Greg Sargent publishes the full context of President Barack Obama's conversation with Bob Woodward about "absorbing" a potential terrorist attack, and it's ... exactly what you thought he said if you weren't Liz Cheney, John Bolton or Marc Thiessen.
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."
The torture wing of the GOP has spent the last 24 hours attacking the president for saying that America is "a strong, powerful country," and that Americans are "incredibly resilient." Because they'd prefer we weren't.
Ben Wittes writes that "this comment could have been made by any one of several members of the last administration." It actually was.
