We can absorb a terrorist attack." - President Barack Obama in an interview with author Bob Woodward.

We can absorb a terrorist attack." - President Barack Obama in an interview with author Bob Woodward.
http://www.examiner.com/law-enforcement-in-national/cheney-obama-unwilling-or-unable-to-protect-americans

"In three states, the proximity of the road to the border allowed investigators to cross undetected, successfully simulating the cross-border movement of radioactive materials or other contraband into the United States from Canada, according to a Covert Operations Report
Since the President -- the Commander in Chief -- believes "we" can absorb a terrorist attack, perhaps that may explain many things including why it is so simple to sneak weapons of mass destruction into the United States across the nation's porous borders. Of course, Obama doesn't include himself and his family in that "we can absorb." He means "they" -- the American people -- "can absorb."
"A fundamental rule of warfare is if you have a military mission, you must provide the resources required to achieve that mission. If you’re not willing to pay the price, you need to change the mission; otherwise you’re setting up a situation designed to fail," said Fox News military analyst K.T. McFarland.
"Americans expect our President to do everything possible to defend the nation from attack. We expect him to use every tool at his disposal to find, defeat, capture and kill terrorists. We expect him to deter attacks by making clear to our adversaries that an attack on the United States will carry devastating consequences," said Liz Cheney, daughter of former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney.
In the past, officials from the Government Accountability Office testified before members of the U,S. Congress on at least three separate occasions in order to describe security vulnerabilities that terrorists could exploit to enter the country. Yet, even with reports of border security deficiencies, President Barack Obama decided to target Arizona and law enforcement officials.
"Once again the President seems either unwilling or unable to do what it takes to keep this nation safe. The President owes the American people an explanation," said Cheney, chairman of the public-interest group Keep America Safe.
FAILURE TO PROTECT THE HOMELAND


Government Accountability Office officials were asked to summarize the results of covert testing and assessment work. Their report discussed the results of testing at land, sea, and air ports of entry; however, the majority of GAO's work was focused on land ports of entry. The unmanned and unmonitored border areas GAO assessed were defined as locations where the government does not maintain a manned presence 24 hours per day or where there was no apparent monitoring equipment in place.
"The government has conducted numerous vulnerability tests and they all appear to highlight the fact that our borders are porous not only to illegal aliens but also to terrorists, weapons of mass destruction and other contraband. Maybe Secretary [Janet] Napolitano [of the Homeland Security Department] should worry more about that than about guns being smuggled into Mexico," said political strategist Mike Baker.
GAO investigators identified numerous border security vulnerabilities, both at ports of entry and at unmanned and unmonitored land border locations between the ports of entry. In testing ports of entry, undercover investigators carried counterfeit drivers' licenses, birth certificates, employee identification cards, and other documents, presented themselves at ports of entry and sought admittance to the United States dozens of times.
They arrived in rental cars, on foot, by boat, and by airplane. They attempted to enter in four states on the northern border (Washington, New York, Michigan, and Idaho), three states on the southern border (California, Arizona, and Texas), and two other states requiring international air travel (Florida and Virginia).
In nearly every case, government inspectors accepted oral assertions and counterfeit identification provided by GAO undercover investigators as proof of U.S. citizenship and allowed them to enter the country. In total, undercover investigators made 42 crossings with a 93 percent success rate.
On several occasions, while entering by foot from Mexico and by boat from Canada, covert investigators were not even asked to show identification.
For example, at one border crossing in Texas, an undercover investigator attempted to show a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officer his counterfeit driver's license, but the officer said, "That's fine, you can go" without looking at it.
As a result of these tests, GAO concluded that terrorists could use counterfeit identification to pass through most of the tested ports of entry with little chance of being detected.
In its most recent work, GAO shifted its focus from ports of entry and primarily performed limited security assessments of unmanned and unmonitored areas between ports of entry. The names of the states GAO visited for this limited security assessment have been withheld at the request of Customs and Border Protection officials.
In four states along the U.S.-Canada border, GAO covert investigators found state roads that were very close to the border that CBP did not appear to monitor. In three states, the proximity of the road to the border allowed investigators to cross undetected, successfully simulating the cross-border movement of radioactive materials or other contraband into the United States from Canada.
For example, in one apparently unmanned, unmonitored area on the northern border, the U.S. Border Patrol was alerted to GAO's activities through the tip of an alert citizen. However, the responding U.S. Border Patrol agents were not able to locate the investigators and their simulated contraband.
Also on the northern border, GAO investigators located several ports of entry in one state on the northern border that had posted daytime hours and were unmanned overnight. Investigators observed that surveillance equipment was in operation, but that the only preventive measure to stop an individual from crossing the border into the United States was a barrier across the road that could be driven around.
"President Obama doesn’t know how to be a good wartime president, and doesn’t really want to be one. He sees it as a distraction from his goal of transforming America, and his aides worry it will be hard to spin in a reelection campaign," said K.T. McFarland who served in national security posts in the Nixon, Ford and Reagan administrations.

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