Clown alert: Janet Napolitano says the “system worked”

By Michelle Malkin  •  December 27, 2009 01:31 PM

Photoshop credit: Another Black Conservative

It has been, in the words of Queen Elizabeth II, an “annus horribilis” for DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano.

Beginning with her embrace of the impotent euphemism “man-caused disasters” to the hit job on conservatives and veterans that she was forced to apologize for, to her assertion that crossing the border illegally “isn’t a crime per se”, to her boneheaded claim that 9/11 terrorists came in through the Canadian border, Ja-No has confirmed time and again that she’s not ready for prime time.

Today, she caps off her horrible year by playing Big Pollyanna in the wake of the Flight 254. The botched bombing — foiled by a faulty detonator and brave passengers, not by homeland security bureaucrats or any preemptive measures by intel officials — shows that the in Ja-No’s fantasy world.CQPolitics:

Transcript of Napolitano’s interview on CNN via

CROWLEY: Secretary Napolitano, thank you so much for joining us. If I am about to get on a plane today in the U.S. or headed toward the U.S., I think my big question is, is this part of a larger plot, or do you think this is a lone wolf?

NAPOLITANO: Well, right now, we have no indication that it’s part of anything larger, but obviously the investigation continues. And we have instituted more screening and what we call mitigation measures at airports. So I would advise you during this heavy holiday season just to arrive a bit early, and to know that we are going to be doing different things at different airports. So don’t expect to do the same thing at one airport when you transfer through to another airport.

But the traveling public — this is my message for you, Candy. The traveling public is very, very safe in this air environment. And while we continue to investigate the source of this incident, I think the traveling public should be confident in what we are doing now.

CROWLEY: So, just to finish up on the question– I do want to talk to you about security measures — but do you think — has there been any evidence of the Al Qaida ties that this suspect has been claiming?

NAPOLITANO: Right now, that is part of the criminal justice investigation that is ongoing, and I think it would be inappropriate to speculate as to whether or not he has such ties.

What we are focused on is making sure that the air environment remains safe, that people are confident when they travel. And one thing I’d like to point out is that the system worked. Everybody played an important role here. The passengers and crew of the flight took appropriate action. Within literally an hour to 90 minutes of the incident occurring, all 128 flights in the air had been notified to take some special measures in light of what had occurred on the Northwest Airlines flight. We instituted new measures on the ground and at screening areas, both here in the United States and in Europe, where this flight originated.

So the whole process of making sure that we respond properly, correctly and effectively went very smoothly.

If the “system” had “worked,” the U.S. consular officials who granted Abdul Farouk Abdulmutallab a short-term visa last June would have revoked it immediately upon being informed by his father that he was a Muslim radical with al Qaeda ties.

If the “system” had “worked,” U.S. consular officials would have never granted Abdulmutallab — a rootless, young, single male — a visa in the first place in compliance with State Department visa regulation 214(b):

That law requires an applicant to show strong roots in his home country — such as a house, a spouse, and/or employment — in order to prove that he would be likely to return home when his visa expired.

Young, single, unemployed men are the people most often refused visas under 214(b) (when it is actually enforced) for the very reasons that al Qaeda recruits them so heavily: They are shiftless and have very little to stop them from packing up and moving to a new country. There’s also, sadly, very little to prevent them from committing terrorist attacks.

If the “system” had “worked,” Abdulmutallab would have been barred from the U.S. like he had been barred from Britain.

The “system,” like Napolitano, was an epic fail.

And as predicted, Napolitano also played the “lone nut” card — dismissing the Christmas Day jihadist as a single operator not part of “anything larger” despite his own testimony to the contrary.

She’s Obama’s biggest joker. And there’s no Blame-Bush loophole
to weasel through anymore.

***

Nothing to see here, move along:

An Al-Qaida operative in Yemen threatened the United States and said “we are carrying a bomb” in a video posted online four days before the botched Christmas Day attempt to blow up a Northwest Airlines flight.

The video does not contain any clear evidence that the speaker was anticipating Friday’s attempt, but it has attracted scrutiny because of reports that the bombing plot may have originated in Yemen.

The 23-year-old Nigerian man accused in the attack claimed he received training and instructions from al-Qaida operatives there, U.S. law enforcement officials said, and a key American lawmaker has said there are “strong suggestions” of a Yemen connection.

In a Dec. 21 video, the al-Qaida operative delivered a eulogy for militants killed in a Yemeni airstrike on a militant training camp four days earlier. The speaker said he had no agenda against Yemeni soldiers, but warned them against cooperating with Americans.

“We are carrying a bomb to hit the enemies of God,” the speaker says.

“O soldiers, you should learn that we do not want to fight you, nor do we have an issue with you. We only have an issue with America and its agents, and beware of standing in the ranks of America,” he says. “You should not defend these regimes. The soldiers and even Obama cannot put out the light of Islam.”

***
Related from Andy McCarthy:

It sounds trite but it’s worth repeating: The object of terrorism is to terrorize, and obviously the mission has been accomplished even if the plane was not brought down.

In Willful Blindness, I recount the debacle of repeated entries into the United States by, among others, the Blind Sheikh (Omar Abdel Rahman) and al Qaeda operative Ali Mohammed — the former permitted free entrance, egress and, finally, a green card (as a special religious worker) even though he was one of the world’s most famous jihadists and was on the terror watch lists for having authorized the murder of Anwar Sadat; the latter permitted to immigrate from Egypt and join the U.S. army despite having been caught trying to infiltrate the CIA. Now, nearly 20 years later — after 9/11, the 9/11 Commission, etc. — we have Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab: He was in the terrorist “database” because we were warned by his own influential father of his radical ties and proclivities, and he was evidently notorious among associates in Africa and Europe for his jihadist leanings; yet, he was issued a multiple-entry visa. And he claims to have been trained in Yemen — the al Qaeda hub to which the administration has just sent a half-dozen trained jihadists previously detained in Gitmo, and where it hopes to send many more.

I wonder what the media would be saying if George Bush were still president.

Jonah Goldberg says, “Fire Napolitano.”

But her hapless first-responder mentality is simply a reflection of the man who hired her.