Ok, I didn’t watch the president’s “State of the Union” show live last night, but I did get a chance to look over the transcript today. Basically…
“My plan will work if you guys don’t mess it up and if it doesn’t work, it won’t be my fault” and “just ignore that man behind the curtain.”
…gibberish (and in case anyone doesn’t know yet, I voted for this administration both times.)
Nothing stood out as surprising to me but one thing.
The President repeated a known false “foiled terror attack” that he had announced on February 9th last year. The thwarted plan supposedly was planned by al Qaeda to fly a plane into the tallest building on the west coast, the LA Library Tower, in 2002. The only problem is that hours after the announcement, mayor of Los Angeles, Antonio Villaraigosa came out with a statement of his surprise that he had not been informed of such a plot by anyone in the government. More surprising was that the next day twenty-three separate active and inactive intelligence agents and experts disputed the claim publicly.
New York Times story (archived story about other officials’ opinion on the “plot”.)
The New York Daily News (another archived story about other officials’ opinion on the “plot”.)
The Washington Post (yet another archived story about other officials’ opinion on the “plot”.)
FBI counterterrorism director John Pistole said he was "not sure what [the CIA] was referring to," when a CIA counterintelligence official mentioned the same “plot” when he said "I think we've probably prevented a few aviation attacks against both the East and West coasts," in 2004.
There is more about this old “plot” for the reading if you do some Google work.
I would feel guilty not pointing out this blatant reinforcement of unprecedented fear in our national mind. Unfortunately, we are expected to tolerate this “culture of fear” as good conservatives or Christians and this talk from our leader only promotes it.
I will hopefully be writing much more about this subject in the near future as I believe we (especially those of us calling ourselves Christians) are not called to live according to fear but that is the primary focus of current official US policy and it is and will affect our families, churches, and lifestyles if we allow it to continue unchecked. It is dangerous, false and for a believer… unscriptural.
