Terror rant

If I have to pull out a microscope to read that fine print I'm going to start bashing heads.

 

My apologies. Evil Hasselhoff must be toying with my computer!

 

GAAAA! Stop that. You've gotta put an NSFW tag on that pic.

 

Maybe. But I don't know.

We stopped the planned millenium bombing attack on LAX in 1999 . . . without any of the measures that were adopted post 9/11.

Just used some good intel, some good dectective work . . . and some luck. That's pretty much the only way to foil these things.

140,000 troops on the ground in Baghdad sure isn't foiling anything.

 

Wrong. Dead wrong.

To paraphrase BTExpress, they thwarted this latest attempt to blow up planes because of good intel, some good detective work ... and some luck:

http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/europe/08/11/terror.plot/index.html

Let's not give the GOP's hide-in-a-bunker mentality more credit that it deserves, especially when it deserves no credit whatsoever.

 

What makes anyone think we're safer today than we were five years ago? And I'm seriously asking.

I've seen nothing but complete bullshit from Homeland Security. Look at the terror watchlist that was just released, with Indiana dwarfing NY and Cali in the number of potential targets. (There's a freakin' roller rink and a petting zoo on the damn thing.) Yeah, there's a department set up for protecting us, but it seems as if there's so much bureaucracy involved in the thing that it's absolutely worthless.

The only measures I can see that might actually make us safer is an increased focus on terrorism at the CIA and FBI.

But then, these guys pretty well did their jobs back before 9-11. They took a lot of criticism, but when you really look at it, they handed the president and anyone who would listen a complete and accurate report detailing how the terrorists would attack and where they would attack. Not really their fault that no one listened.

Maybe the thing that will make us safer is that we'll actually listen to these people out in the field now. But given the Iraq invasion, that's obviously not a certainty.

 

Amen. Outstanding post.

 

In certain ways we are certainly safer. In the areas where we are not safer we are more informed about how unsafe we are we haven't corrected that.

An example would be the new flight security, with the ion detectors in place, in comparison to our ports. New measures have been put in place for flights, however no real steps have been taken to secure the ports.

Sure, we knocked out quite a bit of the terrorist infrastructure in Afghanistan, but our actions in Iraq has created new hostilities in other locations.

In conjunction to this you have the reduction in privacy through government action and a fairly whimsical terrorist alert system that is questioned when real events, like that of London's Heathrow, occur as opposed to when the presidents poll numbers take a dip. It is sort of a boy who cried wolf problem.


I should also add:
An increased deficit, a quetionable economy, the ever increasing debt of the average American family, and rising gas prices do not help us stay safe.

 

We're not safe. We're lucky.

Americans can be so stupid...a couple of years without a major incident, and everyone goes back to feeling comfortable.  

We're throwing away toothpaste and standing in four hour lines, and halfway around the world, a bunch of terrorists are laughing and planning their next move.  They didn't need to blow up any planes, they got their message across--we're here.

I'm a lifelong liberal, but I'm furious that we're living under a threat that is just as strong now as it ever was. We have cancer, and we're taking aspirin.  

 

Right there with ya, 21. Well said.

 

It's all what you're used to. Mass terror murder is a comparatively new phenomenon in the US, and there have been only three major incidents, the two World Trade Center attacks, including the Pentagon on 9/11, and the Oklahoma City bombings. We are accordingly freaked out, because it's a strange new danger.
On the other hand, Americans tolerate random violence of a kind that freaks other societies out. When in the '90s some maniac went berserk and shot up a Scottish elementary school, Great Britian was so horrified it more or less banned handgun possession. In the US, such an occurance would make everyone go "how sad." Otherwise, we'd shrug it off. "Going postal" is part of our language.
Alertness, preparation, and boring police work. That's what it takes to minimize the terror threat. The Islamic world will get rid of its psychos about the same time America gets rid of its-namely, never.