I hope you felt safe on the anniversary of 9/11. I know I did. And for that I have to thank about 500,000 dedicated national security professionals, reservists, regular airman, sailors and soldiers.
Actually make that 500,000 national security pros minus one amateur.
The amateur has been missing more often than not.
While our defense/intelligence community has been fighting the wars on terrorists, America’s been at the mall.
And the amateur? He has been busy taking out a $5 trillion mortgage for a remodeling project he favors in the US of A. Oh, and raising money for his reelection campaign.
Obama- yes, that amateur- the guy who thinks the constitution should force us to accept anything the federal government is willing to give a grateful citizenry? THAT Obama has ignored his one undisputed constitutional duty as commander in chief by skipping his daily intelligence briefings 62 percent of the time this year, according to Marc A. Thiessen, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.
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“The Government Accountability Institute,” writes Thiessen in the Washington Post, “a new conservative investigative research organization, examined President Obama’s schedule from the day he took office until mid-June 2012, to see how often he attended his Presidential Daily Brief (PDB) — the meeting at which he is briefed on the most critical intelligence threats to the country. During his first 1,225 days in office, Obama attended his PDB just 536 times — or 43.8 percent of the time. During 2011 and the first half of 2012, his attendance became even less frequent — falling to just over 38 percent.”
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Now we know how Obama “got” Bin Laden. He just played hard to get.
Actually, he continued playing "fantasy president" and he let the professionals do their proper job.
At the time that Obama was hosting a presidential-record 100 fundraisers, extrapolation of the GAI numbers tells us that he only showed up for 49 of the 130 regularly scheduled intelligence briefings - that’s 38 percent for non-finance types.
But that’s probably good news.
Because let’s just say that Obama’s had some problems keeping intelligence sources and methods secret.
“Security officials and members of both parties in Congress have sharply criticized leaks about classified operations under Mr. Obama,” writes the New York Times “and some Republicans have complained about news briefings on the Bin Laden raid and assistance to filmmakers making a movie about the operation.”
Obama’s tried to parlay the Bin Laden raid into a compelling reelection strategy by intimating that Romney wouldn’t have had the guts to give the order to “get” Bin Laden.
“The military and intelligence people found this terrorist and killed him,” writes the Baltimore Sun on its editorial page, rebutting the president’s paltry, petty argument. “All this president did was give the OK. Any rational American would have done the same.”
Even worse, Rep. Peter King, chair of the Homeland Security Committee has raised questions about whether officials from the Obama administration fingered one of the principle human intelligence sources that fingered Bin Laden for American military forces.
From Fox News:
"This has been handled very poorly right from the time of the raid," King told FoxNews.com.
Dr. Shakil Afridi ran a vaccination program for the CIA to collect DNA and verify bin Laden's presence at the compound in the town of Abbottabad where U.S. commandos killed the Al Qaeda chief in a May 2011 raid.
The operation outraged Pakistani officials, who portrayed it as an act of treachery by a supposed ally.
King, R-N.Y., said administration officials talked about the doctor and his DNA sampling.
"They put him out there," said King, who made clear he didn't know the exact details about what, if anything, the administration may have done to get the doctor out of Pakistan or otherwise protect him. "I'm focused on that they disclosed his identity."
Ironically, over the weekend, newly minted defense secretary Leon Panetta blasted those who would betray intelligence secrets for petty partisan or financial gain.
“How the hell can we run sensitive operations here that go after enemies if people are allowed to do that?” said Panetta on an interview with CBSNews.
Panetta however wasn’t talking about the president. Instead, he was talking about an account of the raid by a Navy SEAL who participated in the Bin Laden operation. The secretary missed the irony that once again we have a case where the president doesn’t have to follow law or even common sense. The president, you see, can release any information he wants for any reason he wants, even sources and methods of intelligence gathering if it can help his campaign.
Now the task is to just get Obama to skip the briefings all together and only concentrate on fundraising.
Oh, yes.
That happens in January 2013, when the new campaign for the Obama Presidential Library starts in earnest.
That's my fantasy.
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