Full context of Obama's "absorb a terrorist attack" - conservative criticism is thoroughly bogus #p2

source http://voices.washingtonpost.com/plum-line/2010/09/full_context_of_obamas_absorb.html?wprss=plum-line

As you know, conservatives spent much of yesterday slamming President Obama over an interview in Bob Woodward's book in which Obama said that "we can absorb a terrorist attack." Right wingers from Liz Cheney on down insisted it proves that Obama isn't fully committed to defending Americans from terror.

But the full context of the quote, from page 363 of Woodward's book, shows very clearly that the criticism is thoroughly bogus. Before the quote, Woodward is discussing how counter-terror officials are preparing for a crude nuclear attack. Woodward then writes:

During my Oval Office inteview with the President, Obama volunteers some extended thoughts about terrorism.

"I said very early on, as a Senator and continue to believe, as a presidential candidate and now as president, that we can absorb a terrorist attack. We will do everything we can to prevent it. but even a 9/11, even the biggest attack ever, that ever took place on our soil, we absorbed it, and we are stronger. This is a strong, powerful country that we live in, and our people are incredibly resilient."

Then he addressed his big concern. "A potential game changer would be a nuclear weapon in the hands of terrorists, blowing up a major American city. Or a weapon of mass destruction in a major American city. and so when I go down on the list of things I have to worry about all the time, that is at the top, because that's one area where you can't afford any mistakes. And so right away, coming in, we said, how are we going to start ramping up and putting that at the center of a lot of our national security discussion? Making sure that that occurence, even if remote, never happens."

I have been unable to establish that Obama ever said this before, as he claims to have done. But even so, it's obvious from the full context that Obama wasn't being even remotely cavalier about the terror threat. As the additional lines I bolded above show, he was making the obvious point that history has shown us to be "strong" and "resilient" enough to survive a terror attack without American society as we know it being pushed to the point of collapse.

What's more, the fact that Obama then launched into a discussion about nuclear terror suggests the first part of his quote was a reference to a conventional terror attack -- which he contrasted with the far more catastrophic nuclear variety. He was saying that history has already shown that we can absorb a conventional attack -- but by contrast, we may not be able to "absorb" a nuclear one without it being a societal "game changer." And that's why it ranks at the very top of his list of security concerns.

If anything, this amounts to the direct opposite of being cavalier about the terror threat.