So Many Superlatives

The initial public pronouncements by officials following the attempt to bring down an international flight deliberately minimized the event. The public was initially only told that a passenger had set off a firecracker on board a plane bound to Detroit from Amsterdam. So what vigilant travelers were informed of seemed to be relatively trivial, only a (somewhat malicious) prank. After all, those in authority would not want to panic, scare into staying home, or increase awareness of possible attacks so much that air travelers might actually avert the next "man-caused disaster" by acting to protect themselves- a Muslim or two might be singled out, profiled, or heaven forfend, even offended. After downplaying the incident originally, then the spin takes place with the active assistance of the complicit media, and vested interest airlines who do not want customers further spooked. So on the Sunday shows, the Obama administration sent Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, who sees potential right-wing terrorists in every Obama political opponent, out to calm the public with statements about how flawlessly security worked with "the system has worked very, very smoothly over the past several days" when there was a lapse of unbelievable magnitude with utter chaos as the purported protectors tried to catch up to the threat. This puffing by Napolitano was so obviously not merited that she had to essentially reverse her statement from Sunday, on Monday, not with a mere retraction, but with the admission that the system had failed miserably as a man whose own family had warned US authorities in Nigeria about his Jihadist inclinations, who paid for the ticket with three thousand dollars cash, and who had no baggage to check for what was supposed to be a trip from one continent to another, raised no flags amongst examiners to prompt additional scrutiny. The painfully glaring security failure brought a slow grudging concession that matters should have been handled differently by Secretary Napolitano. The acknowledgement is accompanied by more spin, spin, spin as the dinosaur media continues to portray the Obama administration in the best light possible. Nothing in the screening worked as it should have, but fortunately, the terrorist was just as incompetent as the security personnel. Whether you believe it was dumb luck or the intervention of God who is on our side (as I do), tragedy was only averted as the bomb did not detonate as designed- only partially igniting and setting the bomber himself alight. Had the weapon functioned properly, we would be mourning hundreds of lives lost with no way to spin the blatant negligence that would have allowed it. An act of willful mass murder was averted, but it was in spite of Janet Napolitano and team Obama, not because of them.