Think for a Minute

Personally, I'm livid about the airliner bombing attempt on Christmas Day, 25 December 2009. Specifically I'm angry that more than eight years after the attacks on 11 September 2001 we still don't have security measures in place that perform whole-body scans or ambient chemical analysis.

But the former administration — on whose watch occurred 9/11 and the shoe bombing incident which parallels last week's attempt in many ways — and the minority party — who are currently thwarting efforts by the Obama Administration to staff the TSA — have decided to try to shift the conversation away from substantive security reforms and from their failed records by attempting to blame the President for this recent attack.

Thankfully, Rachel Maddow did what much of the media couldn't, and took a couple minutes to examine the statements made by the former vice president and others, revealing the mischaracterizations and outright lies being spread:

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(If you can't view the video above, a transcript is available on the Rachel Maddow Show website.)

Some of the most egregious, self-serving, and un-American statements:

• Dick Cheney insisting that prosecuting the alleged bomber using our American court system is actually catering to the terrorists, despite the fact his own administration followed the same legal course for several famous terrorists, including 9/11 co-conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui and "shoe bomber" Richard Reid.


• Multiple Republican representatives and party flacks insinuating that President Obama was ignoring the issue because he took 72 hours to respond, when it took Bush II a full six days to comment on the Reid bombing attempt.


• Republican Senator Jim DeMint's outright lie that President Obama "doesn't even use the word" terrorist anymore, when there are multiple examples of the president doing just that. And this statement is from the man who has spent the last year blocking Obama's nominee for head of TSA.

But the topper is the minority party's demand to use a military tribunal system to try the alleged perpetrator of last week's attack. Nothing I say could be a better response than the one from Ms. Maddow:

The rallying cry now from Republicans is that we shouldn't try the Christmas bomber in civilian court—that, instead, he should be tried in a military tribunal, declared an enemy combatant. I mean, what's the value of a military tribunal here, other than trying to make political hay out of this case? Really, what's the justice, anti-terrorist, counterterrorist value on this?

You really think this kid can't be convicted? You really think we don't have enough evidence beyond the—beyond the, I don't know, 300 or so eyewitnesses who were on the plane? The fact that we have the weapon that he tried to use? The fact that he confessed? You think that's not enough to get this kid convicted?

You have that little faith in our criminal justice system? That little faith in the rule of law? You don't believe that a supermax federal American prison is capable of holding this kid? You think it might be cool, instead, to martyr this kid as some impressive soldier, instead of some idiot confused rich kid who couldn't even handle blowing up his own junk with a bomb that was secreted in his own underpants?

We're supposed to take national security advice from you guys?

Really?"

But after a year of their increasingly deranged shenanigans, I can't be too surprised by the Republican response to this. I am, however, deeply disappointed in the media for not being able to call out any of the aforementioned shenanigans. Or as Ms. Maddow put it:

Again, my friends and colleagues in the media have two choices in covering this. You can just copy down what the Republicans and Vice President Cheney are saying, and click “send,” call it journalism, or you can actually fact-check those comments and put them into context. Your choice. It's your country."

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Think for a Minute	Song by The Housemartins