How do I thwart thee, let me count the ways....
That seems to be the Bush administration's mantra on the 9/11 Commission. After having to be dragged into even allowing a commission to be formed, Bush, his aides and advisers seem to be doing everything they can to slow the Commission down, if not grind it to a halt - or, at the very least - prevent it from being able to come to any kind of meaningful conclusion about what failures happened where and when, and how to prevent them in the future.
This from a President who is running for re-election on the notion that he's somehow committed to battling terrorism and has made the nation "safer." Of course, if either of these contentions were true, he'd want to cooperate fully with ANY investigation that might grant insight into what went wrong and what is needed to really make the country safer, but it's been obvious for quite some time now that Bush has no interest in cooperating.
The most recent stall is actually rather interesting. It seems the commissioners wanted to be able to look at papers from the Clinton era, to see what was known and/or done prior to Bush taking office. There was no objection from the former Clinton administration officials and the papers were forwarded to the White House to present to the commission. The Bush White House, however, decided that most of the papers weren't needed and withheld them from the panel.
The disclosure by the White House on Thursday that it had withheld thousands of classified national-security documents gathered by the National Archives from the files of the Clinton White House drew protests from members of the commission, Democrats and Republicans alike, as well as Congressional Democrats.Why on earth would the Bush administration not want the commission to see papers from the Clinton administration? I can't imagine that they'd be wanting to protect Clinton in any way, so are they concerned that whatever is in those papers would somehow reflect badly on Bush? Obviously, we can't know that until or unless someone releases what information is in those documents, but it is kind of strange - especially since the White House has tried to implicate the Clinton administration as being partly to blame for the 9/11 tragedy (which they very well may be - and if they are, we need to know that and how to avoid the mistakes they made, just as we need to know what the Bush people did wrong and how to avoid those mistakes again as well.)Researchers from the National Archives were allowed to use their discretion in culling information from Clinton White House files in response to a series of document requests from the commission, which is investigating intelligence and law-enforcement failures before the Sept. 11 attacks, made over the last year.
But the final decision on whether the documents could be handed over was left to the Bush White House, which decided to block transfer of three-quarters of the nearly 11,000 pages of material, said former Clinton aides who say they were concerned that so many documents had been withheld.
"This is very disturbing," said Richard Ben-Veniste, the former Watergate prosecutor who is a Democratic member of the commission.
The White House said on Thursday that it decided to withhold the Clinton documents because they duplicated other documents, were not relevant to the commission's requests or involved national security and were "highly sensitive."
Mr. Ben-Veniste and other commission members said they were surprised to learn that any Clinton documents had been withheld.
"Since all of the commissioners and most of the staff have security clearances at the very highest level," Mr. Ben-Veniste said, "it puzzles me as to what would be withheld on the basis of national security concerns."
Kevin Hayden has posted an excellent examination of why the conservatives claims that the Spanish people in their recent electoral choices were somehow appeasing Osama bin Laden..
If conservatives want to complain about what they perceive as the Spanish public's appeasement of terrorism, they should also acknowledge out own appeasement. This is an issue I've addressed before, but it's something I think a lot more people need to be made aware of.
Part of what got Osama bin Laden started on his campaign of terror was his anger at the US's decision to station troops in Saudi Arabia, and removal of those troops has been one of his primary goals ever since. In April 2003, not long after Saddam was removed from power, the US DID remove it's troops from Saudi Arabia - giving Osama a huge victory in the eyes of his followers. Worse, Paul Wolfowitz, speaking with Sam Tannenhaus of Vanity Fair magazine (as reported in the DOD's OWN transcription of the interview) acknowledged that being able to remove those troops was one of the reasons why we wanted to remove Saddam in the first place:
Q: Was that [Being able to remove the soldiers from Saudi Arabia] one of the arguments that was raised early on by you and others that Iraq actually does connect, not to connect the dots too much, but the relationship between Saudi Arabia, our troops being there, and bin Laden's rage about that, which he's built on so many years, also connects the World Trade Center attacks, that there's a logic of motive or something like that? Or does that read too much into --In addition, Osama had said that he wanted to see Saddam removed from power (though he would have preferred that the Iraqi people do the removing). By invading Iraq, we have also given him that - and the hope that a democratic Iraq can be turned into another Islamic-fundamentalist nation. And while it may never have been a stated goal of his, I'm sure Osama doesn't mind that we've handed him an excellent recruiting tool through our invasion and occupation of Iraq.Wolfowitz: No, I think it happens to be correct. The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on which was weapons of mass destruction as the core reason, but [...] there have always been three fundamental concerns. One is weapons of mass destruction, the second is support for terrorism, the third is the criminal treatment of the Iraqi people. Actually I guess you could say there's a fourth overriding one which is the connection between the first two. [...] The third one by itself, as I think I said earlier, is a reason to help the Iraqis but it's not a reason to put American kids' lives at risk, certainly not on the scale we did it. That second issue about links to terrorism is the one about which there's the most disagreement within the bureaucracy, even though I think everyone agrees that we killed 100 or so of an al Qaeda group in northern Iraq in this recent go-around, that we've arrested that al Qaeda guy in Baghdad who was connected to this guy Zarqawi whom Powell spoke about in his UN presentation.
Osama bin Laden wanted the American troops gone from Saudi Arabia. He wanted Saddam out of power. His al Qaeda organization launched an attack against America on September 11th, and as a direct result, we invaded Iraq, removed Saddam from power and pulled out troops from Saudi Arabia. Who says terrorism doesn't work?
According to an NBC News story broadcast on March 2nd, 2004, prior to the war in Iraq, the Pentagon drew up at plans on at least 3 separate occasion to take out a terrorist now considered responsible for at least 700 killings in Iraq only to have those plans killed by the Bush Administration, who were concerned that doing so would weaken their case for going to war in Iraq.
In June 2002, U.S. officials say intelligence had revealed that Zarqawi and members of al-Qaida had set up a weapons lab at Kirma, in northern Iraq, producing deadly ricin and cyanide.By the time we started the war in Iraq, Zarqawi and most of his followers had left the area, and we've been unable to locate them again - and at least 700 people are dead as a result.The Pentagon quickly drafted plans to attack the camp with cruise missiles and airstrikes and sent it to the White House, where, according to U.S. government sources, the plan was debated to death in the National Security Council.
[...] Four months later, intelligence showed Zarqawi was planning to use ricin in terrorist attacks in Europe.
The Pentagon drew up a second strike plan, and the White House again killed it. By then the administration had set its course for war with Iraq.
[...] In January 2003, the threat turned real. Police in London arrested six terror suspects and discovered a ricin lab connected to the camp in Iraq.
The Pentagon drew up still another attack plan, and for the third time, the National Security Council killed it.
Military officials insist their case for attacking Zarqawi’s operation was airtight, but the administration feared destroying the terrorist camp in Iraq could undercut its case for war against Saddam.
Even as President Bush is running ads that seek to capitalize on the 9/11 tragedy for political gain, the Bush administration is thwarting criminal prosecution of terrorists accused of being involved in the attacks.
According to a New York Times editorial, the Bush administration is refusing to allow criminal defendants - both here and abroad - access to Ramzi bin al-Shibh, allegedly one of the masterminds of the attack. As a result, much of the case against Zacarias Moussaoui - the only person facing trial in the US for involvement in the attacks - has been thrown out, and in Germany, one defendant was acquitted and another has had his conviction overturned.
Moussaoui may still end up being tried by a military tribunal here in the states, but
...the German decisions serve as a reminder that Al Qaeda is a global enterprise whose dismantling will require arrests and coordinated law enforcement in many countries. Terrorists arrested in Europe will not be turned over to American military tribunals seen by the outside world as kangaroo courts.As I've mentioned before, I'm no fan of conspiracy theories, but the Bush administration has so consistently done everything they can to block any true investigation into the tragedy that it has the effect of making some of those theories seem like maybe they're not quite so far-fetched after all. Between
CBS News is reporting that Thomas Kean, chairman of the commission on 9/11, has said that the attacks on 9/11 could, and should, have been prevented.
"This is a very, very important part of history and we've got to tell it right," said Thomas Kean.It's not clear at this point if those who failed to either predict, discover or prevent the attacks were members of the Clinton administration, the Bush administration, or some of both, but given how hard the Bush administration tried to prevent the investigation from even being initiated, I suspect that at least some of the blame belongs with them."As you read the report, you're going to have a pretty clear idea what wasn't done and what should have been done," he said. "This was not something that had to happen."
Appointed by the Bush administration, Kean, a former Republican governor of New Jersey, is now pointing fingers inside the administration and laying blame.
"There are people that, if I was doing the job, would certainly not be in the position they were in at that time because they failed. They simply failed," Kean said.
Either way, the people who failed to prevent this tragedy should be identified, publicly named and never again put in a position where the public's safety rests in their hands - regardless of which party they belong to.
Looks like I had some good reason for being concerned yesterday about possible "trickiness" on the part of the White House with regards to their agreement to give the 9/11 comission access to the documents they need. It's not nearly as straight-forward as I initially thought.
The compromise will allow the 10-member commission to create a four-person subcommittee that will have varying degrees of access to the documents known as Presidential Daily Briefs from the Bush and Clinton administrations, according to a commission statement and sources familiar with the agreement.The White House should just simply let the commissioners have access to the information, not go though some kind of dog-and-pony show hoop jumping just to get to have a few of them look at "parts" of the briefings, with further reviews and restrictions on what information can then be shared with other commissioners. Yes, I know there are security concerns, but there should also be security concerns regarding how the administration let the 9/11 attacks happen. The only way anyone can understand for sure what happened is if the investigators are allowed to know what the decision-makeers knew prior to and on that day. Otherwise, they're just making guesses in the dark, and that isn't going to do a whole lot to protect the country in the long run.But the accord also includes restrictions limiting what parts of the briefings can be seen and what parts can later be shared with the rest of the bipartisan panel, and it includes White House review of much of that information, sources familiar with the agreement said. Those with direct access will take notes, and those notes are subject to review by the White House before being shared with others, sources said.
In a bit of - hopefully - good news, the White House and 9/11 panel have come to an agreement that will allow at least some members of the panel to see the classified documents they recently threatened to subpoena.
The 10-member panel will designate a subcommittee that will examine the most sensitive documents and report back, commissioner Richard Ben-Veniste said.In addition, they commission has sent subpoenas to both the FAA and the Pentagon. I'm glad that the White House has agreed to this compromise and I hope it really will give the commission the information its needs to do their job properly. I'm also very pleased that the head of the commission, former Governor Thomas Kean, has been so stubborn in doing his job and didn't let the White House's delaying tactics deter him from doing what he thinks is necessary. I just hope that there won't be any kind of trickery or other dishonesty involved in how the White House upholds their end of this deal. Sad to say, I tend to expect that there will be - at least from this administration. Maybe they can surprise me for once. It'd be nice...“We believe this agreement will prove satisfactory and enable us to get our job done,” according to a statement by the commission.
The White House was pleased by the development. “We look forward to the recommendations to make America safer,” spokeswoman Ashley Snee said. At President Bush’s direction, she said, the White House “has been working closely with the commission to ensure they have the information they need to be successful.”
Bush said last month that the dispute concerned “the presidential daily brief,” a classified written intelligence report he gets each morning.
In late 2002, the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States - also known as the "9/11 Commission" was established to look into the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001. In most cases where there's been an attack or disaster (such as the the attack on Pearl Harbor or the shuttle explosions), commissions quickly established after the events to determine what went wrong and what was needed to prevent it from happening again, but not so with 9/11. It took over a year for the 9/11 Commission to be authorized and even then it was given only 18 months in which to do all of its work.
Of course, first the commissioners had to be chosen. Initially, Henry Kissinger was picked to lead the panel, but when he learned that Senate ethics rules would require him to disclose his client list, he resigned. Eventually, Thomas Kean, a former Governor of New Jersey was appointed to head the commission, and he seems determined to do a thorough job.
After spending several months trying to get a variety of documents from different government agencies as well as from the White House, Kean has started using the "s" word - subpoena.
"Any document that has to do with this investigation cannot be beyond our reach," Mr. Kean said on Friday in his first explicit public warning to the White House that it risked a subpoena and a politically damaging courtroom showdown with the commission over access to the documents, including Oval Office intelligence reports that reached President Bush's desk in the weeks before the Sept. 11 attacks.In the continuing "perception gap" that seems to exist within the White House, Ashley Snee, a White House spokeswoman, said that the White House "believed" it was cooperating fully with the commission. Apparently some of the documents that are in dispute are considered very sensitive and are highly classified, but Kean feels strongly that the commission should have access to them nevertheless."I will not stand for it," Mr. Kean said in the interview in his offices here at Drew University, where he has been president since 1990.
"That means that we will use every tool at our command to get hold of every document."
"These are documents that only two or three people would normally have access to," he said. "To make those available to an outside group is something that no other president has done in our history.Kean does note that, for the most part, the White House has been very cooperative, but that they are committed to getting every document they need for the investigation."But I've argued very strongly with the White House that we are unique, that we are not the Congress, that these arguments about presidential privilege do not apply in the case of our commission," he said.
"Anything that has to do with 9/11, we have to see it — anything. There are a lot of theories about 9/11, and as long as there is any document out there that bears on any of those theories, we're going to leave questions unanswered. And we cannot leave questions unanswered."
There are concerns, however, that the time limit on the commission - the term expires in May 2004 - may run out before the commission can finish all of their work. One commission member, Max Cleland, has said that he believes the White House is intentionally delaying in handing over documents, in order to prevent the commission from finishing the job.
"It's obvious that the White House wants to run out the clock here," he said in an interview in Washington. "It's Halloween, and we're still in negotiations with some assistant White House counsel about getting these documents — it's disgusting."It should be noted that Cleland recently lost his Senate seat in what was considered a very dirty campaign, and thus may hold a grudge against the Republican part in general, but given how hard the White House fought to prevent the commission from being established in the first place, and the lengths they've previously gone to in order to prevent any serious investigation into the attacks at all, Cleland's concern is certainly within the realm of probability.He said that the White House and President Bush's re-election campaign had reason to fear what the commission was uncovering in its investigation of intelligence and law enforcement failures before Sept. 11. "As each day goes by, we learn that this government knew a whole lot more about these terrorists before Sept. 11 than it has ever admitted."
If the time constraints do become an issue, the commission could ask for an extension, but the same forces that delayed the start of the commission for so long may also work to prevent an extension, though not all view it as hopeless.
"If the families of the victims weighed in — and heavily, as they did before — then we'd have a chance of succeeding," said Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican who was an important sponsor of the legislation creating the commission. He said that, given the "obfuscation" of the administration in meeting document requests, he was ready to pursue an extension "if the commission feels it can't get its work done."I find the White House's stonewalling on the commission deplorable. We, the citizens, have a right to know why the attacks happened and why our government and law enforcement agencies were unable to prevent it. I'm glad to see the commission making it known that they intend to get every document they think they need and that they will use the powers granted to them to demand that the documents be turned over. I only hope that if the clock does run out, Congress will do the right thing and allow them an extension, even if it threatens to interfere with President Bush's re-election plans.
Airlines have been ordered to inspect all of their planes in the wake of the discovery of box cutters and other items that were snuck aboard two Southwest Airlines planes.
The inspections were prompted by the discovery of bags containing box cutters, Play-Doh and a small amount of bleach in suntan lotion bottles in the bathrooms aboard two Southwest Airlines flights Thursday night, federal law enforcement officials told NBC News on condition of anonymity.This is one of those stories that seems to have bad news and worse news. I'm just not sure which part is the "worse" - that someone was able to sneak these items on the planes in the first place, or that even after they were tipped off to the items presence in September, it still took them another month to find them.
The cases, which were discovered by Southwest employees doing routine maintenance, also included notes that said that while federal security screeners were doing a good job, they needed to improve. “Look what I was able to get through” was how officials who spoke to NBC News characterized the nature of the notes.
The notes said the packages were stashed on the planes in August. NBC News has learned that the Transportation Security Administration received an e-mail in September bragging about carrying similar packages onto airplanes.
I've never heard this before, but a friend of mine posted it to her LiveJournal yesterday, and it moved me a great deal. One of the most devastating things I've read in a while...
yes, us people are just poems we're 90% metaphor with a leanness of meaning approaching hyper-distillation and once upon a time we were moonshine rushing down the throat of a giraffe yes, rushing down the long hallway despite what the p.a. announcement says yes, rushing down the long stairs with the whiskey of eternity fermented and distilled to eighteen minutes burning down our throats down the hall down the stairs in a building so tall that it will always be there yes, it's part of a pair there on the bow of noah's ark the most prestigious couple just kickin back parked against a perfectly blue sky on a morning beatific in its indian summer breeze on the day that america fell to its knees after strutting around for a century without saying thank you or pleaseand the shock was subsonic
and the smoke was deafening
between the setup and the punch line
cuz we were all on time for work that day
we all boarded that plane for to fly
and then while the fires were raging
we all climbed up on the windowsill
and then we all held hands
and jumped into the skyand every borough looked up when it heard the first blast
and then every dumb action movie was summarily surpassed
and the exodus uptown by foot and motorcar
looked more like war than anything i've seen so far
so far
so far
so fierce and ingenious
a poetic specter so far gone
that every jackass newscaster was struck dumb and stumbling
over 'oh my god' and 'this is unbelievable' and on and on
and i'll tell you what, while we're at it
you can keep the pentagon
keep the propaganda
keep each and every tv
that's been trying to convince me
to participate
in some prep school punk's plan to perpetuate retribution
perpetuate retribution
even as the blue toxic smoke of our lesson in retribution
is still hanging in the air
and there's ash on our shoes
and there's ash in our hair
and there's a fine silt on every mantle
from hell's kitchen to brooklyn
and the streets are full of stories
sudden twists and near misses
and soon every open bar is crammed to the rafters
with tales of narrowly averted disasters
and the whiskey is flowin
like never before
as all over the country
folks just shake their heads
and pourso here's a toast to all the folks who live in palestine
afghanistan
iraqel salvador
here's a toast to the folks living on the pine ridge reservation
under the stone cold gaze of mt. rushmorehere's a toast to all those nurses and doctors
who daily provide women with a choice
who stand down a threat the size of oklahoma city
just to listen to a young woman's voicehere's a toast to all the folks on death row right now
awaiting the executioner's guillotine
who are shackled there with dread and can only escape into their heads
to find peace in the form of a dreamcuz take away our playstations
and we are a third world nation
under the thumb of some blue blood royal son
who stole the oval office and that phony election
i mean
it don't take a weatherman
to look around and see the weather
jeb said he'd deliver florida, folks
and boy did he everand we hold these truths to be self evident:
#1 george w. bush is not president
#2 america is not a true democracy
#3 the media is not fooling me
cuz i am a poem heeding hyper-distillation
i've got no room for a lie so verbose
i'm looking out over my whole human family
and i'm raising my glass in a toasthere's to our last drink of fossil fuels
let us vow to get off of this sauce
shoo away the swarms of commuter planes
and find that train ticket we lost
cuz once upon a time the line followed the river
and peeked into all the backyards
and the laundry was waving
the graffiti was teasing us
from brick walls and bridges
we were rolling over ridges
through valleys
under stars
i dream of touring like duke ellington
in my own railroad car
i dream of waiting on the tall blonde wooden benches
in a grand station aglow with grace
and then standing out on the platform
and feeling the air on my facegive back the night its distant whistle
give the darkness back its soul
give the big oil companies the finger finally
and relearn how to rock-n-roll
yes, the lessons are all around us and a change is waiting there
so it's time to pick through the rubble, clean the streets
and clear the air
get our government to pull its big dick out of the sand
of someone else's desert
put it back in its pants
and quit the hypocritical chants of
freedom forevercuz when one lone phone rang
in two thousand and one
at ten after nine
on nine one one
which is the number we all called
when that lone phone rang right off the wall
right off our desk and down the long hall
down the long stairs
in a building so tall
that the whole world turned
just to watch it falland while we're at it
remember the first time around?
the bomb?
the ryder truck?
the parking garage?
the princess that didn't even feel the pea?
remember joking around in our apartment on avenue D?can you imagine how many paper coffee cups would have to change their design
following a fantastical reversal of the new york skyline?!it was a joke, of course
it was a joke
at the time
and that was just a few years ago
so let the record show
that the FBI was all over that case
that the plot was obvious and in everybody's face
and scoping that scene
religiously
the CIA
or is it KGB?
committing countless crimes against humanity
with this kind of eventuality
as its excuse
for abuse after expensive abuse
and it didn't have a clue
look, another window to see through
way up here
on the 104th floor
look
another key
another door
10% literal
90% metaphor
3000 some poems disguised as people
on an almost too perfect day
should be more than pawns
in some asshole's passion play
so now it's your job
and it's my job
to make it that way
to make sure they didn't die in vain
sshhhhhh....
baby listen
hear the train?
-- by Ani Difranco
When the attacks first happened in 2001, I was keeping a personal journal at livejournal. Below are the posts I made that day watching the events unfold. There's a reference in there to a game called "Majestic" - it was a virtual online game that played out in "real time" - with you getting messages and faxes and such from the game with clues as you unraveled a fictitious government conspiracy. After 9/11, I couldn't play the game anymore at all, but it had some interesting effects on my initial thoughts about the events.
12:16p - Today I've only been awake about an hour now... Matt (knowing me to be a news junkie, and given the enormity of todays news) woke me up to tell me what was going on.. I knew he'd never joke about something this big, yet somehow I expected to turn on the TV and find out that it was something other than what he had said.This was one of the more interesting comments I posted, though, just 2 days after the event. I had commented in a post about Bob Barr trying to get the ban on state-sponsored assassination repealed, and one of my visitors was question what I wanted us to do if I didn't think we should go to war and opposed state-sponsored assassinations. This was my response:All I can do at this point it do whatever I can to keep my mind focused - part of me wants to fall apart in hysterical tears and fear, part of me wants to exact revenge. The best I can do, though, is call upon Thor, Tyr and Odin to help us to find the nithings who did this and to subject them to the full measure of Justice (with a big J) that they deserve.
At the same time, I can tell that Majestic has been getting to me - I know that Bush has been wanting to spend more on defense and I can't help but wonder (thought not actually think that it is at all possible) if some of this was "allowed" to happen as a justification for greater defense spending. No, I do not actually think he or any other American politician would be that callous, but for some reason, the question is still there.
My Hammer is close at hand, and I am finding some measure of comfort from the energies it contains. Knowing that we, the ordinary people of the world, have a defender in Thor is also comforting... sometimes horrors must happen, and I can't pretend to understand, or even have an inkling of comprehension, of why, but I have faith in our Defender, and it is in that from which I am finding the most comfort right now.
current mood: scared, shocked, numb
current music: MSNBC - and appreciating Brian Williams a great deal...
6:11p - More thoughts as the day goes on
These are some messages I posted in reply to comments on my mailing lists. I want to keep them to remember them again later.I keep hearing the speculation that what has happened was due to Osama Bin Laden - which is admittedly quite likely - but I also remember all of the assumptions right after OKC that it was an Arab terrorist plot, and we know how that turned out. I honestly don't know what I think would be worse - a foreign attack or domestic. The enormity is just too much to grasp right now.
I'm glad that the networks are sharing/pooling resources rather than trying to make this a competitive event - its a small thing, but reassuring in a way. I know we'll be hearing many stories of tragedy and heroism - they were just commenting that there is speculation that the plane that crashed in PA may have been on its way to DC and the Capitol building or White House, and that the pilot may have downed it deliberately to prevent that. Given what else has happened, especially the Pentagon building, I wouldn't be surprised. If that is the case, that pilot may be one of the greatest heroes we've had
in this country - being able to keep enough control to down the plane like that rather than let the presumptive terrorists take it where they wanted may have saved a lot more than just the lives of the people in the eventual target - had it been going to the Capitol building, the impact would be almost incalculable, just because of the toll on our current House and Senate memberships.Kriselda
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===== QUOTE =====
> Hoping everyone out there is okay too. I didn't vote for Bush and was
> pissed when he won, but I'll tel you I'm glad it's him dealing with this
> and not Gore. There's a reason for the saying: "Don't mess with Texas."
===== QUOTE =====I have to admit I'm torn on that point... while you're right about the "don't mess with Texas" attitude (which could be very helpful), I'm also a
bit worried that the way Bush reacts to this could make things worse - especially given how many countries he's been pissing off with his military/defense proposals and plans thus far... as much as we need to be tough right now, part of me wishes we had someone with a bit more
sensitivity in office right now. But at the same time, Bush hasn't shown us how he's going to handle this yet - he hasn't had time to - and I'm not going to pass judgment until there's a lot more info in. I will ask Thor, Odin & Tyr to guide him and give him their blessings, that he may lead us and serve the interest of Justice, Courage, and Honour.Kriselda
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===== QUOTE =====
> I've just been thinking about this and whoever is responsible has just
> crippled the defence offices and the financial district.. Is anyone else
> reading too much into this, or is it just my overactive imagination?
===== QUOTE =====Keep in mind that for the last several weeks I've been playing a paranoid-conspiracy game that is handled in "real-time" and is exceptionally interactive (I get phone calls, faxes and IM's from the game, and it's designed to play out like a virtual reality), so my mind is sort of working
along those tracks, but no, I don't really think you're reading too much into it. I also have a feeling that there may well be something to the
speculation that the 4th plane - the one that went down in PA - may have actually been en route to Washington DC to target something like the Capitol or White House (part of the speculation is based on the fact that it was the largest of the 4 hijacked aircraft and therefore they think it may have been headed for a very large target), but that the pilot was able to retain enough control to ditch the plane before the terrorists could take over. *IF* that is the case (and, admittedly, it is *pure* speculation at this point), they could also have taken out the heart of the government - especially if they were targeting the Capitol. This was very much a strike intended to cripple a great deal of our domestic infrastructure -
financially and politically.Kriselda
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===== QUOTE =====
> They say it was Palestinians and that there are parties in the streets in
> Palestinian areas - is this true?
===== QUOTE =====We have no evidence at this point as to who may be behind this. The primary assumption is that it is Osama bin Lauden, but we should keep in mind that after the Oklahoma City, we made the assumption that it was Arab terrorists initially, and then learned it was actually one of our own. In Palestinian areas, however, apparently, the citizens are assuming that it was an Arab terrorist, and, yes, they are celebrating. Bin Lauden had made threats in recent weeks that he was planning something very big, in retaliation for our support of Israel. Officially, however, Yassir Arafat, the leader of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, has denounced the attacks. So, the
Palestinian response is split between the leadership and the civilians.Kriselda
If we can put together credible, hard evidence that bin Laden is behind this (and I believe we're close to doing that already), and given that we know the Taliban has been sheltering him (which in my mind is no different than saying they approve of what he does), then I have NO problem with our going to war. I view war as a very different thing than an assassination. If, during the course of the war, bin Laden is killed, then that's what happens. What I don't want to see happen is for us, on shaky or insufficient evidence, make a decision that we are going to kill bin Laden and then send in an assassin to "take him out" - such as what the CIA tried with Castro in the 60's.At the time, I was more concerned about us using shaky evidence in going after bin Laden, but it was a bit surprising that even back then I was worried about us acting without solid evidence or the backing of the international community.My preference would be to see bin Laden captured, brought to trial and sentenced as the jury deems appropriate (and that it would be a death sentence, I have little doubt). I will support a war effort if we have the kind of evidence necessary to justify such an action (and I will accept the judgement of the international community in that - if NATO supports a war effort based on what evidence we have, then I consider that sufficient). I just don't want us to go skulking around in the dark, sneaking up on him and trying to kill him in secret.
Something else I was realizing today. How often do we hear people accusing those of us who oppose the war in Iraq of supporting terrorism or hating the US? Yet I don't recall there being much of an outcry against the Afghani war - and I know that I, for one, was ok with what we did when we went in (though I am decidedly NOT ok with how we've handled things since the Taliban fell). The difference, of course, is that there was evidence of the Taliban supporting al Qaeda and helping hide Osama bin Laden, and taking the Taliban out made reasonable sense as part of an effort to weaken al Qaeda and bringing bin Laden to justice - though we've blown the opportunities we did have in the immediate aftermath of the war.
See, it's not just the concept of a war that so many are opposed to - or that we think we shouldn't go after anyone because we somehow think the US deserved this. Its the fact that the war in Iraq makes no sense in terms of reacting to 9/11 or in trying to deal with terrorism in general. As I said in 2001, I can support a war if there is sufficient evidence that we are going after someone who is a legitimate target in trying to bring those who attacked us to justice. But I won't support one where the evidence is weak or, worse, virtually non-existant, and which is neither just nor likely to do anything to contain the problem of terrorism in any real way.
A wave toward the clearing sky
All this time we're talking and sharing our rational view
A billion other voices are spreading other news
All this time we're living and trying to understand
Why a billion other choices are making their demands
Talk of a peaceable kingdom
Talk of a time without fear
The ones we wish would listen
Are never going to hear
Justice against the hanged man
Knight of Wands against the hour
Swords against the kingdom
Time against the tower
All this time we're shuffling and laying out all our cards
While a billion other dealers are slipping past our guards
All this time we're hoping and praying we all might learn
While a billion other teachers are teaching them how to burn
Dream of a peaceable kingdom
Dream of a time without war
The ones we wish would hear us
Have heard it all before
A wave toward the clearing sky
A wave toward the clearing sky
The hermit against the lovers
Or the devil against the fool
Swords against the kingdom
The wheel against the rules
All this time we're burning like bonfires in the dark
A billion other blazes are shooting off their sparks
Every spark a drifting ember of desire
To fall upon the earth and spark another fire
A homeward angel on the fly
A wave toward the clearing sky
- Neil Peart, Rush (from the Vapor Trails album)
I originally posted this nid the day after the attacks, and reposted it against last year. I will continue posting it each year on at least one of my sites until all of those who were responsible for the attacks and the deaths and destruction they caused have all been handed a full measure of Tyr's Justice for their dishonourable acts.
Part of my opposition to the war in Iraq has long been that there is no evidence at all that Saddam Hussein had anything at all to do with the 9/11 attacks. When we struck at the Taliban in Afghanistan, I supported that action because they Taliban was helping and sheltering Osama bin Laden and member of al-Qaeda. I do not, in any way, like how we've handled the situation since the Taliban fell - we've failed to provide the kind of funding necessary to actually rebuild Afghanistan, and there have been reports recently that not only is the Taliban in the process of reforming and getting ready to try and take control again in many parts of Afghanistan, but also that we may be in negotiations with them for their cooperation in running things there.
If we have any hope of ever making progress in the War or Terror™ then we must go about it in a much more intelligent way than we have been. If Saddam ever did have weapons of mass destruction - something I have yet to be convinced is true - we failed to protect the locations where we thought they'd be, and have no idea where they are now. They could easily be in the hands of the very people we were told we had to keep Saddam from giving them to (and if he never did have them, then we've wasted time, money and lives going after a target that was not an imminent threat to us.) Our actions are serving to do little but create more terrorists, and this nutball "flypaper" theory is doomed to failure as we can never attract all of the terrorists to one area so we can fight them there since there is a virtually limitless pool of new terrorists being created every day.
In addition, everytime the President or another administration official talks about how, by attracting "all" the terrorists to Iraq so we can kill them there and not have to fight them here, I have to wonder how they justify the idea that it's ok to put all the Iraqi people who may be caught in the acts of terrorism taking place now in their country in harms way just to save Americans. Do not misunderstand me - I do NOT want to see Americans killed or hurt - but I have to ask, what makes innocent American lives worth more than innocent Iraqi lives?
It is important to understand that the Nidstang does NOT stand against those who may have unknowingly aided in the training the terrorists obtained, such as those who worked at private and jet pilot training schools who were unaware of the terrorists goals and had no reason to be suspicious - they are, in their own way, victims of these criminals as well.
I also want to make it clear that this Nid is NOT intended to be placed against anyone on the basis or their race or religion alone. There are many, many, many in the Arab world and among the millions of Muslims around the world, who are every bit as shocked, saddened, sickened, angered and befuddled by these kind of actions as those of us in the US are, and who are hurting right now, not only for the obvious victims of these acts, but also for the name and honour of their people as a whole. Whether it is Osama bin Laden or someone else who is behind these atrocities, we need to remember that the reason "ordinary" citizens were targeted is that those who do these kinds of things believe that ALL Americans are "valid" targets, by virtue of our nationality alone - regardless of what our own personal beliefs may be. If we, in turn, take out our anger on Arabs and Muslims in general, rather than only taking it out on those who have earned the brunt of our wrath, we then act no differently than they have - and in doing so, we let them win.
Magically, the Niding Pole was intended to disrupt and anger the earth sprites (Landvaettir, Land-Wights or earth spirits) inhabiting the ground where the accursed's house was. These sprites would then vent their anger upon the person, whose livelihood and life would be destroyed. Niding Poles were also used to desecrate areas of ground. This technique is called álfreka, literally the 'driving away of the elves', by which the earth sprites of a place were banished, leaving the ground spiritually dead...
On the Niding Pole, the horse skull invokes the horse rune Ehwaz, using the linking and transmissive power of the rune for the magical working. The horse is sacred to Odin, god of runes and magic..."
Excerpt from Rune Magic: The History and Practice of Ancient Runic Traditions,
by Nigel Pennick. Harper Collins, 1993, ISBN=1855381052.
To put a "nid" on someone was a form of verbal curse, a magic ritual that was considered very powerful during the Viking age, and before that. The power of words was not taken lightly by these efficient warriors, so a curse of this kind was something very serious to send, not to speak of having a "nid" spoken over oneself.
In the Saga of Egil Skallagrimsson(an Icelandic/Norwegian story from the 10th century) a dispute is told about Egil and the King Eirik Blodyx ("Bloody axe"), who treated Egil wrongly, and also made him an outlaw. This turned out to become a rather bloody situation, with many dead on both sides.
When Egil has slain a large number of King Eiriks subjects and allies on the island of Herdla (outside Iceland), in anger he placed a hazelwood pole on the top of this island, and on the top of the pole he places a cut off horse's head, aimed towards land. On the pole he carves sacred runes, with a curse upon King Eirik. He also speaks this curse, this "nid":
"Here I place this "nidstang"("curse-pole"), and turneth it against King Eirik and Queen Gunnhild - turneth I this against all the gnomes and little people of the land, that they may all be lost, not finding their homes, until they drive King Eirik and Queen Gunnhild out of the country."According to the legend, the curse soon had it's effect, and King Eirik and his Queen Gunnhild fled to the British Isles.
The Nid
Upon those who seek to strike
Under the cover of secrecy
Who will not show their faces
Or admit that they take these actions
Upon those who kill the innocent
Who consider "ordinary" citizens
Who do not make the decisions of the leaders
Who may or may not support those policies
Who may or may not even understand what those policies are
To be "valid targets" of their hatred and anger
Upon those who would trick other people
Into teaching them the skills they need to kill
Who take advantage of the willingness of strangers
To provide services that may not be available in other nations
Upon those who believe that to cut off the "head of the snake"
To strike at the heart of our symbols
To try and kill our leaders
To destabilize our economy
To break the spirit of our nation
Upon those who give knowing shelter and aid
Who protect these creatures of cowardice
And refuses to allow them to face the consequences of their action
Most specifically
Upon those who knowingly planned
Participated in
Sheltered
Or otherwise, with knowledge and intent,
Assisted those who brought about the decimation
of September 11, 2001, in the United States of America
I call upon these nithings the full wrath of Thor
The Protector and Defender of the common man
I call the fullest measure of the Justice of Tyr
Who allowed himself to be maimed in an act of courage and honour
In order to save the order of the Gods
I call the fullest judgment of Odin
The Allfather, the God of War
Who leads the Gods in the battles against the Jotuns
Including these Jotuns of hate
I call the dominion of Hella
Who keeps all nithings within the horrors of Nifelheim
May those who meet the criteria of this Nid
Never known the comfort and succor of their own God
Only the might, the wrath, the Justice and the punishment of mine
- Kriselda Jarnsaxa
September 12, 2001
David Aaronovitch has an article in today's Guardian that raises a number of questions about the article by Michael Meacher that I posted about yesterday. While he does offer some solid criticism, there are some aspects of his rebuttal that I think should be explored.
Regrettably, Aaronovitch doesn't provide much indication of what sources he used for his information, so, unlike I did with Meacher's post, I can't really go through and look at the actual context of the comments and statistics he quotes. This doesn't mean that he doesn't have any, that his information is necessarily bogus or even that I couldn't find similar information elsewhere. It just means that I can't review his actual sources the way I could with Meacher.
In addition, he roughly dismisses all questios about whether the war was predicated on a desire for oil in order to fulfill the neo-cons desire for a global American hegemony. "The oil and PNAC arguments in points one and two are so complex and recondite that I'll begin at about point three, in which the US may create a pretext for attacks."
While he does address a couple of specific issues (including the quote from Richard Myer's that "the goal has never been to get bin Laden", which Myer did actually say, but as part of a larger comment about the overall goal of the war on terrorism, which I tried to convey in my quotes from Meacher's sources below), he seems to focus a bit more on how Meacher presented his theory than addressing the specific information Meacher provides. He also criticizes Meacher's response when asked on ITN Saturday about the article.
Questioned on ITN on Saturday Meacher denied that he was a conspiracy theorist, citing the "I'm only raising questions" defence. His information, he said, "comes from the collection of data that I have been doing meticulously. It comes from websites across the world."While Meacher may well have gotten his information by reviewing websites, I think its important to note that the information itself is the product of the websites themselves or the people who run them, but are all from articles, originally published in the mainstream press, that were simply rebublished or quoted on the websites Meacher visited. In other words, Aaronovitch tries to make it sound like Meacher was getting his actual information from crackpots, when the information itself came from what most people consider to be reasonably reliable sources, even if they're published on sites run by crackpots.The ones that suggest that the American agencies wanted an attack, so deliberately ignored the activities of terrorists in the US, and stood down their own air defences, in order to allow the worst terrorist atrocity in history to take place - all to secure oil and gas supplies. This act of treachery was accomplished with the complicity of military people, politicians and civil servants of all ranks, some of whose family members were on the planes and in the buildings.
As I said before, none of this means that Aaronovitch is necessarily wrong, just as the thorough source referencing Meacher provided doesn't automatically guarantee that he's right. I just think that Aaronovitch's article is perhaps a bit weak on which to base a denouncement of Meacher's article, lacking, as it does, any attempt to address the questions Meacher raised about the PNAC, the desire for oil being at the root of this whole escapade and America's imperial aims, and without further, sourceable information.
As I noted in a comment to Jan from Secular Blasphemy, I have serious doubts about the Bush administration's ability to pull off the kind of massive conspiracy Meacher said they did. Their incompetence in how they've handled everything else they've tried (and it's getting bad enough that even the invenerate conservatives and neo-cons over at Free Republic are taking pot shots and making complaints about how Bush is running the country) leads me to conclude that they'd never be able to pull something this intricate off.
By the same token, however, I do think that there's a lot more that's going on behind the scene's - both in terms of actions and motivations - than we might even suspect, and I do think that there are a lot of questions that need to be answered. I'm trying to approach the whole thing cautiously, though, because I think this is far too important of an issue to just be lightly glossed over or embraced as the greatest (or worst, depending on how you're defining the terms) conspiracy in American history.
Reader dwain posted a link to this article by Gail Sheehy in comments, and I think it's worth recommending. It's a very interesting look at what 4 of the 9/11 widows have been up against trying to find out just what happened that day.
Four 9/11 Moms Battle BushI personally have a hard time believing some of the conspiracy theories out there - I don't think our government is anywhere near competent enough to coordinate everything necessary to have either pulled something like this off by themselves or to have known about it and deliberately allowed it to happen - but I have to admit, the Bush administration is being FAR to secretive about this, and there is simply too much weird stuff that happened that day to not at least ask questions and try to understand exactly how this happened.In mid-June, F.B.I. director Robert Mueller III and several senior agents in the bureau received a group of about 20 visitors in a briefing room of the J. Edgar Hoover Building in Washington, D.C. The director himself narrated a PowerPoint presentation that summarized the numbers of agents and leads and evidence he and his people had collected in the 18-month course of their ongoing investigation of Penttbom, the clever neologism the bureau had invented to reduce the sites of devastation on 9/11 to one word: Pent for Pentagon, Pen for Pennsylvania, tt for the Twin Towers and bom for the four planes that the government had been forewarned could be used as weapons—even bombs—but chose to ignore.
After the formal meeting, senior agents in the room faced a grilling by Kristen Breitweiser, a 9/11 widow whose cohorts are three other widowed moms from New Jersey.
"I don’t understand, with all the warnings about the possibilities of Al Qaeda using planes as weapons, and the Phoenix Memo from one of your own agents warning that Osama bin Laden was sending operatives to this country for flight-school training, why didn’t you check out flight schools before Sept. 11?"
"Do you know how many flight schools there are in the U.S.? Thousands," a senior agent protested. "We couldn’t have investigated them all and found these few guys."
"Wait, you just told me there were too many flight schools and that prohibited you from investigating them before 9/11," Kristen persisted. "How is it that a few hours after the attacks, the nation is brought to its knees, and miraculously F.B.I. agents showed up at Embry-Riddle flight school in Florida where some of the terrorists trained?"
"We got lucky," was the reply.
Kristen then asked the agent how the F.B.I. had known exactly which A.T.M. in Portland, Me., would yield a videotape of Mohammed Atta, the leader of the attacks. The agent got some facts confused, then changed his story. When Kristen wouldn’t be pacified by evasive answers, the senior agent parried, "What are you getting at?"
"I think you had open investigations before Sept. 11 on some of the people responsible for the terrorist attacks," she said.
"We did not," the agent said unequivocally.
A month later, on the morning of July 24, before the scathing Congressional report on intelligence failures was released, Kristen and the three other moms from New Jersey with whom she’d been in league sat impassively at a briefing by staff director Eleanor Hill: In fact, they learned, the F.B.I. had open investigations on 14 individuals who had contact with the hijackers while they were in the United States. The flush of pride in their own research passed quickly. This was just another confirmation that the federal government continued to obscure the facts about its handling of suspected terrorists leading up to the Sept. 11 attacks.
So afraid is the Bush administration of what could be revealed by inquiries into its failures to protect Americans from terrorist attack, it is unabashedly using Kremlin tactics to muzzle members of Congress and thwart the current federal commission investigating the failures of Sept. 11. But there is at least one force that the administration cannot scare off or shut up. They call themselves "Just Four Moms from New Jersey," or simply "the girls."
Yesterday, news broke that a British man had been arrested in a potential terrorism plot involving the smuggling of a shoulder-mounted surface-to-air missile into the United States. A missile of that nature could be used to try and shoot down aircraft - including passenger jets.
At the time, I'd said that it sounded like this was a sting operation, and that it might be good to keep an eye on it. My concern was that people who take the news of this arrest - and the presumed thwarting of a possible plot - as an indication that the new law enforcement powers are working, and possibly increase support for expanding such powers in the future. Well, today, ABC News (the same place I found the original story) reports that the arrest was, indeed, part of a sting operation, and that there's much less to the possible "plot" than initially thought.
According to law enforcement officials, administration officials are leaving out details and making the alleged plot - and subsequently the arrest of Hemant Lakhani - sound far more significant than it really was.
Lakhani had no contacts in Russia to buy the missiles before the sting and had no known criminal record for arms dealing, officials told ABCNEWS.I hate to sound cynical, but when I saw that the law enforcement officials were say that the administration was trying to minimize some details and exaggerate the importance of the arrest itself, I wasn't the least bit surprised. It's only exactly what I've come to expect from the Bush administration. ::sigh::[...]
Court documents show much of the case is based on the government's key cooperating witness, an informant seeking lenient treatment on federal drug charges, officials told ABCNEWS. He was the first person who led the government to Lakhani.
The missile shipped into the New York area last month was not a real missile — just a mockup — also arranged entirely by the government. The government also arranged the meetings at a New Jersey hotel and elsewhere, where Lakhani allegedly told undercover agents posing as al Qaeda terrorists about his support of bin Laden.
[...]
Government officials said the case will show that Lakhani went along with the scheme willingly and was not entrapped. But the question remains whether any of this would have happened if the government had not set it up.
ABCnews.com is reporting that a British man has been arrested in connection with an apparent plot to smuggle a surface-to-air missile into the US.
The person arrested allegedly sought to smuggle a Russian-made surface-to-air missile into the country and believed he was selling missiles to would-be terrorists, sources said. The name of the person has not been disclosed.Because the news is just now "breaking", the available details are very sketchy. From the phrasing of the above quote, though, it sounds like the man may have been grabbed in some kind of a sting operation ("Sources said the man thought he was dealing with terrorists..."), which, of course, will leave open many questions - including whether or not there's reason to be concerned that terrorists might actually be thinking of trying to smuggle such SAMs into the country and actually use them to try and shoot down a plane.Sources said the man thought he was dealing with terrorists in the United States who wanted to shoot down a passenger jet.
The reason I bring this up is that when people hear that someone has been arrested for possibly smuggling in a SAM weapon to shoot down an airplane, they are, by nature, going to become more worried about the possibility that such an attack might actually happen. More importantly, though, the idea that law enforcement may have prevented an attack tends to make them more likely to support the expanded powers law enforcement has been given - believing that they've been shown to be effective at stopping an actual crime - and possibly more willing to accept an even greater expansion of those powers in the future.
If, however, this was part of a sting operation, then it tells us little about whether those expanded powers are actually doing anything to reduce the threat of actual terroristic attacks. Sting operations, by their very nature, may show that someone has a pre-disposition to willingness to commit a crime, but they don't really tell us much about the likelihood of a crime being committed. In other words, we may know that there's one less person out there who would smuggle such a weapon in, but we still don't know if anyone here is actually looking for one.
Keep in mind, though, that all of this is speculation based on my interpretation of a comment in a very sketchy, early report. It may well be that a genuine tragedy was prevented, and if so, that's wonderful! My concern is just that I don't want to see something like this turned into propaganda used to cut back our rights even further than they already have been. I don't know right know if it will or not, but I think it's at least worth looking into.
At least the government is gettig a bit better about admitting when they've made a mistake. First the Pentagon's "bet on upcoming terrorist events" plan got scrapped within hours of it becoming public, and now, less than a day after it was announced that the Transportation Security Administration would be cutting hours for Air Marshals and dropping them from any flights that would require overnight lodging (which meant they wouldn't have been on the most vulnerable flights), they've reversed the decision and rescheduled the air marshals for all previously scheduled flights.
The Department of Homeland Security on Wednesday blamed the confusion on a mixup in communication and said the department had been working with air marshal officials on Monday to correct the situation.It's too bad they had to mess it up first in order to do it right, but at least they did manage to get it right eventually. It's something of an improvement."America should know that every air marshal that we have is being deployed, and additional resources are being directed to that very critical mission," Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said Wednesday in a speech. Part of the plan to add resources includes a recall of 100 air marshals now doing other jobs with TSA, a spokesman for the said.
The dropping of marshals from flights that many experts consider to be at the highest risk of attack came to light Tuesday when several air marshals contacted by MSNBC.com confirmed that they were alerted via a "text message" on their TSA-issued cell phones to check their schedules for changes.
The Australian government isn't happy with us right now. Apparently, when we announced that there was intelligence to indicate that al Qaeda might be planning another 9/11-style attack, we said that Australia might be one of the potential targets. Australia says the intelligence doesn't indicate that they might be a target at all.
Australian Attorney-General Daryl Williams said intelligence indicated the country could be used as a base for an attack on the United States or elsewhere, but said the new U.S. warning that it could be a target was ''not an accurate reflection of the intelligence.''Interestingly, the article says that "the retraction comes at a potentially embarrassing time, with Washington already under fire for the accuracy of its intelligence." But looking at the Australian's objection, it isn't that there was a problem with the intelligence itself, but with how we portrayed it when making the announcement.He was speaking on the sidelines of a 2003 Homeland Security Conference.
Williams said U.S. authorities had promised Australia a correction to the advisory that warned the airline industry that al Qaeda was planning new suicide hijackings and bombings.
There is a downside, though, to having to make a retraction like this - some people may end up feeling like this is another episode of "crying wolf" in order to distract us. I doubt it'll have that kind of an effect on me, largely because I'm already concerned that it's an episode of "crying wolf", though I'm do consider it serious enough that I'm at least glad I can't go flying off anywhere ths summer (though if I could, I don't know if I'd go ahead and go or not...)
Earlier today, I posted a message about the new warnings being issued on the possiblity of new jet hijackings from al Qaeda this summer. Tonight, this popped up on MSNBC. It appears that the TSA is pulling air marshalls from vulnerable flights in order to save money from hotel expenses.
WASHINGTON, July 29 - Despite renewed warnings about possible airline hijackings, the Transportation Security Administration has alerted federal air marshals that as of Friday they will no longer be covering cross-country or international flights, MSNBC.com has learned. The decision to drop coverage on flights that many experts consider to be at the highest risk of attack apparently stems from a policy decision to rework schedules so that air marshals don't have to incur the expense of staying overnight in hotels.Advanced training had also been cancelled recently.
It's amazing how security is important enough to cut back our civil rights, but not important enough to properly fund a cruicial program.
::sigh::
From today's Washington Post:
WASHINGTON, July 29 — U.S. officials said yesterday that they have learned of credible threats of possible new airline suicide hijackings by terrorists planned for the latter part of the summer.The information was developed in recent interviews with one or more high-level al Qaeda captives and corroborated separately by other means, including electronic intercepts, officials said. They described the possible scenarios as similar to the hijackings of four U.S. airliners on Sept. 11, 2001, that were crashed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in western Pennsylvania.
“The U.S. intelligence community has received information related to al Qaeda’s continued interest in using commercial aviation here in the United States and abroad to further their cause,” said Department of Homeland Security spokesman Gordon Johndroe. “The Department of Homeland Security issued an advisory regarding this information over the weekend to the appropriate airline and security personnel.”
Information about the possible attacks began emerging last week, government sources said. It could not be learned yesterday which al Qaeda captives had provided the information, but officials said they had taken steps to verify its credibility. “It didn’t just come from one place,” an intelligence official said.
“We are continuing to investigate the credibility of the information,” Johndroe said.
Sadly, with the way this administration has handled intelligence and warnings previously, the next question has to be "Is there really a reason for concern, or are they trying to distract us from the scandals that aren't going away?"
Salon has an interesting article up about the Bush administration's reluctance to allow any kind of an investigation into the 9/11 attacks, and how they distracted the media - and the world - from looking at it too closely when a slew of questions came up last summer.
Just over a year ago, the families' questions were at least being asked. During May 2002, controversy swirled when CBS News reported that five weeks before the Sept. 11 attacks, Bush had been briefed about an active plot by Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida operatives to seize civilian aircraft. The revelations stood in stark contrast to White House spin in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks that nobody in the administration or the intelligence community had "specific information" about a possible hijacking plot.At the time, I recall that even in the media, there were some who questioned the timing of all the warnings, coming as they did while people were getting curious about what had happened and what had really been known prior to the attack. When none of the warned-about attacks happened, there was a growing sense of skepticism about the warnings and just how "real" they were. More of them (in particular, the suggestion that terrorists were going to scuba-dive ashore to attack us that way) started showing up in the late-night monologues, and I noticed on the mailing lists I frequented and the blogs I checked out regularly, calls for investigations and additional information were more frequent and angry.Into that combustible mix came revelations that FBI special agents in Phoenix and Minnesota had warned their superiors about suspected al-Qaida operatives training at U.S. flight schools. For the White House, the "what did Bush know and when did he know it" narrative was its first real political crisis after Sept. 11, the first time the press along with Democrats were asking pointed questions -- and gaining traction by the day. Even the New York Post, usually a reliable White House ally, ran a headline that declared "Bush Knew"; the conservative Weekly Standard warned that "the administration is now in danger of looking as if it has engaged in a cover-up."
But the White House, aided by global circumstances and a distractible news media, conspired to change the subject.
First, a succession of senior administration officials made dire warnings about the certainty of suicide bombers striking inside America. Then, on June 6, 2002, the administration abruptly reversed itself and announced it was backing the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, as first proposed by Democrats. And the White House made the historic announcement the same day FBI agent Colleen Rowley testified before Congress about her famous Minneapolis memo, ensuring that the Department of Homeland Security was the next day's top headline.
Just when it seemed like maybe the issue was going to gain some traction, it becomes imperative that we challenge Iraq and begin the run up to that war - and the topic was changed. Of course, now that the war is generating questions all its own, I have to wonder what the next major distraction will be - what will turn people away from wondering where the weapons of mass destruction are so that they can focus on a new crisis?
Part of what's truly disgusting about all of this is that while he's ignored the pleas from victims' families to open an investigation into the events of and surrounding 9/11, Bush and his administration have used the 9/11 attack to justify eveything from cutting back on peoples' civil rights, to exanding the powers of the Justice department, to the war on Iraq itself. Dick Cheney even cited the need for the War on Terror™ as one of he reasons Congress should back off from doing an investigation into 9/11 when he spoke to Senator Tom Daschle in the wake of the attack, claiming it would "divert" needed resources away from their efforts to end terrorism. Yet, without an investigation into what allowed the 9/11 attacks to happen, there's no way to know if any of these measures will actually have any kind of a positive effect.
To date, one investigation has been completed, but the results have not been released to the public - much to the disappointment of families who lost loved ones in the disaster.
Despite budget restraints and complaints from Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., that the White House had "slow-walked and stonewalled" the joint inquiry, the panel's 900-page report was completed late last year. Today it remains stuck in national security limbo as the joint inquiry staff negotiates with the White House and its intelligence agencies over what portions can and cannot be released in the public version of the report. The release date has already been pushed back several times as the declassification process drags on into its seventh month. Even the Republican chairman of the joint inquiry, Rep. Porter Goss of Florida, a former CIA operations officer, has expressed deep frustration at the pace of the process."It appears the joint intelligence committee did too good of a job," quips [Kristin] Breitweiser [widow of Ronald Breitweiser who was killed when flight 171 crashed into the first WTC tower]. Indeed, last fall the New York Times reported that "the findings of a joint committee have been far more damaging than most officials at either agency expected when the panel's inquiry began [in early 2002]." The report is expected to detail disturbing lapses in counterterrorism at the CIA and FBI, where warnings about the Sept. 11 attacks went unheeded. They're revelations that are sure to be uncomfortable for the administration.
Honestly, I don't care if the revelations are uncomfortable for the administration. They probably should be - especially given how hard the administration is trying to keep all this quiet - and they're going to some extraordinary lengths to do just that.
Raising concerns about the joint inquiry review process was the revelation that the administration wanted some information that had already been made public during open hearings to be reclassified in the joint inquiry report. Also alarming was the news from this spring when former Rep. and current 9/11 commissioner Tim Roemer, an Indiana Democrat, tried to read transcripts from the joint inquiry's closed-door hearings. Even though he had actually served on the joint inquiry a year earlier, Department of Justice attorneys refused to let him read the transcripts, insisting that the White House needed five days to decide whether it wanted to exert executive privilege to keep the information under wraps. The White House eventually relented.One thing that I think needs to be done is for Democrats - not just those running for President, but all Democrats - to start asking more questions about 9/11, the Iraqi War and what, if any, true relation exists between them. And we also need to start pushing for more answers. Calls for investigations, demands that what information we now have that can be given to the public (i.e. information that won't legitimately jeopardize national security) be released, and questions about how the steps we're taking are supposed to be helpful if (1) we don't know yet what went wrong and (2) they're not properly funded - as is the case with many Homeland Security measures - should all become part of the standard talking points for every Democrat - especially those on the campaign trail."It was upsetting to find out the White House was trying to block the independent commission's access to the joint inquiry information, when we all know the mandate that created the independent commission states clearly that the commission is to use the joint inquiry as a starting-off point," notes Breitweiser, who also voted for Bush in 2000. "So why would they be blocking access to that?"
It's important that in asking for investigations and answers that no one make outright accusations of any malfeasance as that will only make the Republicans and their supporters more defensive. But these are things we, as citizens, have a right to know and those who wish to be our elected advocates need to make it clear that they're going to fight for us on those points. Coming from a stand point of wanting to ensure that we're actually doing what we need to in order to protect this country and our way of life gives it both a solid justification as well as avoiding going too negative on the current administration, something that, as Brad reminded me yesterday, often can often turn people away.
If I sound like I'm angry about the administrations near complete inattention into finding out what happened and why, along with their attempts to prevent anyone else from finding out either, it's because I am. I'm expected to trust and be loyal to my government, but they make it very hard to do so with their ducking, dodging and dissembling on every issue before them. Three thousand people died on 9/11, and thousands more have died - and are still dying - in the assaults on Afghanistan and Iraq. Wouldn't it make more sense to know if the deaths we're sending our soldiers, the soldiers of our allies, and the citizens of the countries we attack to will actually do anything to prevent further terrorist attacks?
ABCnews.com is reporting that in 1998, there was a plan to try and capture Osama bin Laden, but due to concerns about the possiblity of civilian casualties, it was never approved.
Jack Cloonan, a former FBI agent who is now an ABCNEWS consultant, said that federal agents seeking bin Laden had developed a plan to have a plane fly in and attack a compound in Kandahar, Afghanistan, where the terror leader was believed to have been holed up back in 1998 - three years before the devastating attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.Conservatives are likely to have a field day with this, pointing out that, because we were too concerned about people on the ground around bin Laden, we ended up allowing 3,000 of our own people to be killed. It should be remembered, though, that this was not the only opportunity we might have had to capture bin Laden, and following the start of the Bush administration, much of the focus on investigating terrorism was reduced and the many warnings of an impending attack were ignored.But when the plan went up the chain of command for approval, it was killed by then-Attorney General Janet Reno.
"They came to the decision that this plan was probably too dangerous, that the loss of life on the ground would have been significant," Cloonan said. There was concern that people around the bin Laden compound would be killed."
In other words, it took both the Clinton administration and the Bush administration's inattention to concerns of terrorism to allow the WTC/Pentagon attacks to happen. Neither one is solely to blame, neither is entirely innocent. We had opportunities during both administrations to take steps to lessen the threat of terrorism, and both administrations had warnings about terrorist attacks that were not well-acted upon.
Just two weeks after Cofer Black (the State Department head of counter-terrorism) made his now-infamous assertion that we've got al-Qaeda "on the run", and that the lack of any al-Qaeda attacks during the Iraq war was proof of how effective the war on terror has been, we're back at orange alert status, due to an increased risk of terror attacks. In addition, the FBI is warning that al-Qaeda is "regenerating" and has been training new operatives in the Republic of Georgia.
The ABCnews.com article also notes notes:
In Riyadh, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador to the United States, told reporters late Monday that Saudi intelligence had reported a "high level of chatter regionally and in other international spots" about possible attacks in Saudi Arabia or America.The Department of Homeland Security has also issued a bulletin, warning that people should be aware of the following activities:"My gut feeling tells me something big is going to happen here or in America," said Prince Bandar.
MSNBC news is also reporting that the officials are concerned that the attacks last week may have been a diversionary tactic to try and avert attention from a potential attack here in the US:
OFFICIALS SAID the FBI issued an alert last week to state and local law enforcement agencies across the country that Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network, which was blamed for two recent deadly suicide bomb attacks in Saudi Arabia and Morocco, could mount new attacks in the United States.I must admit, I'm glad that no one seems to be trying to hide the current risk in order to avoid embarassment over the confident "we're winning the war on terror" messages that the administration had been promoting recently. Still, I find it disheartening that such pronouncements were being made by one of the country's top counter-terrorism officials, when the threat from al-Qaeda has never truly lessened. That it took more attacks for the administration to figure out that there is still a significant reason for concern tells me that our intelligence on the matter isn't a whole lot better than it was pre-9/11 - and that's something that should be rather worrisome, I'd think.Senior officials told NBC News’ Andrea Mitchell that some intelligence analysts believed the attack May 12 in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, was intended to distract U.S. authorities from paying attention to imminent threats inside the United States. The Saudi bombings killed 25 people, including eight Americans, as well as none of the bombers.
The officials said al-Qaida operatives left Saudi Arabia before the Riyadh attacks and were at large, which they described as a typical al-Qaida method of operation. They said a particularly active cell had been uncovered in Kenya.
I mentioned that I thought the story about some of the guns found in an al-Qaeda safehouse being tracked back to the Saudi national guard would be down played, but I wasn't quite expecting to see it this soon.
Whenever I open my browser, I've got Google News set as my home page, so I can see if anything new is going on. I just opened my browser after being off line for a few hours, and the story is nowhere on their main page. Granted, stories do get rotated through there, and it may show up again later, but usually, really big stories stay on the front page for a day or two - if not in the very top section, then in one of the lower sections on that first page. It isn't even listed in the "In The News" section that gives 2 or 3 word "headers" with links to stories on those subjects.
Hopefully, this is just a momentary anomoly, but I don't have a lot of confidence in that. This is exactly the kind of story that the Bush administration would want to keep quiet, simply because it could be rather embarassing to him. I mean, we just fought a war and toppled a government that Bush claimed had WMD, which it might give to al-Qaeda, and had other ties to al-Qaeda as well. Of course, so far, nothing reliable has turned up to give credence to either of these claims (and yes, I am aware that there were papers "found" by a reporter, in a building the US had been guarding, indicating a link, but I don't consider that to be "reliable"), yet here we have one of our allies, a country that has produced many terrorists - including most of the terrorists who took part in the 9/11 bombings - that we find out has military officers selling weapons to al-Qaeda - and we're not doing much, if anything, about it.
I can't even begin to imagine what would have happened if, during the lead-up to the war, word had gotten out that officers from Saddam's Republican Guards had sold guns to al-Qaeda. At the very least, it would have been proclaimed as evidence that Iraq was cooperating al-Qaeda and used as further justification for attacking them. I have no doubt that the leaders of Saudi Arabia will claim that they "didn't know" what these officers were doing, yet there's also evidence that, for quite some time, weapon inventories had indicated that weapons were missing, and they hadn't taken steps to find out what was happening or where the weapons were going. Even if the government officials didn't know specifically where the weapons were going, they had to know it was a possiblity that terrorist groups would want to buy them - and probably were.
As I said in my earlier post, I'm not advocating attacking Saudi Arabia or overthrowing their government - that would be an extremely serious over-reaction. I do think, however, that we need to take a very close look at them, and why we consider them allies.
Guns found at an al-Qaeda safehouse have been traced to the Saudi national guard, which apparently has had previous problems with illegal gun sales.
Problems in the Saudi Arabian National Guard are not new, according to the officials, and past audits of its armories have revealed that weapons were missing. But there was no crackdown on the illicit trade largely because of bureaucratic inertia, the officials said.Whether these gun sales are motivated by money or ideology, we still have the armed forces of one of our putative allies providing weapons to a known terrorist organization. Given that the Bush administration seems to be rather focused on not upsetting the Saudis, it will be interesting to see what - if any - response there is to this news. My guess is that it will likely be downplayed, just as the fact that 15 of the 19 hijackers in the 9/11 attacks were Saudi has also been played down."This will focus their attention," a U.S. official said.
A small number of officers in the national guard have been involved in illicit gun sales for years, according to the officials, and have sold weapons, including automatic rifles, to anyone willing to pay prices well above their market value. The officials emphasized that the motivation of the officers selling the weapons was money, not ideology, and does not indicate any al Qaeda penetration of a force that is supposed to protect the government.
I'm not suggesting that we should go attack Saudi Arabia - I don't feel that would be warranted at this point. I would, however, like to see us take some kind of steps to pressure the Saudi government into making reforms that can help correct the problems that exist there which lead to so many Saudi citizens deciding to become terrorists, along with prodding the bureaucracy to work on preventing things such as the sale of guns by the national guard to al-Qaeda. I don't think that sanctions, which often end up hurting the civilians while having little effect on the government, are necessarily the way, either, but there should be some method of bringing international pressure to bear on the government in an effort to bring about change.
The recent bombings may have some effect in that direction. Currently, the Saudi government has - at least temproarily - pulled the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (aka the "religous police") off the streets, and are saying that they will be trying to find ways to allow women more freedom, "within the framework of Islamic teaching".
Joe Crankshaw has a very good editorial about Afghanistan, Iraq and al-Qaeda, and how the US has been handling those situations.
I am proud to be an American, but I am dismayed surveying a landscape filled with destruction, chaos and strife, when our leaders said they were bringing order, justice and democracy, as well as protecting us. All they seem to have done is attack nations, when our real enemy, al-Qaida and other terrorists, have no nation, no home, and very little for us to attack.
This has been a wild month so far for the War on Terrorism™. It started May 1st with the release of a State Department report saying that new attacks from al-Qaeda were likely, and "there is danger the network of Osama bin Laden and its Taliban backers will re-emerge in Afghanistan", followed 5 days later by the head of the State Department's counter-terrorism office bragging about how "effective" the war on terror had been, saying "This was the big game for them — you put up or shut up and they have failed. It proves that the global war on terrorism has been effective, focused and has got these guys on the run." (Hmmm... do the State Department and their counter-terrorism office talk to each other much?)
Since then there have been two attacks that have all the hallmarks of al-Qaeda operations - one in Saudi Arabia and one in Morocco - that appear to be clearly connected to al-Qaeda killing at least at least 50 between them. Yet in his weekly radio address today, President Bush was back to talking about the US' "success" in the War on Terror™.
"With the liberation of Iraq and Afghanistan, we have removed allies of al-Qaeda, cut off sources of terrorist funding, and made certain that no terrorist network will gain weapons of mass destruction from Saddam Hussein's regime," Bush said.[As an aside, this is the 2nd time Bush has mentioned that we've made sure that terrorists won't get weapons of mass destruction from Saddam. While that particular phrasing may be true - since Saddam is out of power, he can't give anyone anything - it is a perfect example of this administrations aversion to truth, since, if Iraq actually had the WMD Bush claimed it did, we have no clue where they now are, who has them, who is giving them to whom or anything else for that matter. So, sure, Saddam can't give them away, but that doesn't mean that if the Iraqi WMD actually exist, terrorists won't end up with them somehow.]"These two battles were important victories in the larger war on terror. Yet the terrorist attacks this week in Saudi Arabia, which killed innocent civilians from more than half a dozen countries, including our own, provide a stark reminder that the war on terror continues," he said.
Following the attacks in Saudi Arabia, The Star, a South African paper, published a story with the rather telling title 'US cleaning egg from its face after underrating al-Qaeda':
[...] On more or less the same day that Black was telling The Washington Post of his belief that al-Qaeda was on the run, a self-proclaimed spokesperson for the organisation set up by Osama bin Laden was warning the London-based Arabic weekly al-Majalla magazine that, far from being destroyed, it had actually undergone a thorough restructuring and was planning further spectacular attacks against US targets.To the best of our knowledge, part of what allowed 9/11 to happen was a tendency to underestimate what al-Qaeda or other terrorist organizations might be willing or capable of doing. Why else would so much of the intelligence and other warnings the CIA and FBI received have been ignored? Obviously, in the wake of the Iraqi war, we underestimated them again, with officials declaring them to be "on the run" or otherwise weakened and less effective than they had been. Even the Saudis were claiming they were non-existant in their country. Yet twice in the last week, they've shown us otherwise, and their spokesman has announced that they've restructured in a way that they believe will be harder for us to detect (which, granted, could well be propaganda to try and make us doubt the information we're getting now - though, given our seeming inability to know what it means, may not be such a bad thing). And still Bush claims that the War on Terror™ has been successful so far.Thabet bin Qais, who said he was al-Qaeda's new spokesperson, claimed that the intelligence on which Black and others were so confidently relying was old and no longer reliable.
"It will take them a long time to understand the new form of al-Qaeda."
With a now chilling prediction that referred to a possible suicide attack, he added: "A strike against America is definitely coming. Martyrdom operations in the jihad will go on."
Peter Bergen, a CNN al-Qaeda analyst and author of Holy War Inc: Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden, said yesterday: "I think this action (in Saudi Arabia) speaks for itself. Prince Nayif, the (Saudi) minister of the interior, just last week said al-Qaeda was weak or perhaps nonexistent in Saudi Arabia. Well, this is their answer.
So why don't I feel any safer?
From Paul Krugman's column today:
Paths of GloryGo read the rest.The central dogma of American politics right now is that George W. Bush, whatever his other failings, has been an effective leader in the fight against terrorism. But the more you know about the state of the world, the less you believe that dogma. The Iraq war, in particular, did nothing to make America safer -- in fact, it did the terrorists a favor.
How is the war on terror going? You know about the Riyadh bombings. But something else happened this week: The International Institute for Strategic Studies, a respected British think tank with no discernible anti-Bush animus, declared that Al Qaeda is "more insidious and just as dangerous" as it was before Sept. 11. So much for claims that we had terrorists on the run.
[...]
I've written before about the Bush administration's amazing refusal to pay for even minimal measures to protect the nation against future attacks — measures that would secure ports, chemical plants, nuclear facilities and so on. (But the Department of Homeland Security isn't completely ineffectual: this week it helped Texas Republicans track down their Democratic colleagues, who had staged a walkout.)
The neglect of homeland security is mirrored by the Bush administration's failure to follow through on overseas efforts once the TV-friendly part of the operation has come to an end. The overthrow of the Taliban was a real victory — arguably our only important victory against terrorism. But as soon as Kabul fell, the administration lost interest. Now most of Afghanistan is under the control of warlords, the Karzai government is barely hanging on, and the Taliban are making a comeback.
[...]
Still, we defeated Saddam. Doesn't that make us safer? Well, no.
Saddam wasn't a threat to America — he had no important links to terrorism, and the main U.S. team searching for weapons of mass destruction has packed up and gone home. Meanwhile, true to form, the Bush team lost focus as soon as the TV coverage slackened off. The first result was an orgy of looting — including looting of nuclear waste dumps that, incredibly, we failed to secure. Dirty bombs, anyone? Now, according to an article in The New Republic, armed Iraqi factions are preparing for civil war.
That leaves us facing exactly the dilemma war skeptics feared. If we leave Iraq quickly it may well turn into a bigger, more dangerous version of Afghanistan. But if we stay for an extended period we risk becoming, as one commentator put it, "an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land" — just the recruiting tool Al Qaeda needs. Who said that? President George H. W. Bush, explaining his decision not to go on to Baghdad back in 1991.
There have been reports in the news lately about the Congressional report on the 9/11 attacks, and the way that, like so much else, is largely being kept secret. As Newsweek reported, "only a bare-bones list of “findings” with virtually no details was made public, and now a committee reviewing it has refused to declasify any further information, and has even sought to "reclassify" some information that had already been made public.
This morning, Atrios posted a link to a site called Cooperative Research that features a well-written and well-documented examination of what we know about the timeline of 9/11 and the official response to it. Poking around a bit more, I also found an essay on significant warnings we were given by foreign government about the potential for terrorist attacks that summer.
The Congressional Joint Inquiry into 9-11 is now finished, but the findings that have been released fail to mention any warnings from foreign governments. The US mainstream media also has paid little attention to warnings from foreign governments.Interestingly, the essay notes that some of the warnings were ignored because of "warning fatigue" coming from the sheer number of warnings the intelligence community was receiving. Interesting, because the government has, at times since 9/11, flooded us with so many warnings of its own that there have been serious concerns that Americans will stop paying attention for that very reason. It seems to me that if the government's ability to possibly protect us from the 9/11 attacks was compromised by it's own "warning fatigue" it would then want to take steps to prevent "warning fatigue" among the general population, so that if there is another attack in the offing, we'd actually take precautions rather than just make more jokes about duct tape.Yet there were so many warnings - from both our friends and enemies alike - often specifically suggesting the targets or method of attack. In at least one case, the warnings actually mentioned hijackers by name. This type of communication between intelligence agencies normally occurs in secret, so one can only wonder what additional warnings or details were provided to us that have never been made public.
[...] One single warning should have been enough to take precautions, but with so many warnings coming in, how can inaction be explained as mere incompetence? Yes, it is often difficult to know which terrorist threats are real, and what information to trust. But if the US couldn't take seriously warnings from close allies like Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and so on, then what were they waiting for? What would they have taken seriously? And where is the outrage, the investigation? As can be seen with the recent Congressional inquiry, the typical US government response has been to ignore these foreign government warnings altogether, or to say they were lies.
There are currently reports of two different discoveries of mysterious powders - one in Florida and another in Tacoma.
According to CNN:
A mail distribution center in Tacoma, Washington, was evacuated early Tuesday after a powdery brown substance initially tested positive for the toxins that cause botulism and plague, federal officials said.As for the situation in Florida, MSNBC is reporting:The officials emphasized that initial field tests often prove to be inaccurate.
On the scene, Jolene Davis of the Tacoma Fire Department said she was not aware of any reports that the sustance had tested positive for botulism or plague toxins. She also said four out of five subsequent tests of the substance had proved to be negative, with one test still pending.
IN FLORIDA, emergency crews were investigating a white powder found in the air cargo building at Southwest Florida International Airport near Fort Myers. Six people were taken to a hospital for possible decontamination. The air cargo building is separate from the main terminal and the investigation did not affect passenger travel.More information as it becomes available.
Earlier this month, I had a post about the way Homeland Security funding was being distributed, and the impact the lack of federal funds was having on a number of states. The money is being distributed in two ways: first, states are given equal portions from one part of the funding, then the rest is distributed based on the state's population. If this sounds familiar, its because its the same basic basic concept as the methods used to determing how many Congressional seats are alotted to each state (each state gets 2 Senate seats and House seats are based on population), which also determines how many electoral votes a state has.
I had also commented on Paul Krugman's column which explained this distribution pattern, and noted that, just as the formula gives disproportionate power to smaller states in elections, it also gives smaller states more money per capita for Homeland Security than larger ones, even though the larger states also contain areas that are more likely to be targets for terrorist attacks. Krugman also pointed out that these smaller states are very valuable to George Bush right now because those are states which tend to be more likely to vote Republican than many of the larger, and largely Democratic, states. The issue, however, goes beyond a matter of whether this distribution scheme is "fair" or not, and is having serious practical implications for states like California, which is having to cut back on education spending in order to provide it's citizens with reasonable protection from potential threats.
Today, Eric Alterman writes, in part, about the impact the lack of federal Homeland Security funding is having in New York, and the picture he paints is grim, indeed.
The Economist compares New York City to Atlas, bearing the weight of the world on its shoulders. Already reeling from a massive deficit, declining income and the economic aftershocks of 9/11, the city must pay an estimated $1 billion a year for emergency and counterterrorism costs. Bush could care less. After attempting to stiff New York entirely, Congress has finally agreed to kick in about $200 million, far more than Bush proposed. My shaken city can ill afford to make up the difference. It already has 4,000 fewer cops than it did two years ago but must assign more than a thousand of those remaining to the terrorist beat. It may shutter forty fire companies. Massive layoffs, tax hikes and cutbacks in every kind of social service are in the offing. And Gotham is hardly alone. Enhanced security measures cost the nation's cities an estimated $2.6 billion in the fifteen months after 9/11.
There's a certain level of perverseness in the way the Bush administration raises the flag of 9/11 every time it wants to restrict our civil rights or violate our privacy just a bit more (and how they waved that flag for all it was worth to convince people that we should go bomb Iraq), yet they don't want to spend any real money to help make us any safer than we were before the attacks happened. As with everything else, 9/11 only matters when it serves their purposes. If remembering all the lives lost on that day and trying to prevent a similar tragedy in the future is going to require them to do something they don't want (say, for example, not cutting taxes so there might be more money to fund security programs), then it seems to become irrelevent.
Personally, I'd rather see us not cut taxes - and maybe even raise them a bit (not a lot, but some) to provide more funds for Homeland Security measures if those measures would help us be able to protect ourselves without needing to cut into our civil rights or privacy. Since the neocons seem to want more police power and fewer individual rights, however, I doubt that even if they had unlimited funds, they'd be willing to give back any of the power and rights they've already taken.
Alterman also point out, though, that the problems with the way the Bush administration is handling Homeland Security go beyond just an uneven distribution of funds. He points out that on several occasions, Bush has blocked even cost-effective means of increasing security.
Several investigations by the media have found serious problems with security at power plants, yet there has been little movement to provide legal mandates or funding for power plant operators to increase security. Bush's own energy secretary had provided a report indicating how much it would cost just to begin increasing power plan security, but Bush would only agree to propose 7% of that amount.
Some other examples:
Bush refused to compensate healthcare workers injured or killed by the smallpox inoculation program. His budget is squeezing the Coast Guard, in charge of port security. He is starving "first responders"--the very heroes of 9/11 to whom he dishonestly promised so much. And the Customs Service got not a single penny in new funding in the Administration's budget. With everyone losing sleep over "loose nukes" falling into terrorist hands, Bush even tried to cut overseas nuclear security funding by 5 percent.
These are not minor issues. The atmosphere in Washington is such that Ted Stevens, R-AK, felt comfortable saying that he didn't think first responders deserve overtime pay if they're responding to a national emergency:
But also there were powerful people such as Senate Appropriations Committee chairman Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) suggesting that rather than lobbying for more money, the emergency workers should be volunteering their overtime out of a concern for national security.
"Those people overseas in the desert," Stevens said, "they're not getting paid overtime ... I don't know why the people working for the cities and counties ought to be paid overtime when they are responding to matters of national security."
Of course, Stevens seems to be overlooking the fact that combat troops do get "combat pay", which does help provide some (though not nearly enough, in my opinion) extra compensation during times when their lives are on the line.
In the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington DC, Bush's response was great. He set a great tone of unity and cooperation, and helped bring many parts of this nation together. For those first few weeks, he actually showed himself to be the "uniter" he has claimed he is. Since then, however, his track record has been abyssmal. September 11 now is only remembered when it's politically expedient, and Homeland Security only matters when it can be used to increase governmental power. When it comes to matters of governmental responsiblity or - Gods forbid - a need for the government to spend money, forget it. It no longer matters.
And, of course, it will be we who suffer for it in the long run.
History News Network has a post about a story that I find nearly unbelievable.
According to phillyburbs.com (a publication of the Philidelphia Inquirer), a woman recently discovered that someone had stolen her credit card and used it to purchase tickets on a flight to Philidelphia for the weekend that President Bush and Homeland Security director Thomas Ridge were to have a meeting there. She also noted that the name of the person who'd charged the tickets to her card sounded Middle Eastern. Yes, being concerned about the situation because the man's name sounds Middle Eastern smacks of racial profiling, but even I have to admit that were I in the same situation, I'd probably be a bit more concerned if it was a Middle Eastern-sounding name than one that wasn't, though I'd be worried either way. It's not the best way to think, but it's also at least somewhat understandable.
At any rate, the woman decided to try and alert someone to what could be a potentially dangerous situation. She tried to call the airline, the FBI office in Philidelphia, the Secret Service, the Philidelphia police terrorist tip line, the airport police, and the police for the local area where the airport is located. Then she e-mailed the White House, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the General Services Administration, all the Philadelphia TV stations. In each case, except for two, she either was unable to reach anyone, was told it wasn't the kind of crime which that particular office handles or given other excuses as to why whomever she was speaking to couldn't help her any. The two responses she did get were from the Pennsylvania Homeland Security office, saying they couldn't do anything until Monday morning - an hour after the man's return flight was leaving Philidelphia, and from someone at the GSA who offered sympathy but couldn't help her since it wasn't a GSA problem.
"All my husband and I wanted was for this guy to be pulled from the flight and questioned," she said.
Given some of the examples we've heard about of people most wouldn't consider being a threat being checked at airports, delayed or prevented from getting on flights and other problems related to security issues, it doesn't sound like it shouldn't have been a difficult request to fulfill.
Over at Eschaton, there's an interesting comment thread about why 9/11 attracts so many conspiracy theories. One comment in particular, however, jumped out at me. In it, Robbo points out how much the right has gained from 9/11, regardless of whether there was a conspiracy involved or not:
I don't believe in any 9/11 conspiracy theory, but every bit of evidence supports the notion that the radical right jumped on 9/11 to jump-start the drive to get America into precisely the jam we're in this very moment.
Deep breath. The entire nation, along with most of the disapproving world, is preoccupied with a dumbass war against a former client state of the U.S. -- a war that's looking dumber and more dangerous every day; the public is "rallying around the flag" right on cue, despite the well-publicized litany of lies repeatedly told by Administration officials to sell us this war; we have turned our back on the international court of law and several important international treaties; our steel tariff was just declared illegal by the WTO, meaning that another international institution may have to be relegated to the junk-heap already occupied by NATO and the UN; the nation is not having open debates on any of a number of other serious issues facing the country; Dick Cheney and a crew of reactionaries are holed up in a fortified bunker somewhere undoing the nation's regulatory framework (e.g., exempting military bases from the Endangered Species Act); the media have few correspondents left to follow up on a variety of massive corporate scandals that left Wall Street reeling (how's your 401K?); the military budget is pushing $400 billion/year even before massive war/reconstruction costs, which we will bear the brunt of this time because of widespread international horror at our actions; Bushco's major campaign contributors are receiving fat no-bid contracts to re-build the country our military is systematically dismantling; John Ashcroft is busy writing PATRIOT Act III in between busting head shops and outlawing abortions; the Republicans shoved through massive cut taxes (primarily for the wealthy) at a time when federal and state budgets are hemorrhaging, thereby ensuring that government services and regulatory structures will become ever weaker and less able to constrain amoral corporations; and the U.S. Freaking Congress has responded by issuing a resolution directly the President to designate a day "recognizing the public need for fasting and prayer in order to secure the blessings and protection of Providence for the people of the United States and our Armed Forces."
These are irrefutable facts. Who needs conspiracy theories? Wake up.
Bleak as it may be, sometimes its good to look at the whole ball of wax in one shot like that - an important reminder of what we're up against.
It's been no secret that President Bush doesn't want there to be much of an investigation into what went wrong and allowed the September 11th attacks to happen. While there is endless speculation of why this may be - theories have ranged from feeling it would be a waste of time, since something like this couldn't really have been prevented, to conspiracy theories claiming that Bush doesn't want an investigation because we then might find out he was somehow involved in the attacks to help arrange his own political gain. We may never know where between those extremes the truth falls, but there's no denying that Bush simply doesn't want anyone to go poking around into the whole mess.
Previous tactics have included delaying announcing the formation of an independent "blue-ribbon" commission, warning Congress not to look into the matter too deeply and suggesting that we simply move forward, to the naming of Henry Kissinger as the head of the commission - a move Bush and his administration had to have known would be beyond controversial and tie things up with debates and protests until a new head was named. Since that time, little has been heard about the commission at all.
When Bush finally agreed to set up an independent commission, they were given until May of 2004 to do all of their investigative work and a $3 million dollar budget. Recently they requested an additional $11 million in order to do their work properly. The White House has "brushed off" the request, and did not include it in their most recent supplemental spending bill - the that included the $75 billion for the cost of the war.
If the commission does not get the $11 million that they have requested, they will not be able to continue functioning past August of this year, meaning that they won't be able to complete their job or do the kind of investigation this country needs.
As a point of comparison, a commission has been formed to investigate the recent explosion of the space shuttle Columbia, and they have been given $50 million in order to do their work - yet the 9/11 commission cannot get $11 million to do theirs.
Commission member Tim Roemer, a former Democratic congressman, said the probe is off to a disturbingly slow start and that failure to quickly provide the funding increase wouldn't help. "The White House should be strongly supporting that effort, given President Bush's compelling statement when he signed this bill into law," said Roemer, who last year served on the House-Senate joint inquiry on 9/11 that led to the creation of the commission. Roemer has gone so far as to draw comparisons with the $50 million provided to investigate the recent Columbia tragedy in which seven people died. "If we're looking at well over $11 million for that, we certainly should be looking for at least the same vicinity of money for how 3,000 people died and how to strengthen our homeland security," he said.
Of course, with all the focus that the war has been getting, the 9/11 commission and their woes has taken a way-back seat in the news. Bush may be hoping that he can quietly kill the commission by refusing to fund it, so that the investigation will never take place. He cannot be allowed to get away with this.
America needs to know what happened - what we did wrong, and what we did right. We need to know that our country is doing everything it can to prevent another attack from happening. In the name of preventing another attack, the government has been curtailing our rights, expanding their own powers, creating new departments, colour coding how worried we should be, planning to invade our privacy in new and different ways - including the use of data mining and background checks before allowing people to fly, demonizing dissenters and started a war with a country that they can't prove had anything to do with 9/11. What they won't do is allow a truly independent commission to have the time, money, manpower and access necessary to fully investigate what actually happened so that we can learn from the mistakes we made and make better use of the things we did right.
If we can't do that, then all of our other efforts will be in vain.
Time Magazine link via Hesiod at Counterspin Central
Just found this in the comments section at Eschaton - rather interesting, given how much time and energy Bush has put into convincing people that there is a link between Iraq and al-Qaeda. The quote is from the official transcript of a January 31st joint press conference with President Bush and Prime Minister Blair, located at the official White Hourse site:
Q One question for you both. Do you believe that there is a link between Saddam Hussein, a direct link, and the men who attacked on September the 11th?
THE PRESIDENT: I can't make that claim.
THE PRIME MINISTER: That answers your question. The one thing I would say, however, is I've absolutely no doubt at all that unless we deal with both of these threats, they will come together in a deadly form. Because, you know, what do we know after September the 11th? We know that these terrorists networks would use any means they can to cause maximum death and destruction. And we know also that they will do whatever they can to acquire the most deadly weaponry they can. And that's why it's important to deal with these issues together.
Be sure to re-read that. One of the main justifications for this war has been the belief among many Americans that Saddam Hussein IS connected to al-Qaeda and the 9/11 attacks. President Bush has been going out of his way to create the impression of this link, and polls show that 48% of the American people believe that there is a connection, even though there has been no evidence presented to back up that belief. Yet here we have the President, upon being asked directly if he believes (not if he has evidence of or can prove - just if he believes) that a link exists, and his answer is that he "can't make that claim". This isn't something where his words are being twisted, or a case of bad reporting by the so-called liberal media - this is from an official White House transcript from the White House website.
Some good tips, via Lesliepear:
One of the things we have learned over the past 18 months is that we are amazingly resilient. The vast majority of us have the ability to cope during the most challenging of times. Taking action where we can, mobilizing our resources and recognizing what we can control and what we cannot control can make a big difference in how we feel. Here are some additional tips and group meetings which you may find helpful.
Living with Uncertainty - Personal Strategies
- Remain engaged in the world by staying connected with people. Don't withdraw. Talk to family, friends or colleagues about your concerns.
- Keep up with the news, but don't watch it around the clock.
- Take necessary precautions but don't overdo it. Make an emergency communication plan with family and friends. Reach out to neighbors and get to know each other.
- Maintain your regular routine and make time to do things you enjoy.
- Get involved in local activities or volunteer your time for a worthy cause. Know there's strength in numbers and building a sense of community is very helpful.
- Take care of your health. Make time to exercise and participate in other pleasurable activities which distract you and lower your stress level. Be sure to get adequate rest.
- Don't numb your feelings with drugs and alcohol.
- Draw on your religious or spiritual traditions for strength.
- Remember you don't have to believe everything you think. Keep a perspective.
- Remind yourself that the perceptions are different but the stress effects from perceptions are real.
- Be optimistic about the challenges ahead. Remember we've come through challenging times in the past.
Al-Qaida operatives are planning to strike at US and allied forces taking part in a war in Iraq, according to information acquired by American intelligence agencies, counterterrorism officials said Saturday. [Chicago Sun-Times]
I have a sneeking suspicion that this information is going to quickly be cited as proof that Saddam Hussein is in cahoots with al-Qaeda - why else would they have terrorist cells in Iraq, right? Before we go down that road, though, we need to remember that there are also thought to be any number of cells in the United States. Somehow I doubt that would be considered evidence that President Bush was involved with al-Qaeda. Just wanted to throw that out there....
Something I've been thinking about a bit.
Since September 11, there has been a significant focus on airport and airplane safety. The Transportation Security Administration has been formed to help screen passengers, and we're now going to be testing a system of checking bank records and credit reports (among other things, potentially) to ensure that everyone getting on an airplane is "safe" for flying.
Concern about air safety is certainly valid, and we do need to try and prevent terrorists from being able to take over our planes and crash them into buildings, or whatever else the may have in mind.
What bothers me, though, is that when you look at air travel in general, there is still a greater risk that a plane will crash from mechanical malfunctions or human error as opposed to being taken out by a terrorist act. Yet despite all of the airplane crashes we've had over the years, we've never had the kind of focus on making aircraft themselves, and the personnel and crew who maintain and fly the planes, safer, that we now have about the possiblity of terrorism. There's no denying that what happened was one of the most horrific acts ever commited - but in terms of overall safety issues, there are greater dangers than terrorists that aren't being given anywhere near the same kind of consideration.
By the same token, following the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, even though we knew it had been commited by white supremacists, using a rented Ryder truck and a bomb made from fuel and fertilizer. Did we, as a country, establish any kind of systems to help identify potential white supremacist terrorists? Did we take any steps to make sure that fertilizer and fuel wouldn't fall into the wrong hands? A rented vehicle was also used in the first World Trade Center bombing, but we don't seem to have put any procedures in place to help make screen who we allow to rent trucks.
It just seems curious to me that so much effort is being made to prevent terrorism aboard airplanes, but we have never done so much to prevent accidents due to other causes, or terrorism that takes different forms. It suggests that there may also be another agenda at work, though I'm not sure what - and I hate feeling like I'm getting more cynical and suspicious all the time.
Fox News Carries Bin Laden Speech Uninterrupted
Fox News Channel chose not to heed a request by the Bush administration to show restraint in broadcasting taped messages purported to have originated from Osama bin Laden and instead carried a new message ostensibly from bin Laden in its entirety as it was being carried by the Al-Jazeera Arabic news network. The administration had earlier warned that such messages could contain coded instructions to terrorists. CNN and MSNBC carried only highlights of the bin Laden statement.
I can certainly understand that a news network would want to bring the full news story to the public - and there's been a great deal of criticism lately that news outlets have not necessarily been providing complete coverage of important information. At the same time, however, the possibility that these tapes, ostenibly from Osama bin Laden may include coded instructions is something that needs to be taken very seriously - especially when one is released at a time when we're being told that we have to be on heightened alert and that the government is concered about what they consider to be credible threats.
Under these circumstances, it's my opinion that broadcasting the tape in its entirety is irresponsible. There are many factors that need to be considered when deciding what and how to report on something, and the risk to the public safety should be one of them. In most cases, reporting on a story or about an incident doesn't contain any kind of a threat to the public safety, and, indeed, not doing so may be the greater threat. But tapes that are allegedly being produced by a man who has made it clear that he wishes to destroy our country, and is the head of a global network that has to find very discreet ways of communicating, are really a different matter.
Regardless, I do have to say that I am glad that the government can only request that they not broadcast the tapes in full, rather than being able to order them not to, or punish them if they do. I may want the editors and directors of our news media to use better judgement, but under no circumstances do I think the government should be able to dictate what can or cannot be shown. In a way, I suppose, Fox's choice is a reaffirmation of the fact that - even though it may not always seem like it, we do still have a mostly-free press, and while they're not perfect, they're better than the alternative.
"The war on terror involves Saddam Hussein because of the nature of Saddam Hussein, the history of Saddam Hussein and his willingness to terrorize himself." -- George W. Bush - Grand Rapids, Mich., Jan. 29.
Maybe if Saddam terrorizes himself enough, he'll get scared and surrender.....
White House Yields on a 9/11 Inquiry Backed by Congress
By DAVID FIRESTONE
WASHINGTON, Friday, Nov. 15 - Yielding to intense pressure from families of Sept. 11 victims, the White House agreed last night to a Congressional compromise that would create an independent commission to investigate the terrorist attacks. The House immediately approved a bill to establish the commission on a 366-to-3 vote before adjourning for the year early this morning. The Senate was expected to pass it later today.
[...] Members of the panel, which will be known as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, are intended to be nationally recognized American citizens, none currently holding office, with broad experience in national security affairs and law enforcement. Former cabinet members and elected officials have been mentioned for the positions. The commission will issue a report to the president and to Congress 18 months after it begins, which could provide an embarrassing political issue in the middle of the 2004 election campaign.
[...] The agreement calls for two commission members each to be appointed by the Senate Republican leader, the Senate Democratic leader, the House Republican leader and the House Democratic leader. (Mr. McCain's choice will be one of the Senate Republican leader's two appointments.) The president will choose the chairman, and Congressional Democrats the vice chairman. Subpoenas can be issued by either the chairman and vice chairman together, or by any six members.
It's sad that it's taken over a year for Congress and the White House to finally reach an agreement on how to handle the necessary investigation into the 9/11 attacks. Of course, given the White House's initial stand against any kind of an investigation, this certainly is progress.
It does sound like they've taken a number of steps to help make sure that the commission is reasonably fair, though I am a bit concerned about what kind of a chairman Bush will appoint. The structure of the plan, however, does not put all of the power into the chairman's hands alone. Each party will have 5 members on the commission, and any 6 members can opt to issue a subpoena if they feel it is necessary.
It will be good if this commission can help answer questions as to what the US could have done mre effectively to help prevent this disaster, and even better if we can learn enough to prevent this kind of a tragedy from occuring again - especially if we can figure out how to do it without having to give up our freedoms in the name of security.
I do very much believe that, had the intelligence community been more attentive to the information it had access to, or had been better able to coordinate across agency lines, that there would have been a very good chance that the attacks could have been prevented. Rather than trying to coordinate and analyze databases full of consumer and commercial information (under the "Total Information Awareness" Program), perhaps the Pentagon, FBI, CIA, and NSA, along with state and local law enforcement agencies should work to coordinate their databases of tips, interviews, and other information they've received through various investigations. If all of that information could be cross-referenced and analyzed on a regular basis, I think it would be an incredibly effective tool for helping to stop terroristic activity (and might even help capture some "regular" criminals in the process), without violating the average citizen's privacy or restricting our civil liberties any further.
Suspect Tells Police That Target of Bali Bombing Was Americans, Not Australians
By JANE PERLEZ
KUTA, Indonesia, Nov. 8 — A suspect in the terrorist attack on a Bali disco told his interrogators that the group that carried out the blast intended to attack Americans and regretted that instead they killed many more Australians, the head of the investigation said today. [...]
[...] According to the account of Gen. I Made Mangku Pastika, the chief Indonesian investigator, Mr. Amrozi told his interrogators: "They wanted to kill as many Americans as possible. They hate Americans. They tried to find where the Americans are gathering."
They believed that Bali was a haunt of Americans, and afterward were "not happy because Australians were killed in big numbers," General Pastika said. The attackers sought revenge for "what Americans have done to Muslims," General Pastika said.
How bad does your intelligence have to be in order to think that a tourist hotspot for Australians is actually a tourist hotspot for Americans?
Somehow, I find it a bit difficult to believe that this was an honest mistake. Anyone who would go to the trouble of bowing up a night club in Bali and setting a second bomb to try to kill those who escaped from the first bomb as they ran from the club and to try to kill the rescue workers who reported to the first blast, would also be capable of determining who was likely to be at the target location and if they were the people they really wanted to kill or not. The question, therefore, becomes, why would someone bomb and kill Austrailians and then try to claim they intended to kil Americans? One reason may be that they want to create tension between America and our allies, by giving them reasons to resent us and our treatment of Muslims.
Even while working towards the now-passed UN resolution, the US has made it clear that if we think it's necessary (and it seems unlikely that we won't), we will invade Iraq, regardless of what the UN decides. I suspect that most of the Middle Eastern and Muslim eaders have realized it is inevitable that the US will invade, and that trying to stop us is a wasted effort. International support for our efforts, how ever, have remained shaky, and that makes it an area that those opposed to our goals can attack. The fewer allies we have who will join us in the war, the weaker they think our resove will be. And I can't say I blame them - once the reality that our kids - our young men and women - are dying in a war that makes no sense, its very likely that public support for the war itself will collapse, and the Bush administration will have to decide how much further to push, and balance what future their personal careers may have against the outrage of the public and against whatever their true goals for the attacks are.
U.S. Wants Prints Of Muslim Visitors
Arab Rights Groups Denounce Plan
By Mary Beth Sheridan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 7, 2002; Page A03
The Justice Department announced yesterday that it will require thousands of students, workers and other men from five Muslim countries who are temporarily residing in the United States to be fingerprinted and photographed, the latest step in its program to register visitors from countries linked to terrorism.
Authorities launched the registration program less than two months ago at airports, where they began gathering extensive information from arriving citizens of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan and Syria -- countries allegedly involved in terrorism -- and other people suspected of links to terror.
This program is very narrowly targeted - only males who are visiting the US and who are from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan and Syria, will be affected. Aside from the obvious civil rights concerns, however, I'm not really sure how well this plan will work to cut down the risk of terrorism. For one thing, most of the terrorists who have either struck in the US or tried to were from Saudi Arabia or Egypt, not any of the countries that are being targeted.
I have to wonder, then, what the point of the program is. Why are men from these five countries being singled out, and why aren't we looking at men from countries where identified as producing the most terrorists, and why aren't we looking at women at all? Granted, female terrorists aren't exactly common, but it wasn't that long ago that the first Palestinian female suicide bomber struck, and other women have since followed in her footsteps. What makes us think that there won't be a female terrorist who might strike here. What better way would there be for someone to sneak a terrorist into the US than to find a Saudi Arabian woman who would be willing to do the job?
I'm not a supporter of violating the civil rights of individuals - even those who are only visiting - especially if it's not likely to produce the desired results. In this particular case, if we're going to start fingerprinting those we think belong to a demographic that is likely to commit terrorists acts, then lets do exactly that - include Saudi Arabians and Egyptians, and include women. Otherwise, we're simply once again doing something that is supposed to look effective, but which actually won't do any real good.
Gunmen hold Moscow theater crowd
Audience held hostage after mid-performance raid
BREAKING NEWS
Moscow, Oct. 23 — Up to 30 armed men seized a Moscow theater in the middle of a performance on Wednesday, firing shots into the air and taking the audience hostage, the Federal Security Service said.
From the scant information that has been received so far, the kidnappers seem to be speaking in a Chechnian language, and have allowed children and Muslims leave. Other captives have been allowed to use their phones.
This is a story I'd like very much to learn more about, but CNN, MSNBC and FOX NEWS are, of course, still covering the sniper story. This actually manages to create an intersection of 2 of my recent complaints - that American's are far too self-centered and care little about what happens outside our borders, and the obsessive coverage of the sniper story.
Why is something like this given such a low priority just beause it happens away from our shores? 1,000 people under threat and being help hostage should, one would think, be a major story, regardless of where the incident is taking place.
According to Canadian Customs, you are looking at what is apparently one scary guy. He was on a tour today, as part of a vacation with his dad, and when the tour bus pulled into the customs station, the Canadians made him get off the bus and spent about 5 to 10 minutes asking him various questions such as how much money he had with him, what his camera was for, and a number of other things.
Now, I may not be a customs agent, (and I'm probably a bit biased since I'm married to the guy) but generally if I see a tourist on a tour bus as part of the tourism-related tour, well, I figure they have a camera with them to take pictures, but maybe all the training that agents receives tells them to be suspicious of long-haired guys with a camera on a bus.
Be sure to take a few moments to read the article "Failsafe" by Elaine Scarry. It's a very well written and well-thought-out evaluation of our National defense system in light of what did and didn't work on 9/11.
The article focuses particularly on how so much of our national defense system is based on the idea that decisions will have to be made and actions taken in a very short period of time - "a matter of minutes" as the saying goes. Yet even with as much warning as was available about the potential for hijacked planes and the knowledge that if a plane was hijacked that day there was a very good possiblity that it would be crashed into a building, none of our high-tech, super-fast planes were of any use. Our military was unable to defend us that day, in spite of decades planning for the President to be able to make quick decisions and have them carried out immediately.
What did work was a group of ordinary citizens who made use of whatever resources they had available, including their own personal courage, and were able to prevent yet another tragedy that day.
Scarry provides an interesting breakdown of how much notice the Pentagon had in regards to the plane that plowed into it and what actions (or lack thereof) were taken. She then compares that to a breakdown of how the passengers of Flight 93 made use of their time and the actions they took.
She also takes the time to comment on the excuses that some have given as to why the government had a difficult time getting anything done that day - and why the situation would be largely the same if we were looking at missles instead of airplanes.
So take some time to read it - agree with it or not, I'm sure it'll get your mental wheels working.
Underreported Stories You Need To Know
by Margie Burns
[...]
* Another reason is that Osama bin Laden is dead. You don't bounce back from renal shutdown, and anyway if he were alive, we'd be hearing from him. This tidbit has been outed in Pakistan, which supported bin Laden and the Taliban. Here, it was fed to the supermarket tabloids.
I have NO way of knowing if Osama bin Laden is dead or not. I honestly don't know if anyone in the West does. I do find it interesting, though, that no one in the government seems to be very eager to find out the answer to that question.
But then again, why would they? Osama bin Laden and the Al Queda network are the ones who are supposed to be our targets, are they not? If Osama were dead, we'd probably lose a fair amount of support for our continuing war on terrorism, as one of the main objectives - finding Osama dead or alive - would have been met.
Instead, whether Osama himself lives or not, keeping the specter of his exisence alive and out front is enough to insure that support continues for George Bush's little party. Few things motivate people to fall in line like fear - justified or not.
Forbidden thoughts about 9/11. From gloating about getting off work to enjoying the "country road" ambience of lower Manhattan to hating on-the-make firemen: A spectrum of improper responses to the terror attacks. [Salon Headlines]
In all the hubbub surrounding the 9/11 anniversary, it's sometimes hard to deal with not having all the required patriotic thoughts that we're expected to have. Being human, we sometimes have thoughts that seem out of place, inappropriate or just downright wrong. But being members of a society that, in spite of all its protestations of freedom, expect conformity, we don't always know what we're supposed to DO with those thoughts.
For me, one of the most forbidden thoughts I've had has been, isn't in convenient how all this worked out - George manages to get an election that he arguably should have lost, and then gets a tragedy that allows him to start changing all our rules to mesh in with his "jokingly"-stated belief that things would just be a lot easier if this were a dictatorship and he were the dictator.
Now, I'm not accusing anyone of anything. I don't even necssarily think (or, at least I don't necessarily WANT to think) that the government had any hand in planning this or foreknowledge of it - but at the same time the coincidence factor is pretty high, you know?
As for the near-mandetory patriotism that's grown out of the tragedy, I've found myself being quite cynical. Waving a flag while we watch our leaders chip away at our rights and freedoms does nothing to support this country... and all those flags seem to be keeping some people from seeing what's going on. With it being so verbotten to question what our government wants to do (patriots always support the government, after all), its much harder to find ways of communicating appropriate concern for the treatment of potential terror suspects, plans such as the TIPS program, the holding of suspects without charges and with no judicial review of their cases and the other ways the government has stepped out of bounds.
At least once a day I see that "public service announcement" about how the terrorists thought they would change America forever - cut to a picture of a neighborhood with more flags than houses with a voice over telling us how they did. But what have those flags really done for us? Are we a more united country than we were before? Well, we have waitresses accusing obviously Muslim men of being potential terrorists because she thought they were "joking" around about 9/11 (heaven forbid anyone do that!) and might have made a couple statements that could be interepreted as possibly being terroristic in nature - claims they flatly deny. We have more hostility towards Muslims, Arabs, and those who look as if they could be Muslim or Arabic. We have extreme anger because a man wants to return the Pledge of Allegiance to the way it was before Congress changed it in the 50's. How dare someone think that it might be appropriate to rectify a violation of the separation of church and state? We have people watching and listening to their neighbors with more suspicion than they used to, especially if that neighbor is a bit "odd" or "different" somehow. The gaps between hawks and doves, liberals and conservatives, Christian and non, Republican and Democrat, and white and minorities seem to be growing daily. Rhetoric is more contentious, and there's a sense of "either you're with us or your're against us". So no, I don't think our sense of "patriotism" has helped unite us more than we were before 9/11.
Has it helped with supporting the economy? The gulf between rich and poor keeps widening, and there's no sign to the end of the current recession. Corporations are falling left and right to various accounting schemes and other forms of dishonesty. Investors are worried, weakening the stock market, and consumers seem to be more interested in getting the most for their dollar than in buying American.
In all honesty, I've seen very little benefit from the new patriotism. Sure, TV networks (including my beloved MSNBC) have begun their own flag waving to gain bigger audiences, and many products are being pitched with patriotic themes, but I can't say I feel any safer, any freer, any better off or any more secure than I did before 9/11, in spite of the near-constant reminders that I live in the greatest country in the world.
But I'm not supposed to say any of this, am I?
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