President Obama will eat his words and his plan to close the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, where suspected and confirmed Al Qaeda operatives are being detained. Problem is, he’s made it such a live issue, during and since his presidential campaign and stated his position so firmly, that to change his mind now could amount to political suicide. Imagine how many ways the GOP party of no will spin this. The Republican Party salivates at any opportunity to criticize the current administration. This is their job, at least as they envision it.

Yes, much of Cheney’s criticism has been ill-directed and hypocritical, since much of the mess exists the way it does because of his misguided personal greed, ambition and strategy. That does not minimize the value in the point that the US government, from an intelligence and local preparedness stature, seemed to have been drifting back into pre-911 mode, with regard to where attention needs to be focused. Cheney’s obsession with waging war to flex muscle and profit from it is absurd. Cheney reminding us to continue to take the other forces of evil more seriously must be appreciated. After all, who better to take advice from about dealing with a sinister bully, than a sinister bully who we at least know is on our side, ultimately.

Closing Guantanamo makes no sense at this juncture, unless there is a territorial problem with having the facilities there. Obama’s only valid reason for wanting it closed is because it serves as a recruitment tool for Al Qaeda. Well… the prisoners released from there continue to  join and lead the enemy’s camp at a very disturbing rate. This should have been anticipated, expected and more closely monitored.  So what if Al Qaeda uses Guantanamo as a recruiting toll? It is one of many that are available to them. These thugs will always find tools to motivate each other on their jihad march. It’s not as if moving them to Illinois will eliminate the motivation. By any sensible calculation, it might make conditions worse. They will not only continue to use the US detention of their members as a spur, they will indeed think of ways to terrorize the Thompson Correctional Facility in the heartland of America. Given their success rate and the number of times we get caught with our pants down, I don’t like the odds, and neither should American citizens living in that region. Jobs or no jobs, it poses serious additional risks. If anything, Guantanamo is much less of a potential target, since a terror attack there would terrorize their jailed counterparts far more than it would, regular American citizens. It is also far less accessible to them. Perhaps this is why they focus on air travel.

The 2005 "911 Commission Report" gave airline passenger screening an "F"; information sharing among the intelligence community got a "D". Apparently this didn't get the message across. Airline passenger screening, internationally (almost entirely), should be done by military personnel. If terrorists show up at the airport and see soldiers in uniform, with guns, screening people and handling visas...they will think thrice about proceeding. Airport security staff in pretty white shirts and grey pants, who can't wait for their breaks so that they can go play with apps on their mobile devices or can't wait for their shift to end so they can pick up their child from the babysitter, don't instill fear in the enemy. The enemy is able to sense and take advantage of the occasional lack of focus and inconsistency in this system. Maybe private security firms and lax TSA agents who cry union and get bolstered by collective bargaining advantages that help them avoid having to do certain activities that actually make flying safer, is not the best approach. Make no mistake, hard work and dedication put forth by many TSA (Transportation Security Administration) screeners in the US is respected and appreciated. TSA is a division of the Department of Homeland Security, which is a bloated and convoluted federal agency that continues to grow exponentially since its inception after the 911 attack. Perhaps, tax dollars could have been better spent by having stateside military personnel serve as airport security inside the USA, while there is a joint intercontinental military effort to secure airline transportation internationally. Expensive body scanning equipment merely presents a minor hurdle for the enemy.
 
On January 3rd, 2010 the President's Homeland Security Advisor, John Brennan was asked about Umar Abdulmatallab's attempt to damage an airline full of passengers on Christmas day. He stated that despite Al Qaeda's previous assassination attempt of a Saudi Prince with the use of highly explosive PETN, the intelligence community had no evidence or reason to believe there would be any attempted attack on aviation. He said that the assassination attempt was made in a room. Are you kidding me? So if the enemy doesn't tell you exactly what it's going to do, then you don't anticipate or prepare for it? Even when they run an old play from the Al Qaeda playbook, we get caught off guard, leaving airline passengers to save themselves. Some say the enemy is evolving, cunning and hard to keep up with. Really? Eight years after Richard Reid’s attempt to blow up an airline with PETN, the ONLY strategic difference with the Christmas day 2009 attempt is that they moved the explosive from the shoe to the crotch!

The even more important point is that Abdulmatallab should have never made it onto that airline. We all know now about the warning signs, including his own father outing him weeks before. He was put on a terror watch-list but nobody was watching him (CIA code name: The Nigerian). England had denied him a visa due to suspicion. As The Daily Show's John Stewart aptly put it:

"He paid $3000.00 for his ticket. It's December, he’s going from Nigeria to Amsterdam to Detroit, without a coat? With a one-way ticket; oh, do you think he’s going to Detroit to start a better life? Whadya think, he’s goin there cause he heard there’s lots of jobs?"

On December 31, 2009, five CIA agents and two Blackwater opertaives were killed by a suicide bomber while others were seriously injured. A known Al Qaeda double-agent was allowed to meet with critical and high ranking CIA personnel, without being properly screened because they thought they could trust him. The doctor who blew himself up and murdered these agents at a post in Khost, Afghanistan was originally arrested as an Al Qaeda operative. During interrogation he tricked our “swift minded” agents into letting him go by convincing them that he would turn to their side and spy on Al Qaeda. After spending considerable time re-entrenched in Al Qaeda operations he called up his CIA handlers and said he had some juicy information on the location of Ayman al-Zawahiri. The CIA arranges a meeting and gather top agents who carry exclusive, high level sensitive materials in their brains after years of information gathering. They were so excited and eager to hear his juicy info that they didn’t screen him. Unfortunately they didn't even get a chance to pat him down because they were all within blast range when he go out of the vehicle he arrived in. Even writers and movie directors know better. Are we to accept that our spies are idiots, or just naive and incompetent? Intelligence agents must be held to higher standards. Maybe they should have read David Ignatius' book: "Penetration" (Body of Lies), or at least seen the movie.

To be fair to President Obama, he has, since his inauguration, stepped up the game as far as covert operations and understanding that extremists must be sought out in small pockets, with pinpoint strategy, as opposed to invading and colonizing entire nations that are low on the list as actual terrorist breeding grounds. Where he has been lacking, is the unearned confidence he seemed to have in the intelligence gathering and leveraging, which continues to fail us. Furthermore, announcing that there are 14 specific countries from which passengers will be more closely scrutinized, better be a psych-out. Otherwise, it is another instance where our leaders show their hand just to enhance the impression to critics that they are on the job.

If you are aware of Blackwater, aka Xe Services, LLC and you're rubbing your eyes in confusion after reading the opening line in the paragraph above... you're not hallucinating. A major surprise to us, is that Obama has allowed this American, Christianity touting, mercenary army to continue to ride along-side the US military, even after all the "shit" they've gotten into. They are so deeply entrenched that they are front and center in highly classified intelligence matters of national and world security. The bush administration granting Blackwater the power it did, was a horrendous mistake. Yet after rapes, murders and rampant disregard for any rule; while having to answer to no government agency or official and being banned from Iraq by Iraqi government in 2009, they continue to operate there and everywhere else. The US government is even having to answer to the German government regarding Blackwater running around Germany, trying to execute assassination plots. To learn about the true history and atrocities of Xe (pronounced 'zi')... 
check out Jeremy Scahills book. Here's Scahill, Take a listen: