UPDATE: For my friends, I've changed this diary to a TTFN. That's just how life is sometimes.
President Obama says a “Lone Wolf” terror attack similar to the recent one in Norway is what he is worried about most, not another coordinated terror attack like what happened on 9/11/01.
I’m sure you already know that if you follow any sort of news, there are thousands of articles on the internet with the same message.
I find it quite interesting. The President of the U.S., or POTUS, gets a daily intelligence briefing from the largest, most expensive and most experienced intelligence services in the history of the world. The United States has been conducting the “Global War on Terror” (GWOT) for almost ten years, spending trillions and sacrificing millions, currently culminating in no less than six war theatres and special forces and CIA operations in over 70 countries. There is no end in sight for the GWOT.
We’re closing in on ten years in Afghanistan with an actual projected end date of 12/31/14. That’s over two years and four months from now. We ask why we’re still in Afghanistan and we still get the same answers, Al Qaeda, the purveyor of the 9/11 attacks, is still the most dangerous terror threat we face and if we leave before we wipe them off the face of the earth, it might happen again.
President Obama has been in office for about two and a half years. How many intelligence briefings has he received in that time? 400? 500? 600? Hell, if he doesn’t take a day off from those briefings, we’re talking about 900.
Now, shortly after the "Lone Wolf" Norway massacre and just into the presidential election season, he comes out and says his biggest worry is a Lone Wolf terrorist.
To be fair, his exact words were:
"The biggest concern we have right now is not the launching of a major terrorist operation, although that risk is always there," the president said in an interview with CNN.
"The risk that we're especially concerned over right now is the lone wolf terrorist, somebody with a single weapon being able to carry out wide-scale massacres of the sort that we saw in Norway recently," he said. "You know, when you've got one person who is deranged or driven by a hateful ideology, they can do a lot of damage, and it's a lot harder to trace those lone wolf operators."
http://old.news.yahoo.com/...
That can mean a number of things.
*They don’t have current intelligence and haven’t for some time about any coordinated terrorist attacks on U.S. soil.
*They do have current intelligence concerning possible Lone Wolf terrorist attacks on U.S. soil.
*He’s going on a hunch.
*He’s blowing smoke up our asses.
In true bipartisan camaraderie, Republicans seem to agree with him however.
Congressman Steve King, Republican, who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee, says “For ten years, we’ve heard the term “intelligence chatter,” but here’s the problem, if there’s only one person involved in the terrorist plot, there is no chatter.
“that leaves investigators to focus elsewhere. Then you look for weapons sales. You look for, for instance, purchase of explosives. So, you try to track that down [to] see any type of unusual activity,”
Good idea Steve, let's look at weapons sales. Only let's look at those our own government sells, and gives, and to whom. Remember Ollie North Steve?
Authorities say there are no specific threats at this time.
http://newyork.cbslocal.com/...
No specific threats, yet the Lone Wolf Terrorist is now seen as the gravest threat to those of us on U.S. soil, not international terrorists.
Maybe that’s good. Maybe our government has done such a good job at fighting terrorism over the last ten years that we can now relax a little on that. It’s that dude next door. There’s no intelligence chatter coming from them. They can strike with no warning, no one can or could foresee.
Maybe it’s all bullshit and is meant to scare us or take our attention away from the continuing trillion dollar a year war machine. Or maybe it’s an attempt to up the ante of the Homeland Security apparatus and continue to build up the police state.
Either way, it smells. Leon Panetta, Robert Gates, Pentagon Generals, everybody and their mother is telling us if we cut defense spending we risk our very lives. Now they tell us they're more worried about a faceless American citizen. When does it ever stop?