Bush Dropped the Ball On Counterterrorism

[HemlockGrey]

http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/042503G.shtml

[Iceberg]

What a surprise.

[Gandalf]

Bush apparently is an idiot? Whod've thunk it?

[Montcalm]

We see that Shrubby will be responsible for starting WWIII.

[aerius]

I had it figured out about a week after the towers fell down in 2001. The politicians are more concerned with creating an illusion of safety than actually making things secure, while at the same time cutting into personal freedoms. People are stupid, they see the extra checks and weapons restrictions at the airport, hear about all the money being spent on "anti-terror" measures, and learn that new laws and restrictions are going into place, and from this they conclude that the government is doing something to improve their safety and security. To the casual observer it looks like something is being done, but on closer inspection, it's just an illusion.

Sure they search you for knives & nailclippers at the airport, and they even check your shoes now, but wait till you get on the plane and they serve your in-flight meal. Guess what? They hand you a knife & fork. I flew out of Newark International a month after 9/11, and that's exactly what happened. If I had a few buddies along I coulda taken some hostages and crashed another plane.

Their "security measures" do nothing exept making things a pain in the ass for everyone and re-assuring the sheeple that something is being done.

[Queeb Salaron]

Very true, aerius. And your foresight is refreshing, to say the least.

I've been saying it for about a year: Nothing good will come from this "war on terror." In order for the US to decimate global terrorism, it will have to sever links with organizations that are invaluable to them (The School of the Americas, for example). Also, America would have to turn its beady little eye on the lives of Americans to prevent national terrorism, and that will be seen as a blatant violation of privacy. Ashcroft has caught the bulk of the flak for his attempts at monitoring the every move of potentional international terrorists, but the shit will REALLY start to hit the fan when the FBI walks into Texas and sets up spymobiles outside the houses of prominent NRA members. Of course Bush wouldn't offend the NRA, as they provide a buttload of money to both the Bush campaign and the organizations that the NRA supports. (I think the main-page on the NRA website has a picture of a gas-guzzling Ford Expedition with a tribute to the amount of fuel it consumes. At least that's what it was a week ago.)

But Bush and Cheney can't give the impression of not doing anything anymore, so they put up fronts about airport security, sports stadium security, incresed police patrolling, etc., and never mentioning where the money is coming from to pay for these things. In fact, even when war is piled on top of this equation, Bush STILL proposes tax breaks.

There's something going on that the American people don't know about, and I don't like it. I smell a rat.

[Axis Kast]

Somehow, an editorial under the auspices of a website entitled, "Let's Get the Truth Out" doesn't exactly strike me as unbiased. Besides - they make a poor argument.

Abrams main battle tanks and F-16 'Fighting Falcons' aren't exactly the stuff of counterterrorists' dreams. Conventional arms aren't going to help us curb Osama Bin Laden's organization per se now that they're out of Afghanistan. That sort of thing is better left to professional police or intelligence forces - the kind that have little or nothing to do with the divergent invasion of Iraq. Bush isn't squandering anything by going to war with Hussein.

[Montcalm]

Baby bush will do the same mistake as Hitler,he will try to fight a war on too many front.

[Queeb Salaron]

Baby bush will do the same mistake as Hitler,he will try to fight a war on too many front.

That, and he'll let propoganda ring free about Islam and how terrible it is and how unGodly it is, and say that not only is opposing Islam (and, necessarily, terrorism) PATRIOTIC, it's MORALLY RIGHT.

::sighs:: This man makes me sick.

[Joe]

Time for a fisking.

One of the many maddening feats of this Administration is that in choosing to fight the war on terror by going to war with Iraq, George W. Bush has inspired new terrorist threats to the United States--according to the official testimony of his own CIA--where none existed. At the same time, he purposely starves those localities and institutions on which the complex and expensive task of terrorist protection ultimately falls.

That CIA report was speculation by a few members of the CIA, not the whole damn thing.

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.

Hmm, the 34 billion dollars for social services/education/other programs the 2003 Bush Budget allocated to New York to be distributed throughout the state and the city not enough? Looks like we have a member of the Whiner's Club.

But as with Vietnam, "W" is AWOL and Cheney has "other priorities." They have not merely ignored "homeland" protection, they have sabotaged it. Shocking, yes. But don't take my word for it. A January Brookings Institution report explains, "President Bush vetoed several specific (and relatively cost-effective) measures proposed by Congress that would have addressed critical national vulnerabilities. As a result, the country remains more vulnerable than it should be today." A Council on Foreign Relations task force chaired by Gary Hart and Warren Rudman concurs: "America remains dangerously unprepared to prevent and respond to a catastrophic terrorist attack on U.S. soil," it warns.

Bzzt. Bush has not used his veto power yet.

Speaking of cost-effective anti-terrorism measures, whatever happened to guns for pilots in cockpits? Oh that's right, you and your ilk fought it tooth and nail.

Power plants constitute obvious terrorist targets but are frequently operated by private or semiprivate corporations unwilling to pay to protect them. According to Brookings, the Administration has done nothing--repeat, nothing--to help or encourage "private-sector firms--even ones that handle dangerous materials--toward improving their own security." Last year, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review discovered a frightening series of security lapses at three separate chemical plants in Houston and Chicago, which, if attacked, could endanger 1 million people each. The New York Daily News found one plant in East Rutherford, New Jersey, where an attack could threaten the lives of more than 7 million people (including, um, mine). And it employed virtually no security at all. Spencer Abraham, Bush's Energy Secretary, worried in a March 2002 letter to OMB director Mitch Daniels that firms "are storing vast amounts of materials that remain highly volatile and subject to unthinkable consequences if placed in the wrong hands." However, he added, due to insufficient funding, "the Department now is unable to meet the next round of critical security mission requirements.... Failure to support these urgent security requirements," he concluded, "is a risk that would be unwise." Nevertheless, The New Republic's Jonathan Chait reports, Bush agreed to propose a mere 7 percent of what Abraham said would be needed just to get started.

I would be extremely skeptical of any report claiming that there are nuclear power plants anywhere in this country lacking security. They should have been attacked by now, if that is indeed the case (and the terrorists sure as hell would know about it).

Chait has more: 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.

OK, assume this unsubstantiated claim that Bush is screwing over the 9/11 heroes is true. That 34 billion dollar budget not enough to set aside some money for compensation, mmm? Of course not, you need that money to buy votes.

In a sensible media universe, Chait's cover story, "The 9/10 President," would have set off a journalistic firestorm. But the only place I've seen it picked up is in Paul Krugman's invaluable New York Times column. Using the Homeland Security Department's original spending figures, Krugman took Chait one step further on April 1, arguing that Bush's plan to spend seven times as much per capita on protection for Wyoming as for New York--where, need I point out, a few more obvious terrorist targets are located--"was adopted precisely because it caters to that same constituency" that enabled Bush's "election." Krugman puts the Rove/Bush strategy thus: "Even in a time of war--a war that seems oddly unrelated to the terrorist threat--the Bush administration isn't serious about protecting the homeland. Instead, it continues to subordinate U.S. security needs to its unchanged political agenda."

The spoils system is an inevitability in American politics. Say what you will, but $34 billion dollars is far from stingy.

Thanks to Bush & Co., America is hated the world over as never before.

Wake up and smell the swamp of Islamic fundamentalism. It fucking stinks.

Deficits are exploding,

A Democrat advocating fiscal responsibility is kind of like OJ Simpson advocating not murdering your wife.

Really, bugger off. You've fought every spending cut the Republicans have ever proposed, but now fiscal responsibility is soooo important? Why don't you hypocrites actually try to get on board and CUT spending on some of your vote-buying social programs, if deficit spending is suddenly such a huge problem?

unemployment remains high,

Compared to much of the rest of the world, in this recession? Not too bad.

the stock market is still in the tank

The bubble had to burst sometime. Furthermore, it was the CLINTON economy that burst, not the Bush economy. In any case, whoever is in office has little to do with the state of the economy, other things being equal.

and interest rates are poised to take off.

Let me know when they do, mmmkay?

The country is headed to hell in a handbasket from so many directions one can barely keep track.

And the only way to save it is to do exactly as Eric Alderman says right now.

And yet the increasingly Foxified media tell a story only of heroism: of the US military, of the American people and of the President of the United States, who has so far managed to avoid service to either one.

If someone wants a non-Foxified perspective on the news, he can turn on a network news channel, pick up a newspaper, or put on NPR.

[Nathan F]

I agree wholeheartedly with what you just posted, Durran.

[Sea Skimmer]

Baby bush will do the same mistake as Hitler,he will try to fight a war on too many front.

Sure, except beyond special operations forces that are now mostly going home the forces used to fight Iraq are near useless for the current phase of the war in terror.

In fact you might notice that Bush waited quite a while between major campaign to allow US forces to build up ammunition stocks, conduct training, let carriers cycle though the yards to allow for the massive surge and in general recover from the ops temp that came directly after 9/11

[Ted]

You know what though Durran?

If Boeings plan had been adopted, pilots would never have been at risk.

No risk to pilots, no highjack, no 11 September.

[Joe]

What plan was that, Ted?

[Ted]

What plan was that, Ted?

They had a design where the cockpit was seperate from the main compartment, the only way into the cockpit was from the outside.

[Joe]

What plan was that, Ted?

They had a design where the cockpit was seperate from the main compartment, the only way into the cockpit was from the outside.

Interesting. How long ago did Boeing put this design forward?

[Ted]

What plan was that, Ted?

They had a design where the cockpit was seperate from the main compartment, the only way into the cockpit was from the outside.

Interesting. How long ago did Boeing put this design forward?

Think it was in the 70's, after the first major hijackings.

[Montcalm]

They had a design where the cockpit was seperate from the main compartment, the only way into the cockpit was from the outside.

Interesting. How long ago did Boeing put this design forward?

Think it was in the 70's, after the first major hijackings.

Its surprising they did not made them.

[Col. Crackpot]

They had a design where the cockpit was seperate from the main compartment, the only way into the cockpit was from the outside.

Interesting. How long ago did Boeing put this design forward?

Think it was in the 70's, after the first major hijackings.

common sense to me. the cockpit should be completely isolated from the passenger compartment....i can't see why it hasn't been done.

[Justin]

Well, my question is this? If he's obviously such a failure, why hasn't there been more terrorist attacks. Your not going to here about most succeses until long after they happen because that would jepordize most intelligence resources and ongoing operations. What this stupid Democrat (retch) is doing is outright exaggeration in the hopes of getting (The gods forbear) a Democrat elected President next year. Note this fuckwit did not provide ANYKIND of solution for the problems he outlined (probably because his masters can't even fucking decide who's going to run for president in 2004, much less get a coherent domestic and foreign policy together). This is the kind of thing that turned me from being a Democrat to a Republican.

"The problem of leadership is inevitably:Who will play God?"

[Nathan F]

Thing about that Boeing design is that sometimes it is necessary for the pilot to access the passenger compartments. There are times when in a pinch the pilot might have to make basic repairs or check on certain systems not accessible from the cockpit. An incident in Nashville comes to mind. A McDonell Douglass MD-11 was having landing gear problems. The pilot had to go back into the passenger compartment to get access to some hydraulic controls under the floor.

Of course, it would also be possible to make it harder to close off the crew compartment by using steel doors and reinforcing them.

[The_Nice_Guy]

Bush apparently is an idiot? Whod've thunk it?

I dunno, but losing to an idiot doesn't seem to auger well for the Democrats.

Oh well, a least a clock tells the time correctly twice a day...

The Nice guy

[Asst. Asst. Lt. Cmdr. Smi]

Interesting. How long ago did Boeing put this design forward?

Think it was in the 70's, after the first major hijackings.

common sense to me. the cockpit should be completely isolated from the passenger compartment....i can't see why it hasn't been done.

It probably had something to do with pilot convienence, like if it was isolated, then they would need a seperate exit, or their own lavatory. Still, I think they should have done it.

[Shinova]

Thing about that Boeing design is that sometimes it is necessary for the pilot to access the passenger compartments. There are times when in a pinch the pilot might have to make basic repairs or check on certain systems not accessible from the cockpit. An incident in Nashville comes to mind. A McDonell Douglass MD-11 was having landing gear problems. The pilot had to go back into the passenger compartment to get access to some hydraulic controls under the floor.

Of course, it would also be possible to make it harder to close off the crew compartment by using steel doors and reinforcing them.

The answer is what Israel did: make separate food storage, and bathroom for the cockpit. Right now, the US is going for locks on the cockpit doors but then there's no bathroom or food inside the cockpit, making it a problem for the pilots.

For the Israelis, they can lock their door tight and not have to worry about going to the bathroom or anything. And they can still come out if they have to do something elsewhere on the plane.

[Rubberanvil]

The answer is what Israel did: make separate food storage, and bathroom for the cockpit. Right now, the US is going for locks on the cockpit doors but then there's no bathroom or food inside the cockpit, making it a problem for the pilots.

Also the stewards are armed which denies the would-be hijackers easy targets to torture in order to force the pilots to obey their commands.