I’m very, very grateful to you. I was going to mention how silly it was for Napolitano to say that “the system worked”, but now I don’t have to, because you’ve said something much, much dumber.
ETA: the nice non-uniformed men with guns are called air marshals. Flying into our airports is a privilege (though not really).
And we can make them give us all blow jobs when they get here too.
America – Fuck Yeah!
Its jingoistic dickwads like you that make America a target in the first place. How about I say that America should pay my country $1million for the privilege of hosting one of our scientists, $2 million for the privilege of using our talents in movies and $3million for the sheer joy of hearing our accents.
Pull your head in and get a clue you friggin ignoramous
You can call me dishonest, but watch the linked videos, or here is the full transcript of the interview: http://news.yahoo.com/s/cq/20091227/pl_cq_politics/politics3273705_1
Here is the full paragraph in question
You can try to parse words and claim that there are 2 separate systems and she is only talking about the response system, and not the prevention system. But it is not the response system that makes us safe and confident, it is the prevention system.
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If the “prevention” system makes you confident, you’re not paying attention. I thought everyone knew you could smuggle more or less anything you like onto a plane.
Actually I’ll hold off on that, since you’re talking about the initial interview and GIGObuster is talking about her followup, half-retraction interview. She’s wrong to suggest that passengers and screwups by terrorists are part of the security system. The security system is supposed to prevent this kind of thing from happening in the first place.
Hey, just because you people hate America doesn’t mean that I want to go along with your ‘we suck’ meme
(*I guess I have to fulfill your jingoistic image you have of me, now)
PS thanks for the spelling correction, RNATB
PPS If we are members of some int’l org that prevents us from securing our own flights, then it’s time to leave that org.
FYI borrowed from one of my favorite radio sportscasters, Steve Czaban, local to us here in DC. I guess he got it from a beer commercial, no idea.
Ah, the old “International Organization That We Helped Set Up Doesn’t Do Precisely What We Tell Them To Do So Fuck Them” tactic. I call it the “United Nations Syndrome.”
You’re right, there’s nothing remotely jingoistic in that attitude. Don’t know what we were thinking.
And she did say that the prevention failed. Really, if a reporter then had asked that before, it is clear to me that she would had told us that earlier. As it is, she is not clueless nor she conceded anything.
Maybe you want to outsource our security policy to the UN. I don’t.
I can’t believe anyone would be against what I’ve proposed. This really shines the light on where your priorities lie; better to get along with other countries rather than save American lives? Better to be the ‘team player’ rather than do all we can to prevent the next 9/11?
Clearly the Air Marshal program increases safety and saves lives; else your guy Obama would have long ago eliminated it, right? Clearly the back-scatter machines, currently at 40 US airports, work, else we wouldn’t have paid millions to buy them… the fact that the 15 backscatters currently installed at Schiphol aren’t allowed to be used on American inbound flights… wtf?
He never passed through a TSA gate. He boarded in Amsterdam . Yet Obama was playing golf. Clearly his fault.
Unless we institute a system where passengers on domestic flights are strip-searched, their carry on bags rooted through (if allowed at all) and we build some giant offshore airbases where incoming international flights are offloaded and passengers put through the same, these things will happen from time to time. You guys all realize that, right? It really doesn’t matter who the President is or what party sponsors him.
I hate CYA political boilerplate as much as anybody else, but it’s part and parcel of Democracy. It’s pretty disingenuous to point at it as though it was some shocking proof of an administration’s ineptitude. Especially since no one died in this incident, thanks to alert and brave passengers and the perp’s incompetence.
If we get along with other countries, we *will *be saving American lives … and non-American lives as well; but I can see that that’s your bugaboo. Can’t be saving any non-Americans. Too pussy.
Better to be able to fly overseas and back to the US than leave the ICAO and not be able to fly anywhere beyond Puerto Rico.
I’d like to know if the Netherlands is reviewing its own security measures in light of this. It’s the least they could do.
But air marshals on all incoming flights? How ludicrously expensive would that be (especially in light of the fact that the passengers seemed to do a good job themselves taking care of the guy)?
She should have done that anyway instead of hitting the ‘reassure, reassure, reassure, keep flying’ button.
It sounds like she was trying to say it is safe to fly because the agency had responded to this attempt by tightening security and instituting new procedures, and had successfully shared information quickly after the attempt. All of that is good. She did screw up by suggesting that the security apparatus worked because the bomber was incompetent and the passengers subdued him. Self defense is necessary and all, but if it gets to that point, something went wrong and it needs to be fixed rather than minimized.
I’ve flown out of Amsterdam, security was tighter than in the US before 2001. What I don’t understand is this: how does one go from having it pointed out to them that Dutch aviation authorities don’t answer to the US goverment to “you hate America”? I find the phenomenon fascinating even after years of watching the American right’s particular brand of performance art almost daily.
Thank you