[OPINION] The gaping hole where the commander in chief should be by Monica Crowley

“I hope to God I know what I’m doing.”

Seventy-one years ago this week, Gen. Dwight Eisenhower turned to his staff and uttered this half-self-reassurance, half-prayer. On the eve of D-Day, even the wise, steady, old pro had his doubts about the mission, his leadership of it, and its potential for success.

Fortunately, Gen. Eisenhower did know what he was doing and had the guts to pull the trigger despite the inconceivable death and chaos he knew lay ahead. It had to be done if tyranny were to be crushed and freedom restored. On June 5, after getting final weather reports for the Normandy coast, Gen. Eisenhower stopped pacing and said firmly, “OK, let’s go.”

Would we recognize such exemplary leadership today?

Several weeks ago, I made a pilgrimage to Normandy to see the combat zones about which I had long read. We began in St. Mere Eglise, into which paratroopers from the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions drifted in the dark, early hours of June 6. From there, we stood at Pointe du Hoc, the 100-foot cliffs which the 2nd Army Ranger Battalion scaled in the face of unrelenting German fire. Past the cliffs lies Omaha Beach, site of the fiercest combat and greatest carnage of D-Day and the location of the heartbreakingly beautiful American cemetery. And further east, the British and Canadian beaches and German gun emplacements at Longues-su-mer.

At each site, I tried to imagine the incomprehensible violence — and the magnitude of what our brave soldiers achieved — that day, and in the days, weeks and months that followed.

Via: Washington Times

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OBAMACARE TECH FIRM TRIED, FAILED TO BUILD GUN REGISTRY IN CANADA

CGI, the Canadian company whose U.S. subsidiary built the failed Obamacare website, was once contracted to build a federal gun registry for the Canadian government, Breitbart News has learned. 

CGI's contract was canceled in 2007 after a report by the Auditor General found that the Canadian Firearms Information System (CFIS) being built by CGI was "significantly over budget" and that it had been plagued by delays.

The Conservative government that took power in 2006 canceled CGI's gun registry contract, and eventually repealed the Canadian gun registry entirely. 

In another parallel to the Obamacare controversy in the United States, the gun registry had been passed in 1993 over vehement Conservative objections, and was upheld by the Supreme Court of Canada in 2000, before finally being repealed in most of the country in 2012.

The failed gun registry was only one of CGI's many Canadian failures, which included canceled contracts to build health care databases in the provinces of Ontario and New Brunswick. Despite CGI's checkered record, the Obama administration awarded its U.S. subsidiary, CGI Federal, the $93.7 million contract to build healthcare.gov, part of $678 million in health care services contracts awarded to the company. 

Brian Lilley of Canada's Sun News reported Monday on CGI's history of failures, cost overruns, and conflicts of interest, including the gun registry: 

CGI was hired to make sure that the then-Liberal government's gun control program was efficient and high-tech. It never worked the way it should have. Was it bad programming or bad government decisions? The truth is, we don't know--we just got stuck with the bill.

The Canadian government spent $10 million to cancel the contract, on top of $81 million already spent--close to $100 million in U.S. dollars at the time. 

The U.S. does not have a gun registry, but one would be required, according to Breitbart News' AWR Hawkins, to implement the universal background checks that Democrats and the Obama administration tried to push through Congress earlier this year.

Via: Breitbart.com

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