It's not a matter of the Secret Service's efforts; it's a matter of determination. This is an important concept here... it's why the war on terrorism is such a joke. You cannot prevent a determined and halfway competent individual from building a bomb, period. It takes a more determined individual to assassinate someone protected by the Secret Service, but not *that* much more. Case in point: Reagan was seriously wounded by a raving lunatic with a .22 revolver. They had 18 years after JFK was shot to tighten their security, but it only goes so far. If the president is willing to go out and mingle with the common folk, and there is a significant minority of common folk willing and able to assassinate him, then that president will probably be assassinated. Imagine a few thousand people like Hinckley, a few thousand people with the necessary resolve to do such a thing. Now imagine that at least 10% of them are competent. That's what Obama has to defend himself against. If you don't think that there are at least 1000 gun owners in this country that would earnestly believe that President Obama is the Antichrist... well, you obviously live in a blue state. To the person who said that radical Christians are all talk... again, you must come from a blue state. Sometimes the crazies go out and shoot someone, or they blow up an abortion clinic, or they tie someone behind a truck and drag them until they die. It's a tiny minority of a tiny minority, but in a country of 300+ million I think it still adds up to thousands of potential assassins. Re:Gringinho, I highly doubt the SS cares about me. It should be clear by now that I don't want to see Obama dead, and I'm hardly the only one talking about the possibility of an Obama assassination... even Clinton mentioned it. I am not and will not be discussing hypothetical assassination ideas more detailed than "determination + gun or bomb". The latter is plentiful in this country... that's a given. The point of this post is to say that, if Obama is elected, there will be a very sharp increase in the former. And it worries me. It should worry everyone here. Left or right, it's a lose/lose situation. The more I think about it, the more I wonder if voting McCain is the right thing to do. Ideally I would much rather have President Obama, but it wouldn't be long before President Biden is ramming the anti-gun "Obama Bill" through congress... maybe even a constitutional amendment to repeal or "clarify" the second amendment. (Just to be clear here, I'm anti-gun control and pro-Obama, largely because the republicans of the past decade have proven themselves utterly incapable of anything other than warmongering, huge deficits and religious pandering.)
It is worrying as there are a lot of nutjobs around. However I can attest personally to the insane security around obama, and he is not even prez yet.
The chance of Obama getting assassinated is much greater than any president we've had in a while. There are too many white supremacists out there. And I'm sure they're more than willing to buddy up with the CIA to get the job done. If the powers that be want Obama dead, he'll be dead. Hopefully, it won't start a race riot.
I'd say the chances are somewhat greater an attempt will be made. But most of those white supremacists types are all mouth and no action pussies. Not to mention stupid. If they were going to they should killed him a long time ago, before security became as tight as it is now.
I think that the secret service, air force security service and all the other groups that keep tabs on the President do a good job, and I'm sure when Obama wins they will have more work to do vs "normal", although I can't imagine Bush is real popular with the masses right now. My biggest concern would probably be radical racists and Aryan "Christian" types, a lot of them have law enforcement and military backgrounds. I visited my cousin once at Fort Bragg and there are a lot of KKK types in the combat arms of the army, including highly trained snipers, special forces types etc. However, as I said if we are able to sit on ET and figure this out so can the Secret Service and the Air Force.
A few people keep saying "well then, why isn't Bush dead yet..." Answer: The left-wing nuts in this country don't like guns nearly as much as the right-wing nuts. Also, as someone else noted, Cheney is a lot scarier than Biden. As for the people still saying that the radical right lacks the balls to do it... again, consider the minority of the minority in a country of 300+ million. Even if they're mostly all talk, even if only ONE of them isn't a "no action pussy"... that's all it takes. As for people saying that increased security will prevent any attempts from succeeding... well, it's hard to continue that line of debate without veering into questionable hypothetical scenarios. I don't doubt that the Secret Service monitors forums like these, so any such discussion would probably be a Bad Idea. Let me just say that determined, competent, and anonymous-until-the-crime individuals are extraordinarily dangerous. If we learned nothing else from 9/11, we should have learned this...
Yeah, you're probably right. I think that Obama's secret service will have their hands fu... Crap I I gotta go! Tell my family I love th
You're right of course. Although once I did jokingly say, to the face of a secret service agent, I wouldn't mind killing Clinton. I got the impression he wasn't entirely opposed to the idea.