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Secret Service Critics Pounce After White House Breach
HughPickens.com writes On Friday evening, a man jumped the White House fence, sprinted across the North Lawn toward the residence, and was eventually tackled by agents, but not before he managed to actually enter the building. Now CBS reports that the security breach at the White House is prompting a new round of criticism for the Secret Service, with lawmakers and outside voices saying the incident highlights glaring deficiencies in the agency's protection of the president and the first family. "Because of corner-cutting and an ingrained cultural attitude by management of 'we make do with less,' the Secret Service is not protecting the White House with adequate agents and uniformed officers and is not keeping up to date with the latest devices for detecting intruders and weapons of mass destruction," says Ronald Kessler. "The fact that the Secret Service does not even provide a lock for the front door of the White House demonstrates its arrogance." But the Secret Service must also consider the consequences of overreaction says White House correspondent Major Garrett. "If you have a jumper and he is unarmed and has no bags or backpacks or briefcase, do you unleash a dog and risk having cell phone video shot from Pennsylvania Avenue of an unarmed, mentally ill person being bitten or menaced by an attack dog?" But Kessler says Julia Pierson, the first woman to head the Secret Service, has some explaining to do. "If the intruder were carrying chemical, biological or radiological weapons and President Obama and his family had been in, we would have had a dead president as well as a dead first family."
So in the worst case scenario all you had to do really is to bring in the vice president or hold a new election. Yeah that sounds like the end of the world.
Yup. Here's the key part of the comments:
Secret Service is not protecting the White House with adequate agents and uniformed officers and is not keeping up to date with the latest devices for detecting intruders and weapons of mass destruction
In other words, buy more stuff for more security theater. This is probably the same guy who thinks the TSA actually provides security.
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I am sick of this. Every. Fucking. Thing. that happens is an excuse to pump money into the militarization of the US of A with the accompanying security theater. I've been in Europe for about 15 years. I am not going to talk about whether Europe is better or not, I've been around enough to know that it's apples to oranges. But I can compare between the America I grew up in and love and what I see today.
When Obama came to visit Brussels last year, myself and several thousand other people were locked in our offices for three hours because the only exit was on the street that his motorcade was scheduled to come down, only he was two hours late. When he passed, he rolled by in his motorcade with military escort; the last vehicle was an SUV with the back hatch open and a couple of dudes with machine guns in it. While I was having a smoke afterwords, one of the older ladies in the building told me about Clinton's visit in the 90's... she saw him out jogging in the foret de soignes park.
Every time I go home to visit my family, it makes me cry a little bit. Crime rates are their lowest since well before I was born, yet all I hear is about how important it is to take measures to keep myself safe. Last year I was jet lagged and went out for a walk at 2am for some air... a cop actually stopped me to ask me what I was doing! A middle aged man, clean-shaven and wearing light-colored clothes while walking on the sidewalk is now a cause for suspicion in suburbia. When I was growing up, I used to go out at that time on a weekly basis and actually do bad stuff. Never even saw a cop then.
It is time for us to wake up as a country. It is popular to say that 9/11 changed everything, but in fact it only changed us. We need to stop being so pussy-shit and do a little cost-benefit ratio analysis on the stupid security stuff we do. What is more likely to extend the average lifespan of your community's inhabitants, putting a dozen patrolmen on the streets or building a gym? I bet I know the answer to that one.
Oh, and the president is just a man. His family is just a family. He is an important man serving the country and deserves to be protected by said country, but if he bites the dust he'll be replaced and it ain't worth many millions of dollars on technical gadgetry when we could use that money to pay down the deficit.
How many snipers had this guy in their sights thinking "please don't make me shoot you." The Secret Service agent at the door did their job as did the rest of the unit.
Yup, if the the President or family had been at the White House instead of on vacation (again) the snipers would probably have taken him out, and the door would have been locked anyway, and there would have been more agents around.
To borrow from HHGttG, maybe the foreigners realise the purpose of the president is "not to wield power but to draw attention away from it"?