You would almost think that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab had actually succeeded if you listen to the Republicans.
I've been thinking for some time that they've almost been wanting something really, really bad to happen in order to pounce on Barack Obama and sell the red meat of "weak on terrorism" to their rabid, mindless base. Of course, we've had the Fort Hood shooting, but the right-wing wants a public disaster with an even higher body count to use as their own weapon of choice to make cheap political barbs.
Think that's wrong? How many times did the Bushies use 9/11 as their reason for warning Americans they're all going to perish if we vote for John Kerry.
Sure enough, Head Fuck in Chief, Dick Cheney, pretty much accusing the president of a massive failure and not really being engaged in the "war on terror." (You might flash forward several years and wonder if a former Democratic vice-president will be taking routine shots at a sitting president, but that only exists in science-fiction movies.)
So, all this wailing from the right (the president doesn't call Fort Hood terrorism, he's endangering us all!) seems a little misplaced, you know, when you consider that it was fortunate the Christmas Day bombing didn't end with anyone dying at all, that they're treating it as if the president received a memo during his summer vacation about an impending attack. One that actually was a massive intelligence failure. One that had a body count.
But I've learned that the right-wing is like a baby: remove something from their field of vision and it merely no longer exists. They almost want a major terrorist attack to occur, if for no other reason than to have a platform to use in 2012. And again, if you think that's wrong or just plain horrible, you're not paying attention. For the right-wing, 9/11 wasn't a massive failure to connect the dots that resulted in over 3,000 deaths because it was somehow all Clinton's fault. And while the situation could have been more horrible and devastating, the fact is that the Christmas Day attempt failed. September 11 did not, and any attempts to make the two equal is ugly, perverse and wrong.
In other words, a Republican talking point.
