National Security Messages from President Obama

Did I Hear This Right?

President Obama says we should close Guantanamo Prison because it doesn’t reflect who we are as Europeans. Errr…correct that—Americans.

He says Guantanamo is a “mess” that his administration is forced to deal with on a daily basis. The president strongly implied that his administration officials were too busy with bank and insurance company bailouts, paying back unions, acquiring auto corporations, jousting with Rush Limbaugh, and figuring out how to raise taxes without anybody realizing it. In other words, people should understand he has better things to do than to be thinking about mundane terror activities which might be unleashed by the hard-core Islamic militants at Guantanamo.

Al Qaeda is actively planning to attack us again, the President told us. You have a right to wonder where he got that information. From the detainees, would you think? We do know that 3 “detainees” were waterboarded, just like those pranksters who water boarded each other in YouTube videos.

We know this because President Obama wants us to know that. Mr. Obama declassified the memos himself so that they could be used for propaganda purposes and for domestic political reasons. Mr. Obama strongly implied he knew way more than we do about the results of those interrogations, but he doesn’t want us to know what some of the thwarted terror plans were. I wonder if they were like the ones in the DirecTV 101 series called “Sleeper Cell.” You know, the one where terrorists smuggle radioactive fuel cells into the Hollywood Bowl and detonate IEDs in other crowded places. Why doesn’t President Obama think we are strong enough to know what information came out of the interrogations? Was it too terrible for words? Certainly, a man of such vaunted oratorical skills could find a way to explain it to us that won’t have us wetting our pants. Perhaps he wants us to believe that we are completely safe now and can set our priority of expenditures to expanding his unprecedented domestic spending and social agenda.

At least, it is comforting to know that “we've launched an effort to secure all loose nuclear materials within four years.” But that leaves me with questions, too. Is an “effort to secure all loose nuclear materials within four years” exactly the same as getting it done before Al Qaeda can explode a dirty bomb in one of America’s cities?

Knowing as we do that President Obama is so fond of image and protocol, we can expect to receive world-wide accolades as we pursue that goal with exceptional degree of priority concern for the legal rights of terror suspects.

So sleep well, America. And don’t worry about the results of those terror interrogations. It is enough for you to know what you have already learned from the declassified memos, that the Obama team has produced another ongoing reality show called “Americans Behaving Badly.” You don’t need to know that your city, subway, or workplace was the target of the next planned Al Qaeda attack, nor how the attack was to be accomplished.

You need to know only two things: President Obama will protect you. And ignorance is bliss.