I guess the words “unfit for ANY command” is a good way to describe this America-hating and dangerous imbecile in the White House.
Jan. 20, 2013 can’t get here soon enough for the sake of our country and the rest of the world.
And of course, the Obama-loving MSM, other than ABC News, to their immense credit, ignores this as they have every other blunder and scandal these incompetent lib dolts make or create on an almost-daily basis with their breathtakingly glaring ignorance.
OBAMA’S BLUNDER: 20,000 MISSING LIBYAN SURFACE TO AIR MISSILES
By Dick Morris And Eileen McGann
For twenty years – long before 9/11 – the danger of terrorists armed with surface to air missiles shooting at passenger planes has been the secret fear of many top political leaders. In the late 90s, a terrorist network was nabbed trying to bring them into Newark Airport, but the airline industry and the government have done nothing to equip passenger airplanes with any defense against these always deadly missiles.
Now Barack Obama has committed the ultimate sin: He has let 20,000 surface-to-air missiles escape from military depots in Libya. According to ABC News “U.S. officials had once thought there was little chance that terrorists could get their hands on many of the portable surface-to-air missiles that can bring down a commercial jet liner. But now that calculation is out the window, with officials at a recent secret White House meeting reporting that thousands of them have gone missing in Libya.” An estimated 20,000 of these “portable, heat-seeking missiles have gone missing from unguarded Army weapons warehouses.”
Senator Barbara Boxer (saying probably the first intelligent thing she’s ever said, I’ll add- BiB) , of the Senate’s Commerce, Energy, and Transportation Committee said that “matching up a terrorist with a shoulder-fired missile, that’s our worst nightmare.
And now, thanks to Obama’s carelessness and his unnecessary decision to intervene in Libya, it may be our future reality.
ABC News describes the missing missiles as “four to six-feet long and Russian-made, [they] can weight just 55 pounds with launcher.” They are accurate within a range of more than two miles. That a terrorist could sit on a boat off JFK airport and shoot down a passenger plane as it ascends could now be a real possibility.
In the Iraq War, during the run-up to the 2004 election, there were reports of unguarded US military depots from which insurgents allegedly stole thousands of explosives. The story broke in the week before the election and Kerry took down all his other ads and focused on this issue, first reported in the New York Times. By Election Day, it was proven that the report was bogus, adding to Kerry’s woes. Now, faced with this massive blunder and security threat, we hear nothing but the sounds of silence from any of the mainstream media except, to its immense credit, ABC News.
We need to assign a top priority to hunting down these missiles. In Afghanistan, our troops jumped through hoops to corral all the Stinger Missiles left over from the Russian War. This potential leak of these dangerous weapons is vastly more threatening. Obama needs to face this issue squarely and publicly. And we all need to learn the cost we may pay from having elected a rank amateur as president.
Nightmare in Libya: Thousands of Surface-to-Air Missiles Unaccounted For
The White House announced today it planned to expand a program to secure and destroy Libya’s huge stockpile of dangerous surface-to-air missiles, following an ABC News report that large numbers of them continue to be stolen from unguarded military warehouses.
Currently the U.S. State Department has one official on the ground in Libya, as well as five contractors who specialize in “explosive ordinance disposal”, all working with the rebel Transitional National Council to find the looted missiles, White House spokesperson Jay Carney told reporters.
“We expect to deploy additional personnel to assist the TNC as they expand efforts to secure conventional arms storage sites,” Carney said. “We’re obviously at a governmental level — both State Department and at the U.N. and elsewhere- working with the TNC on this.”
ABC News reported today U.S. officials and security experts were concerned some of the thousands of heat-seeking missiles could easily end up in the hands of al Qaeda or other terrorists groups, creating a threat to commercial airliners.
“Matching up a terrorist with a shoulder-fired missile, that’s our worst nightmare,” said Sen. Barbara Boxer, D.-California, a member of the Senate’s Commerce, Energy and Transportation Committee.
Though Libya had an estimated 20,000 man-portable surface-to-air missiles before the popular uprising began in February, Assistant Secretary of State Andrew Shapiro told ABC News today the government does not have a clear picture of how many missiles they’re trying to track down.
“We’re making great progress and we expect in the coming days and weeks we will have a much greater picture of how many are missing,” Shapiro said.
The missiles, four to six-feet long and Russian-made, can weigh just 55 pounds with launcher. They lock on to the heat generated by the engines of aircraft, can be fired from a vehicle or from a combatant’s shoulder, and are accurate and deadly at a range of more than two miles.
Peter Bouckaert of Human Rights Watch first warned about the problem after a trip to Libya six months ago. He took pictures of pickup truckloads of the missiles being carted off during another trip just a few weeks ago.
“I myself could have removed several hundred if I wanted to, and people can literally drive up with pickup trucks or even 18 wheelers and take away whatever they want,” said Bouckaert, HRW’s emergencies director. “Every time I arrive at one of these weapons facilities, the first thing we notice going missing is the surface-to-air missiles.”
he ease with which rebels and other unknown parties have snatched thousands of the missiles has raised alarms that the weapons could end up in the hands of al Qaeda, which is active in Libya.
“There certainly are dangerous groups operating in the region, and we’re very concerned that some of these weapons could end up in the wrong hands,” said Bouckaert.
“I think the probability of al Qaeda being able to smuggle some of the stinger-like missiles out of Libya is probably pretty high,” said Richard Clarke, former White House counterterrorism advisor and now a consultant to ABC News.
Tommy Vietor, spokesman for the National Security Council, told ABC News in a statement similar to Carney’s remarks that, “Since the beginning of the crisis, we have been actively engaged with our allies and partners to support Libya’s efforts to secure all conventional weapons stockpiles, including recover, control, and disposal of shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles.”
Boxer: U.S. Passenger Jets at Risk
Adding to the urgency is the fact that America’s passenger jets, like those of most countries, are sitting ducks, despite years of warning about the missile threat. Since the 1970s, according to the U.S. State Department, more than 40 civilian planes around the world have been hit by surface-to-air missiles. In 2003, Iraqi insurgents hit a DHL cargo plane with a missile in Baghdad. Though on fire, the plane was able to land safely. Four years later, militants knocked a Russian-built cargo plane out of the sky over Somalia, killing all 11 crew members.
Now there are calls in Congress to give jets that fly overseas the same protection military aircraft have.
“I think we should ensure that the wide-bodied planes all have this protection,” said Sen. Boxer, who first spoke to ABC News about the surface-to-air security threat in 2006. “And that’s a little more than 500 of these planes.”
Boxer sent a letter today to Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano urging the two to establish a joint program “to protect commercial aircraft from the threat of shoulder-fired missiles.”
According to Boxer, it would cost about a million dollars a plane for a system that has been installed and successfully tested over the last few years, directing a laser beam into the incoming missile.
“For us to sit idly by and not do anything when we could protect 2 billion passengers over the next 20 years [with] a relatively small amount of money [from] the Department of Defense, I think that’s malfeasance,” said Boxer. “I think that’s wrong.” And it could be more practical than trying to round up all the missing Libyan missiles.
“Once these missiles walk away from these facilities, they’re very difficult to get back, as the CIA realized in Afghanistan,” said Bouckaert.
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