere. Since I'm still fortified by my holiday egg nog (which, if you cannot read a newspaper through the glass of nog, it's not strong enough), I'll just briefly touch on a few of these rather than throwing a full blown tirade over each one. (For now. There's always tomorrow.)

First up, we have some jackass on Northwest Flight 253 who allegedly (translation: he did it) tried to blow up the plane by attempting to ignite explosives which he had brought onto the plane. Flight 253 was destined for Detroit, having originated in Nigeria, and had 278 passengers and 11 crew members aboard. While this could have been absolutely disastrous had the man succeeded, what struck me as even more amazing was that there were 278 people in Nigeria that wanted to go to Detroit! How does that work, exactly?

According to the account by the huffy folks over at the Huffington Post, the plan was thwarted when "...travelers who smelled smoke and heard what sounded like firecrackers rushed to subdue him." Afterwards "...the suspect was taken to the front of the plane with his pants cut off and his legs burned." (That is known around here as "Friday night".)

Really, all of the circumstances of the whole ordeal are pretty murky, so it's hard to say if this guy was working for ol' Weird Beard over there in Sand Land (Translation: Osama bin Laden in Pakistan) or if he was just a plain ol' lone nutjob. But in the wake of this, you can expect "heightened security" at airports. Just what exactly that means, no one really knows. I'm going to have to guess because they really don't do anything. How were they going to prevent this? They like to tell us (in a ineffective reassuring fashion) that all passengers pass through metal detectors. Yeah, that's not going to help much with the bomb-y folks carry chemicals, now is it? Nope. Not going to help a bit.

And if there isn't better security in these foreign lands, that's not going to help much either. According to the article cited above, in Nigeria "Uniformed federal police officers often focus their time on keeping hagglers and taxi drivers out." Hagglers? Like street vendors? Like hot dog cart dudes? THOSE are the folks that the federal police officers in Nigeria are concerned about?! Tell you what folks? What say you let me fend off the guy trying to get me to buy a poncho or a shawl and you have the federal police officers try and keep nutjobs with bombs off of the planes, all right? All right.

Speaking of nutjobs, some woman managed to jump on or at (it's really not overly clear to me) the Pope just before he was getting ready to do his Christmas Day shout out to his peeps. According to those across the pond at The Daily Mail "Susanna Maiolo, 25, a Swiss-Italian national with psychiatric problems" jumped over a rail as the Pope walked down the aisle. The thing that amazes me is that she tried the same thing last year. (By the way, I really appreciate the Daily Mail folks characterizing her as one with "psychiatric problems". I find that refreshing. Here in the States, that would have read "with an alleged history of possible mental health issues". That's because our media coddles. The media also sucks. Sucks and coddles. Hmm. That's really not a bad name for a band, you know. Whoops. Sorry. I digress. Anyway....)

The Pope wasn't hurt but French Cardinal Roger Etchegaray fell down and broke either his femur or his hip. I've read accounts of both (because the media sucks, that is correct).

Since this woman pulled the same stunt last year, she was known to folks at the Vatican. People really stand up and take note when you jump out at the Pope. And a senior source at the Vatican (aren't they all seniors over there? From what I can tell, the average age is about 92.) said 'The fact this woman is known and was still able to get through security is very, very serious." Has anyone checked to see if she's had recent contact with the Salahis? Just wondering.

The article also mentioned that "All the people who were inside St Peter's had invitations and so would have had to be checked and give their names." Again, Salahis? Anyone? Anyone? But then I saw the photos of the crowd at St. Peter's. You know. That crowd with "invitations"? Behold!

Yeah, right. How do you send out invitations to that many people? How do you verify and/or check that many people and their invitations? I don't think that you can. I'm guessing that you don't. Oh, it's a good line to spew out in cases like this, but I just don't think it's possible. (No offense to the Pope, the Vatican, and/or God.) Then again, I also saw the photo below and have concluded that perhaps in the future, maybe the Vatican doesn't want to employ the court jester as a guard. Behold!

But the statement that indicated that this sort of thing is likely to happen again was when that senior Vatican source said, "This woman was able to get through these checks as well as the airport style metal detectors." Um, sir? Pope co-worker man? Yeah, see, when you're attacking someone, you don't need any metal. I can be metal free and jump on anyone who walks by me. A metal detector isn't going to change that. I appreciate the effort, but that was really weak.

And finally, we learn from the Washington Post that while President Barry and the family went to Hawaii for the holidays, Bo the dog did not accompany them on their vacation. The reason being is that, "Hawaii is rabies-free. Hawaii's quarantine law is designed to protect residents and pets from potentially serious health problems associated with the introduction and spread of rabies." Now, while I understand all of that, they sure do take it rather seriously. (I know that there are rabid animals on the mainland, but are they problematic? Sure, we'd like there to not be rabid animals, but is it such a big deal that is why Hawaii has these seemingly overly stringent rules on animals coming over for a little fun in the sun?)

Basically, if your animal is under 10 months old, there's no way that the animal can be brought to the islands and released to you (as animals usually are) without being quarantined for 120 days. That's right. Animals coming into Hawaii, if they haven't met a boatload of requirements, must be quarantined for 120 days. Wow. Now, while I can understand why the islanders would want to keep the islands "rabies free" how many people are really taking their potentially rabid dog to Hawaii with them? I'm guessing not many. I'm guessing not many at all. And 120 days seems rather excessive. Then again, those folks live in Hawaii. I can't imagine that they're in much of a rush to do anything really.