Waterboarding Too Good for Inaugural Planners
Through the applause-laden cacophony that is the post-inaugural Obama lovefest, you can probably barely hear me. I am the guy with a legitimate beef, struggling in vain to be heard.
When President Obama first sat at the desk in the Oval Office, he became a pen-wielding whirling dervish, signing proclamation after proclamation, promise after promise, pledge after pledge. First among them, he promised to close the detainee camp at Guantanamo Bay, and I can’t disagree more strenuously. We must keep Gitmo open – and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) should back me up on this. Let me explain.
Several weeks ago, I began my hunt for tickets to the Presidential Inauguration. They were scarcer than hen’s teeth, and it took a lot of help from one of the greatest members of Congress I know. I’d name names, but American politics doesn’t need another overinflated ego.
With hard-to-find tickets in hand, a special friend and I made plans to show up early. We were prepared for the long lines we heard about on the news, and for the extremely cold weather that we learned about from various D.C.-area weather reports. With wind chills, the temperatures felt like single digits – and nothing is less fun than standing in such cold gusty weather for hours, but we did it anyway. Such was our commitment to being on hand for the latest chapter in America’s history.
Clearly, we were not alone. When we arrived near the Capitol and looked for the color-coded entrance gate matching our Blue tickets, we were confronted by a flood of our fellow Americans. It was the largest ocean of humanity either of us had ever seen. There were hundreds of thousands of people swarming to and fro, not moving very quickly, and waiting patiently for their turn to go through the Security gate.
The line we stood in was longer than any I’d ever seen and, at points, it seemed to blur with other lines. But, following the rules and being good neighbors, we stood patiently enduring the cold and the utter lack of guidance from the event organizers. Had only one of the legion of Obama volunteers been on hand with bullhorn to direct traffic, so to speak, things would have far better organized. As it was, it was a frozen directionless wasteland. Still, we figured that we would make it to the security gate slowly – and we were there early, so time was on our side.
Three freezing hours later, we had made it to within six feet of the Blue gate when the security personnel – primarily U.S. Capitol Police and Secret Service officers – decided it was time to close the gate. The Blue section – where we would have stood – was filled to capacity already, they said.
The crowd went crazy when the gates began to close. Not throwing-shoes-at-Presidents crazy, but close. If anything, it was very similar to the mob I’ve seen in old news footage of the last American chopper leaving Saigon. We were in a crush of our fellow Americans, frozen and now being turned away from the very event we’d suffered for hours to see. Some attempted to climb the security fence or to block the gate’s closure, but cops fingering their holsters is an attention-getter. Nothing makes a celebration of freedom more ironic than being locked out of a public event and intimidated by gunmen.
Having no other choice, we and thousands of others trudged brokenheartedly home to watch the big event on C-SPAN re-runs. We could warm our hands, but not our spirits. It was extremely disappointing.
This same scene, I have since learned, played itself out in other areas of the Capitol too. The Purple section and the Silver section each turned people away, some of whom had waited in line with tickets since 6 a.m. that day.
Enter Sen. Feinstein, the chief organizer of the Swearing-In ceremony who distributed a memorandum on Thursday to various Administration and Congressional officials, admitting that mistakes were made and that she was going to get to the bottom of it. Well, it’s too late to change things but it’s nice that someone admits that wrongs occurred. One of the chief mistakes, as it turns out, was that the security details were letting people in without tickets. It isn’t rocket science – asking someone to show them a card that is Blue or not is all it took. If that’s what these guys call law enforcement, it is no wonder America’s borders are so porous. No passport, no problem!
To sum up, this is why we cannot afford to close Guantanamo Bay. If we do, we will never be able to adequately punish the ne’er-do-wells who prevented me and thousands of freezing Americans from seeing one of the nation’s great moments. In fact, waterboarding may be too good for them but it would be nice to have it as an option.
When President Obama first sat at the desk in the Oval Office, he became a pen-wielding whirling dervish, signing proclamation after proclamation, promise after promise, pledge after pledge. First among them, he promised to close the detainee camp at Guantanamo Bay, and I can’t disagree more strenuously. We must keep Gitmo open – and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) should back me up on this. Let me explain.
Several weeks ago, I began my hunt for tickets to the Presidential Inauguration. They were scarcer than hen’s teeth, and it took a lot of help from one of the greatest members of Congress I know. I’d name names, but American politics doesn’t need another overinflated ego.
With hard-to-find tickets in hand, a special friend and I made plans to show up early. We were prepared for the long lines we heard about on the news, and for the extremely cold weather that we learned about from various D.C.-area weather reports. With wind chills, the temperatures felt like single digits – and nothing is less fun than standing in such cold gusty weather for hours, but we did it anyway. Such was our commitment to being on hand for the latest chapter in America’s history.
Clearly, we were not alone. When we arrived near the Capitol and looked for the color-coded entrance gate matching our Blue tickets, we were confronted by a flood of our fellow Americans. It was the largest ocean of humanity either of us had ever seen. There were hundreds of thousands of people swarming to and fro, not moving very quickly, and waiting patiently for their turn to go through the Security gate.
The line we stood in was longer than any I’d ever seen and, at points, it seemed to blur with other lines. But, following the rules and being good neighbors, we stood patiently enduring the cold and the utter lack of guidance from the event organizers. Had only one of the legion of Obama volunteers been on hand with bullhorn to direct traffic, so to speak, things would have far better organized. As it was, it was a frozen directionless wasteland. Still, we figured that we would make it to the security gate slowly – and we were there early, so time was on our side.
Three freezing hours later, we had made it to within six feet of the Blue gate when the security personnel – primarily U.S. Capitol Police and Secret Service officers – decided it was time to close the gate. The Blue section – where we would have stood – was filled to capacity already, they said.
The crowd went crazy when the gates began to close. Not throwing-shoes-at-Presidents crazy, but close. If anything, it was very similar to the mob I’ve seen in old news footage of the last American chopper leaving Saigon. We were in a crush of our fellow Americans, frozen and now being turned away from the very event we’d suffered for hours to see. Some attempted to climb the security fence or to block the gate’s closure, but cops fingering their holsters is an attention-getter. Nothing makes a celebration of freedom more ironic than being locked out of a public event and intimidated by gunmen.
Having no other choice, we and thousands of others trudged brokenheartedly home to watch the big event on C-SPAN re-runs. We could warm our hands, but not our spirits. It was extremely disappointing.
This same scene, I have since learned, played itself out in other areas of the Capitol too. The Purple section and the Silver section each turned people away, some of whom had waited in line with tickets since 6 a.m. that day.
Enter Sen. Feinstein, the chief organizer of the Swearing-In ceremony who distributed a memorandum on Thursday to various Administration and Congressional officials, admitting that mistakes were made and that she was going to get to the bottom of it. Well, it’s too late to change things but it’s nice that someone admits that wrongs occurred. One of the chief mistakes, as it turns out, was that the security details were letting people in without tickets. It isn’t rocket science – asking someone to show them a card that is Blue or not is all it took. If that’s what these guys call law enforcement, it is no wonder America’s borders are so porous. No passport, no problem!
To sum up, this is why we cannot afford to close Guantanamo Bay. If we do, we will never be able to adequately punish the ne’er-do-wells who prevented me and thousands of freezing Americans from seeing one of the nation’s great moments. In fact, waterboarding may be too good for them but it would be nice to have it as an option.
Very thought provoking post I have to ruminate on it. YOu raise som good points.
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But now I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth.
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