It’s been a week since Attorney General Eric Holder announced that five terror suspects will be transferred from Guantanamo Bay to New York City to face trial. There are still a lot of questions to be answered about logistics, and it will likely be months before the first suspect sets foot in a federal courtroom.
Republicans have already told us what’s going to happen, though: If you let President Obama have his way, you will die.
The GOP has returned to a familiar line on Obama and national security in the days since Holder’s announcement. It’s time to be afraid again, they say, hearkening back to the days of duct tape and Orange alerts even some Republicans thought they left behind on Election Day 2008.
So grab an assault rifle and keep the phone number for Operation TIPS close — here are the four ways Republicans say Obama is putting your life at risk.
4. Surrendering In The War On Terror
According to the GOP, Obama has abandoned the war on terror to appease his left-wing friends. On a conference call yesterday, Rudy Giuliani said he welcomed the return of the word “war” into the administration lexicon. Giuliani said that before Holder used the word the other day, he was afraid that Obama had forgotten about all that 9/11 stuff Giuliani made sure was a part of the GOP primary for president last year.
“I was under the impression that the Obama administration thought this was just an unfortunate situation we’re dealing with,” he said.
Rudy’s not the only one. Many Republicans have claimed recently that Obama has returned the government to a “pre-9/11 mentality” where things like legal rights take precedence over things like unchecked wiretapping ability. At a press conference the other day, Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI) suggested that it was this mentality literally led to the deaths of 13 American soldiers in Texas. Hoekstra said there were “tools” that George W. Bush and the Republicans gave the intelligence community that Obama and Democrats have since taken away. He said that those tools may have prevented the killings in Texas, and he wants to hold hearings to investigate before the Democrats can take away more tools by letting provisions in the Patriot Act expire at the end of this year.
Watch Hoekstra explain how the U.S. government is “unable or unwilling” to track potential terrorists:
3. Daring The Terrorists To Attack Us Again
Sorry, New York City. Obama’s plan to try terror suspects on American soil means you’re probably going to get hit. That’s according to Rep. Peter King (R-NY) who told reporters this week that the move was “one of the most dangerous decisions any president has ever made.”
That’s pretty dangerous. Giuliani backed up fellow New Yorker King. Though he praised the staff at the detention center where the suspects will likely be held and he said more than once that the city he used to run is “ready” to host the trials, he said that when it comes down to it, the trials will probably not end well for New York.
“Does it increase risk to New York City?” Giuliani said. “Yes.”
2. Allowing Muslims To Walk Around Like “Regular” Americans
It’s more than just secret “tools” Obama has taken away from intelligence agencies that puts your life at risk, according to Republicans. Obama’s unwavering allegiance to Political Correctness means you’re probably going to die because law enforcement officials are too afraid of looking like racists to stop the terrorists from carrying out their nefarious plots.
In a media stop on her book tour this week, Sarah Palin said that this devotion to being P.C. literally cost 13 soldiers at Ft. Hood their lives.
“I think that there were massive warning flags that were missed all over the place,” she told Fox News’ Sean Hannity. “And I think that it was quite unfortunate that, to me, it was a fear of being politically incorrect to not — I am going to use the word — profile this guy, profile in the sense of finding out what his radical beliefs were.”
Palin’s take isn’t unique among Republicans. Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI), a former Special Agent with the FBI, said this week that his old buddies in the Bureau are telling him about a new “political philosophy” sent down from the White House that’s keeping agents from “raising the red flag” on a “person like” alleged Ft. Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan. Rogers said Hasan “fits the exactly the kind of profile [of a person] we know pretty bad people want to recruit to do pretty bad things,” but said it’s possible the “threshold” of tolerating someone like Hasan has been raised so that he and others like him are falling through the cracks.
“It’s something we have to get to the bottom of,” Rogers said.
1. Trading Safety for Good paying Government Jobs
Obama isn’t content risking the lives of soldiers and New Yorkers to look good to his liberal friends, Republicans say. He’s willing to trade the safety of America’s heartland for a little political capital, too.
The White House has suggested moving Gitmo detainees to relatively empty prisons all over the country, including sites in economically depressed towns in Michigan and Illinois.
The White House and local officials in Illinois have said the plan will bring desperately needed jobs to communities ravaged by the economic downturn.
Despite the fact that guards are paid to look after society’s most dangerous people in prisons all over the country, Republicans are warning that the promised jobs are simply a “bribe” Obama is using to talk small Midwestern towns into becoming terror targets.
Rep. Mark Kirk (R-IL) and other Republicans have spelled out the danger to rural America posed by housing Gitmo detainees.
“Federal policy allows up to 10 followers or family members per prisoner,” Kirk said a recent press conference. “With 215 coming to Illinois, that would be over 2,100 Al Qaeda followers and family members connected to Jihad coming to Illinois.”
Prison officials say that’s actually not true, but Kirk’s message is clear — taking one of Obama’s promised jobs means your family could die in a terrorist attack.
At press conference sponsored by World Net Daily earlier this week, Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ) suggested terrorism could actually a boon to Democrats desperate to create new jobs.
“Democrats have a jobs program,” he said. “First they’ll make jobs housing the terrorists here. And then they might create more jobs dealing with the havoc [the terrorists] create.”
