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The United States of America presidents always face a range of threats. The
list of security threats seems to be never ending for the current United States
president, Barack Hussein Obama. Four presidents have actually died from
assassination and another six were the subject of assassination. The huge amount
of power and symbolism of the office makes any U.S. president a key target for
assassination. Obama will be no different, except in his case, the federal law
enforcement officials have an extra consideration: his race. Obama is the first black
president ever to be elected in the history of the American presidency.

In a time where America was and still is in a deep economic debt and other
serious issues, Obama promised a radical change. According to PolitiFact, a
service from St. Petersburg¶s Times that assesses the truth behind politicians,
Obama has made more than 500 promises during the course of his presidential
campaign. Obama is under pressure to deliver and will be held accountable for all
the ³change we can believe in´ promises he has made to the American people. This
introduces another more serious security threat to president Obama.

I.?  


Abraham Lincoln was the first president to be assassinated. John
Wilkes Booth was a supporter of Southern America and believed that civil
war of 1861 to 1865 was needed to maintain the freedom of the south. He
did not like that the North was trying to abolish slavery. On April 14, 1865,
He learned that president Lincoln will be attending a play called ³Our
American Cousin´ at Ford's Theater. He fixed the president¶s private box so
that he would be able to get in and shot the president at around ten o¶clock
that evening. It is uncertain if Booth was killed and committed suicide.
James Garfield was shot by Charles J. Guitau who was a mentally
disturbed on July 2nd, 1881. In this case, the president died of blood
poisoning due to the poor treatment of his wounds by his physician. Guitau
was convicted of murder and hanged on June 30th.1882.
William Mckinley was the the 3rd president to be shot. He was shot
two times by anarchist Leon Czolgosz while he was visiting the Pan-
 American Exhibit in New York on September 6th, 1901 and died a week
later. Czolgosz declared that he shot the president because he believed that
President Mckinley was an enemy to working people and was electrocuted
on October 29th, 1901.
President John F. Kennedy was the fourth and last American president
to be assassinated. Lee Harvey Oswald shot President Kennedy while he was
riding in a motorcade in Dallas on November 23rd, 1963. Oswald was shot
and killed by Jack Ruby before Oswald went to trial. Many argued that
Oswald had an accomplice but the FBI disagreed.

II.? 


? Andrew Jackson was at a funeral for Congressman Warren Davis on January

th
30 , 1835. Richard Lawrence tried to shoot him with two different large-caliber
pistols that misfired. He went to trial for attempted assassination but was found not
guilty by reason of insanity. Lawrence spent the rest of his life in the insane ward.

Theodore Roosevelt was shot in the chest by John Schrank, a saloon-keeper

from New York, on October 14th, 1912. Roosevelt¶s term in the white house as
president had actually ended at the time but he was running for another term
against William Howard Taft in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The bullet went in
Roosevelt¶s chest after hitting both his steel eyeglass case and a 50 page copy of
his speech that was in his jacket at the time of shooting. Roosevelt was not
seriously wounded although blood was seeping through his while he was doing
scheduled ninety minute speech. Doctors determined it was safer to leave the bullet
inside his chest instead of attempting to remove it. Shrank was declared mentally
insane and was sentenced to the Central State Mental Hospital in 1914 where he
died of natural causes 29 years later.

Franklin Roosevelt was giving a speech in Miami on February 15th, 1933,

when Giuseppe Zangara fired six shots into the crowd. The Mayor of Chicago,
Anton Cermak, was shot in the stomach but Roosevelt was not harmed. Zangara
was convicted of attempted murder and was retried for murder after Cermak¶s
death. Zangara was executed by electric chair in March, 1933.
? Two Puerto Ricans, Oscar Collazo and Griselio Torresola, tried to kill
president Harry Truman while he was staying at the Blair House with his family
across the street from the White House . They tried to shoot their way into the
house killing one policeman and wounding two others. Torresola died in the
gunfight but Collazo was arrested and sentenced to death. Collazo and Torresola
were trying to bring attention to the case for Puerto Rican independence. Collazo¶s
sentence was changed to life in prison by President Truman and was later released
from prison by President Carter in 1979.

Two women attempted to assassinate President Gerald Ford. Lynette

Fromme, who was a follower of Charles Manson, pointed a gun at President Ford
but did not fire on September 5th, 1975. She was convicted of attempt murder of
the president and was sentenced to life in prison. The second attempt was made by
Sara Jane Moore on September 22nd, 1975. Moore fired one shot that was averted
by a bystander. She was convicted and sentenced to life in prison as well.

?
III.? Ñ  
!

? The Obama administration is running against an unfortunate history of

assassinated famous U.S. African-American leaders. These have included Medgar
Evers, Malcom X and Martin Luther King Jr. The Southern Poverty Law Centre
recently brought a report called ³Terror From The Right´ that identifies the serious
homegrown plots, conspiracies, and racism riots in America since the Oklahoma
city bombings. It lists 75 domestic terrorism events, from plans to bomb the
government to attempts to attempts to kill judges and politicians. Instead of a
variety of targets, Barack Obama¶s name surface time and time again on the report.
Home-bred terrorist are creating the biggest threat for this American president.
The entries are as follows:

-? The first entry in this report concerning Barack Obama is on June 8th, 2008.
Six people, linked to a militia group in rural Pennsylvania, were arrested
with a mass of assault rifles and homemade bombs. One of the six allegedly
told the authorities that they had intended to shoot black people from a
rooftop and predict a civil should Obama be elected to the White House.
 -? The second entry was on August 24th, 2008. Three supremacists were
arrested in Denver the day before the opening of the Democratic convention
where Obama was nominated. They were in possession of high-powered
rifles and camouflage clothing. They intended to assassinate Obama.

-? The next entry was October 24th, 2008. Two supremacists were arrested in
Tennessee of a strange plan to murder 100 black people including Obama.
This was two weeks before the election.

-? On January 21st, 2009, the day after Obama¶s inauguration, a white man was
arrested in Massachusetts after having allegedly killed two immigrants and
injuring a third. He said he was fighting for a ³dying race´.

-? On June 10th, 2009, James von Brunn walked into the Holocaust Memorial
in Washington and shot dead a security guard. When Brunn died in jail
awaiting his trial, he left a note that read ³Obama was created by Jews´.

These are just the few potential threats. According to the center¶s report, the
number of militant right wing group have increased from 149 in 2008 to 512 in
2009. These extremist anti-government groups see the Obama administration as a
plot to impose a ³one world government´ to America.

IV.?  "#

Danger can come to this commander-in-chief from any number of directions.

Using the realism theory is telling it like it actually is and the reality of this issue is
that the president can only be as safe as he allows himself to be. For any president,
the Secret Service usually measures the general atmosphere with the particular
personality the current president brings to the job. Obama is a president with a rare
personality that likes to be out with the people.

The role of the president¶s personality is shown in the single most disastrous
failure existing in the secret service¶s history. According to the security standards
today, the assassination of President Kennedy in Dallas on November, 1963,
should have never happened for numerous reasons. The parade route Kennedy took
was publicized before his arrival which is a key offence in the secret service¶s
book. Lee Harvey Oswald had an easy and clear shot from the sixth floor of the
Texas School Book Depositors which these days would be thoroughly swept and
shut by the secret service. But it was the order of President Kennedy himself that
has stamped his fate. Kennedy had asked for the removable plastic roof section of
the limousine to be taken off and for his agents not to ride behind him. This left
him fully exposed to any security breach which consequently got Kennedy shot in
the head and throat.
Since the start of his campaign, Obama has said that he will personally
negotiate with the leaders of states who have been denied face-to-face meetings?
with U.S. presidents such as Iran. Some believe that he is stamped as Muslim at
conception because of his father and also because of his middle name, Hussein.
Hussein is a name that is given in honor of Islam¶s most respected saints. Obama¶s
security will be severely under threat because to assassinate the president would be
very desirable to the al-Qaeda. The secret service can only advice the president
what is best for his security, but they cannot give him orders.
Power is crucial in the realist theory. Obama is in office when America is
presently the super power of the world. His election has outraged white
supremacists. The terrorist who acts alone is harder to track than extremist groups
because they usually remain isolated and do not tell anyone about their intentions.
The groups are noticeably emerging in the rural areas around the Appalachian
Mountains and Great lakes of America. These groups, who believe that Obama has
come to take their freedom and enslave the white-American nation, have dead
giveaways as far their movement and how every member of this group should keep
silent and keep their plot clandestine.

The liberal theory emphasizes on what ought to be rather than how it

actually is.Obama knows that he should stay away from any possible security
breach for not only his own safety but also for the safety of his wife and two
daughters. There is definitely a feeling of frustration in Obama who has struggled
to uphold a sense of normalcy in the White House. He has tried to detach himself
from direct involvements with the public which is normal to some extent because
he is no longer running in an election.
Obama was born to a Muslim father but his middle name, Hussein, should
not determine his religion. Obama grew up living all across the world with plenty
of spiritual influences, but without having one actual religion. Obama was later
baptized to be Christian in the early 1990¶s at the Trinity United Church in
Chicago.
Concerning Iran, the Bush administration has made direct talks to Iran with
the condition of Iranian suspension of its uranium enrichment programme.
According to the Obama agenda, the new administration will ³talk to our foes and
friends´. The U.S. will also have ³tough and direct´ talks with Iran, provide wide
economic and diplomatic help if uranium enrichment is suspended. The White
House has said that they will coordinate closely with their allies and proceed with
careful preparation. If Obama¶s plan works out the way he envisioned it, he will be
in no threat.