Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Threat against the White House
Baitullah Mehsud, the commander of the Pakistani Taliban, threatened an attack against the White House during a radio interview today, and on Washington, D.C., during a separate phone conversation with AP today.
Mehsud has a $5 million bounty on his head. He claimed responsibility for the attack on the Pakistani police academy on Monday in Lahore.
It is of course hard to tell whether Mehsud is simply taking a page from Baghdad Bob's playbook, or he has been watching the current season of the Fox TV show "24" closely and with envy, but the threat has to at least be considered. He has made such threats in the past.
President Obama is facing the same kinds of foreign extremist threats that his predecessor did. I would be supportive of almost any measure that he might undertake to deal directly with those threats. Attacks by any foreign entity on our capitol are completely unacceptable. Understanding that it is difficult to have a consensus on most issues, I would expect that a clear majority in both political parties (as well as Independents) would agree with that point of view. It would be disappointing if the president has people in his own party, or the opposition party, who are reluctant to do what is necessary to defend the capitol.
6 Comments:
By 
, at
Tue Mar 31, 04:36:00 PM:
"Attacks by any foreign entity on our capitol are completely unacceptable." Attacks by any entity, foreign or domestic, are unacceptable, but, in my opinion, clearly are in our near future.
By Ron Russell, at
Tue Mar 31, 05:01:00 PM:
I firmly believe the primary reason for Obama sending a few troops to Afghanistan, was that should another attack come from that region of the world he will have his butt covered, thats also the reason no GITMO detainees will be released in the U.S. should one of these people kill just one American it would be a severe blow to the Obama administration. He is just another politician, but one with an alien radical agenda.
By , at
Tue Mar 31, 08:21:00 PM:
Why should we be concerned? After all, Obama entered into dialog with the leaders who actually fund and support terrorism. He sent his envoy Hillary to do his bidding and to ensure our safety.
Obviously the threat against the White House is not a valid threat.
OK, let's see what works. Obama says dialog will work. If the White House is blown up then dialog didn't work.
Dave
By 
Dawnfire82, at
Tue Mar 31, 09:45:00 PM:
"It would be disappointing if the president has people in his own party, or the opposition party, who are reluctant to do what is necessary to defend the capitol."
I don't think they understand what is necessary...
By MainStreet, at
Wed Apr 01, 05:14:00 AM:
I don't think Napolitano has the mindset to protect the USA against this, or any major threat. It is almost like, if you ignore it, it will go away. All these terminology changes are just a smokescreen for appeasement.
By Pax Federatica, at
Wed Apr 01, 10:45:00 PM:
This incident does have a silver lining: It may have provided the final, crushing death blow to the tired old Obama-as-lapsed-Muslim meme (which, believe it or not is still making the rounds).
If there were anything to this meme, you'd think Islamic supremacist leaders like this Mehsud guy would be tripping over themselves and each other to exploit it. You'd also think that as long as Mehsud's already making a threat against Obama's official residence and workplace, this would also have been a perfect opportunity to call out Obama himself as an apostate, and/or offer to call off the attack if Obama were to publicly "revert". That Mehsud apparently didn't see fit to do any of that tells me that he, and in all likelihood others of his persuasion, look upon Obama as just another garden-variety infidel POTUS and not a Muslim, lapsed or otherwise.
