More Fallout from Air Force Fly-by

A former Bush Homeland Security advisor is understandably critical of yesterday's Air Force photo-op in New York:

(CNN) - A former homeland security adviser to President George W. Bush is slamming the decision by an Obama White House official to use lower Manhattan as the location for a low-flying presidential plane photo-op.

Francis Townsend, a CNN security contributor, called the fly-over "crass insensitivity" Tuesday on CNN's American Morning. "And, frankly, as I would say as a former prosecutor, I would call this felony stupidity," the lawyer and former Bush homeland security adviser added.

Townsend also suggested that Louis Caldera, the Director of the White House Military Office, may not be fit to continue serving in the Obama administration.

"What makes this almost more disturbing is the fact that that's the office responsible for the movement of the president and his staff in a time of emergency," Townsend told Kiran Chetry. "So, of course, the most important thing is that the person leading it has good judgment. . . . at its best this is bad judgment. This is probably not the right job for Mr. Caldera to be in if he didn't understand the likely reaction of New Yorkers."

"This was not necessary," Townsend added. "If you needed pictures of Air Force One over a national icon, fly it over the Grand Canyon. But flying it over lower Manhattan, which to many of us is a sacred ground now where we lost thousands of Americans, I just think it wrong."

To be completely fair the flyover was not supposed to be over Ground Zero, but over the Statue of Liberty. However, it's pretty impossible to fly a 747 over the Statue without being very close to Ground Zero. The flight time in that jet between those two points would be only a few seconds.

Then there was this reaction from New York-based NBC news anchor Brian Williams:

This was dangerously mishandled. As I said the other evening at a gathering of New York City firefighters: even after all these years, among many New Yorkers, 9/11 still feels like it was about 10 minutes ago. The pit is still there, though it's now a construction zone. The losses don't go away. No one is bringing my neighbor back to me. I will drive by his house on my way home from work tonight, and he won't be there. We still look up at the sky (in ways we never did before) when we hear low-flying aircraft, and we still worry. Lower Manhattan is no place for an unnanounced low-altitude jumbo jet-and-fighter-jet flyover.

Someone should pay for this.

Of course, this whole thing is now giving way to a collection of jokes about the next Obama photo-op. This tweet from AllahPundit:

Next Obama "photo op": An unannounced overflight of Pearl Harbor by 200 or so unmarked fighter/bombers

And this from TTBL:

BHO reminds us the Air Force One stunt is not his fault - he inherited AF1 from Bush.

This will probably keep up for awhile.

UPDATE: Feds knew flyover would cause panic but insisted on secrecy anyway.