Sobering isn't it, or did you forget about Terrorism and the constant threat it poses to our national security and well-being.  I went to Providence College.  My freshman year, I met a guy named Joe Corbett.  Joe was from New York.  We struck up friendship, attended class together, argued New York/Boston sports at lunch, and played on the same intramural basketball team.  We were young, thanks to our parents: fortunate enough to go to college and had bright futures ahead of us.  I lost touch with Joe after graduation. He went home to Long Island and got a job in the city that he loved, working for Cantor-Fitgerald in the Twin Towers.  Joe was successful and in his office working hard for his family when Islamic terrorists flew a plane directly into it on 9-11.  In an instant, Joe was dead.  I'll never forget that day or the images of those people jumping to their deaths or the fireman who made the ultimate sacrifice or Joe.

Do you remember 9-11?  Do you remember those images, those people, and the feeling of helplessness and insecurity that followed.  Let me ask you, do you feel helpless and insecure today?  Most of us don't, and we don't because President George W. Bush took the fight to the terrorists and implemented key policies and programs that have kept us safe.  So safe, that many of us returned to pre-9-11 thinking in November and voted for Barack Obama.

And so here we are not even 8 years later, and the only time we mention Terrorism is to talk about the tragedy of our interrogation tactics.  Well, I'm here to tell you that Dick Cheney is right.  We are less safe since Barack took office.  When asked to respond, White House Press Secretary, Robert Gibbs joked that Dick Cheney was only interviewed because “Rush Limbaugh was busy,” and then called Cheney “the next most popular member of the Republican cabal.”  Once again, when asked a serious question about our President security policies, the President's spokesman doesn't defend his policies or explain why Cheney was wrong, he simply makes a lame joke and then hurls personal insults.  We deserve better.  This is a perfect example of the lack of seriousness that lead to 9-11. It is the symbolism over security that Bill Clinton gave us.

Here are just a few of the moves that the Obama administration has made in its first 100 days that have made us less safe.  These shouldnt' anyone.  Barack campaigned on them, and most of us voted for him anyway.

• Announced a deadline for pulling our troops out of Iraq.  We decimated Al-Qaeda in Iraq and regardless how Barack feels about Iraq's strategic importance, Al-Qaeda obviously felt it was worth fighting for.  President Obama just invited Al-Qaeda back into the country by telling them the exact date that we are leaving. Al-Qaeda will now simply wait until we leave and then move back in.  They will then get the country they desperately need to re-establish themselves to attack again.
  

• Announced that he is closing our Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba.  There are over 250 dangerous terrorists detained in that prison.  In order to look “kinder” and “gentler”, President Obama suspended military tribunals and will most likely grant these detainees access to our criminal court system.  Almost every terrorist that we've released so far has turned up on foreign battlefields and killed again. Foreign Governments, apparently smarter than ours, refuse to take in these terrorists.  Barack has admitted that he doesn't know what we are going to do with them.  Attorney General Eric Holder announced last week that some of these terrorists may end up released into our country.  Like the Clinton administration. they plan to treat terrorism as a law enforcement problem and by doing so limit the tools and resources that can be used in a military engagement. 9-11 proved this didn't work.
  

• Announced strict guidelines on CIA interrogation procedures.  Again, Dick Cheney's words: “I think those programs were absolutely essential to the success we enjoyed of being able to collect the intelligence that let us defeat all further attempts to launch attacks against the United States since 9/11. I think that’s a great success story.  It was done legally.  It was done in accordance with our constitutional practices and principles.”  How can you argue with the results?  Why would Barack change these procedures when they are working?
  

• Other recent actions include sending $900 million to HAMAS in the Gaza strip for infrastructure projects (the same HAMAS that wants to destroy Israel), sending a bizarre secret letter to Russia in an attempt to broker a back room deal that would have sold-out our ally Poland in exchange for help with Iran, sending a video tape of himself to Iran in an attempt to begin a better diplomatic relationship with a country that wants to wipe Israel off the map, and appointing a Director of Homeland Security that refuses to call terrorist attacks anything other than “man-caused disasters.”  Apparently, she doesn't want to hurt the terrorist's feelings.

It's hard to believe that only 8 years after 9-11, America is returning to the very attitude and policies that left us exposed on that September morning.  Perhaps most disappointing is that Barack told us he would do these things before he was elected.  I am reminded of a famous quote: “those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.”  If we don't stand up and reject the “symbolism over security” policies of the Obama administration, we will be attacked again, and we will have no one to blame but ourselves.