Isn’t that in effect what he said? It was all along the lines of “Obama blew this off for a year, but now it got his attention so that’s good.” It’s only “good” as compared to continuing to ignore it. It sure as heck isn’t what anyone with more than three brain cells would call “leadership”.

Here’s Obama at the first debate with McCain. Is anyone in the MSM asking him to indicate progress he’s made on all these things he listed as important for our security?
1) securing potential targets, particularly chemical sites, transit, and ports
2) stopping nuclear proliferation in Iran and elsewhere
3) continuing missile defense
4) getting more cooperation from our allies in rooting our AQ
5) restoring our standing in the world

On 1) he’s done nothing. On 2) he’s made things worse because we are further away from any action on Iran. On 3) he’s slashed the budget so we’re worse off. On 4) we still seem to be where we were a year ago. On 5) we are arguably worse off – a year ago most of the world hated us; now most of those countries don’t even take us seriously any more.

Well, first of all, I think that we are safer in some ways. Obviously, we’ve poured billions of dollars into airport security. We have done some work in terms of securing potential targets, but we still have a long way to go.

We’ve got to make sure that we’re hardening our chemical sites. We haven’t done enough in terms of transit; we haven’t done enough in terms of ports.

And the biggest threat that we face right now is not a nuclear missile coming over the skies. It’s in a suitcase.

This is why the issue of nuclear proliferation is so important. It is the — the biggest threat to the United States is a terrorist getting their hands on nuclear weapons.

And we — we are spending billions of dollars on missile defense. And I actually believe that we need missile defense, because of Iran and North Korea and the potential for them to obtain or to launch nuclear weapons, but I also believe that, when we are only spending a few hundred million dollars on nuclear proliferation, then we’re making a mistake.

The other thing that we have to focus on, though, is al Qaeda. They are now operating in 60 countries. We can’t simply be focused on Iraq. We have to go to the root cause, and that is in Afghanistan and Pakistan. That’s going to be critical. We are going to need more cooperation with our allies.

And one last point I want to make. It is important for us to understand that the way we are perceived in the world is going to make a difference, in terms of our capacity to get cooperation and root out terrorism.

And one of the things that I intend to do as president is to restore America’s standing in the world. We are less respected now than we were eight years ago or even four years ago.

And this is the greatest country on Earth. But because of some of the mistakes that have been made — and I give Senator McCain great credit on the torture issue, for having identified that as something that undermines our long-term security — because of those things, we, I think, are going to have a lot of work to do in the next administration to restore that sense that America is that shining beacon on a hill.