Terrorist activity in DC today (May 11, 2005)

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Sounds cute!

"I'm gonna promote the social securement bill today"

For the umpteenth time I'll just post how the people in my office on the 9th floor of this building do nothing but chuckle darkly whenever we have to sit through an explanation of the evac procedures for our office. M1k3 was amazed that the Capitol staffers were so stupid as to actually LEAVE the building. Batch of fucking imbeciles.

Scenario 1: Plane is loaded with explosives, flies straight down onto mall and hits building in kamikaze attack!
A. Well those fighter jets are sure going to be able to stop that from happening.
B. Especially if they shoot guns and rockets at it in pursuit over the national mall.

Scenario 2: Plane is loaded with nerve agents and crop dusts downtown!
A. Good thing everybody ran outside.
B. Especially since not taking the elevators means a lot of them are probably huffing and puffing rather nicely.

And again, the best part about the "system" is that we found out about it from Google News. What the fuck ever!

Only if I was there to watch. Seeing it on TV wouldn't do it justice.

This doesn't even make sense. How do the terrorists and governors even find the Capitol building! It is blurred out on Google maps. They're not going to figure it out. It's all ok, why are we even still worried? They will not find the Capitol. Or Disneyworld. STOP EVACUATING it is cool now.

No. It makes me feel like a lot of people will think the system is working -- that Bush turned things around in Washington and is successfully protecting us from the turrrists -- that all of the added spending is worth it and hey while we're at it let's pump more money into homeland security since it seems to be such a success.

How about if the Bush administration had stopped the actual threat that killed thousands of people? You know, the one they had prior warning of, that they didn't act on? Stopping that may have made me feel "vaguely better about stuff."

But, jeez, haven't we agreed before that the threat is "unstoppable" to argue against Bush's policies, and now we're saying the threat is stoppable to argue with Bush's policies? Can we just admit we want to fling more crap at Bush and be satisfied? (I totally understand that instict! Trust me.)

Anyway, it's better to have one day of useless madness, then what happened at the Pentagon on 9/11 (which could have been avoided, apparently, as far as lessening deaths.) I'm with miccio and nabisco on those points.

Rasheed also OTM too.

Nobody with a lick of common sense thinks that the evacuation today was a show of good security. Everybody I've talked to agrees it's fucking LAUGHABLE, MAN.

If anything what happened today is just illustrative of how disconnected from Earth World the White House and Congress have actually become. I love fuckin' Shelby's line in the article, "there's no joking about this" WHAT ARE YOU DOING GIVING ALL THAT MONEY TO WYOMING FOR HOMELAND SECURITY THEN? ARE YOU SAYING THAT WAS SERIOUS?

We just watched the Pentagon Missile Strike conspiracy movie again. Taxpayer dollars!!!

xpost

I regard the claim of the 'right' that they have the only appropriate sense of how to deal with this to be as utterly spurious as the claim that the right is the only one to be appropriately religious in this country.

Uh... WTC, 1993, Clinton Administration?

"One of the reasons the center-right can't get more support" erm, gabbneb, i think they're doing just fine.

Ned - what's more rational: assuming that government agencies have been constantly fucking up since 9/11, and that the US is just lucky that it hasn't been attacked...

or

admitting that certin advances have been made in tracking down terrorists (which isn't to suggest that i excuse all kind of civil lib issues etc - differenbt argument).

My question to the cynics (what an easy position!) is:

why haven't terrorists attacked again in an organize way (ie versus suidcide bombers etc), given the US involvement in the Middle East?

uh, read what i said

admitting that certin advances have been made in tracking down terrorists (which isn't to suggest that i excuse all kind of civil lib issues etc - differenbt argument).

To which I say -- read Tom's post. Recall the work that Tom has done and is doing. Are you doing the same? And can you speak with the same authority? Who will I trust more immediately to give me a clearer sense of what is actually happening day to day? And what does THAT have to do with the political party who happened to be in power?

Given this, I am going to trust his word much, MUCH more than yours, especially given your own particular ideological bent. And before you get huffy, I would say the same thing if the political party in power were a different one and the same lines of defense being argued for that party being in place by someone else other than you.

you do understand that 'not doing enough' /= "constantly fucking up," and that it's your own 'government agencies' who most often refer to the inevitability of another attack?

LEARN TO READ.

For a guy who prides himself on being one to cut through rhetoric, you clearly can't deal with the fact that a dude who served in the military and currently is doing related work has shot your claim to holes. If he had argued along your lines, then I'd think you have a case, Paul. He hasn't. You don't.

You remind me of the characters in the movie All Quiet on the Western Front who, safe behind the lines and set in their ways, insist to the lead character, ironically enough named Paul, that his experience on the front means nothing because he has missed 'the big picture' -- and then proceed to argue on the basis of the ideologies they espouse and believe in because they can't have it any other way.

Have fun with your blinkers. You wear them as well as those you hate, and probably shopped at the same store for them.

Gabbneb misses the point...as usual.

You make a poor liar.

Can you account for the utter dissolution of the Left since the mid-90s in any other terms than a propaganda / conspiracy / right-is-dumb terms?

Co while you're chuckling at your cleverness, the right is chuckling at your chuckling...

and btw, I spent 2 years at the Smithsonian national Security Research Center (2002-3) studying security docs / analyzing data.

Can you account for the utter dissolution of the Left since the mid-90s in any other terms than a propaganda / conspiracy / right-is-dumb terms?

you mean like in the Pew poll that came out today showing that Liberals are easily the largest subsection of the polity and that their ranks have doubled in the last 5 years?

Wrong. It's because anyone who thinks they're above it all with their own biases is a poor liar. I have my biases. You have yours. And you are a VERY poor liar.

Can you account for the utter dissolution of the Left since the mid-90s in any other terms than a propaganda / conspiracy / right-is-dumb terms?

The 'utter dissolution' idiocy has already been addressed. As for why the Democrats, more accurately, lost two close elections and have seemed to struggle with messages and national momentum at times? Quite simple. People are dumb, believe their own myths, get ridiculously overconfident, tell themselves how smart they are, blame all failings on someone or something else, demonize that which does not agree with them to make themselves seem so very pure and sinned against.

Those are 'chuckling at my chuckling' in NRO world, at the Weekly Standard, elsewhere, demonstrate the same flaws, unsurprisingly. They are suffering from the same delusions, the same grotesque worship of power above all else, engaging in the same lackey-like behavior to please the boss, whoever the boss might be. It is not limited to one political party, and attempting to divide humanity into a fallacious all-unified-in-stupidity left and a clear-thinking all-unified-in-correctness right shows you think of this world in far too black and white terms for me to take any comfort from your claims. Indeed, I think I distrust them all the more now.

No, Gabbneb, I don't think that the US has done all it can to make itself safe. it probably never can, agreed. but it's not clear that terrorists want to exceed 9/11. in bali and madrid, the disaster was different, and, i guess lesser. As the IRA or other groups will tell you, the issue is not about "topping" an earlier event, but about reminding 1. the faithful that you're doing a job, and 2. the enemy that you're a threat. a grenade into the UK embassy would've done it.
but, in all honesty, do you not give credit to any of the angenies that've foiled (reported, planned) attacks? Cos I'm suprised, if that's the case (yeah, this is a throw yor hands up and move on to talking to someone else case, I spose...)

Appealing to the LCD != getting smart!

And Tombot, *Richard Reid* is your example? Good god.

I'm not able to reply as quickly as all of you will to me, but I do wish this board got more people who could help me argue this case. We're not dumb, we';re informed, we're winning, and hell, we're not even necessarily ideological.

This line of reasoning (common during the campaign) drives me crazy. 9/11 was one attack. Once in the history of the country (ignoring the attempt in 93 that the Clinton admin stopped). What kind of crazy twisted logic assumes that after 9/11 there are going to be attempted attacks every week?

admitting that certin advances have been made in tracking down terrorists (which isn't to suggest that i excuse all kind of civil lib issues etc - differenbt argument).

You've created a totally false dichotomy. How about the possibility that on 9/11 the administration fucked up and didn't do their job? Since then they've had to be more careful and do what they should have been doing all along, but all of the extra funding, the new programs, agencies, buzz words and bullshit have nothing to do with it! If they would have done what was necessary with the old programs, systems, intelligence, etc. the results would have been the same.

It means maybe you might be wrong about a few things, just like I might well be. Pray keep that in mind.

We're not dumb, we';re informed, we're winning, and hell, we're not even necessarily ideological.

You have nothing to do with it now, dude. Neither do I. 'We' just happen to be watching.

1. there's no point in terrorism unless it remains in the public / political eye. What are you thinking": a random one-off attack?

2. the admin. weren't prepared then, agreed (but which director would've oked an anti-terrorism budge in 2000?); they have been since (imperfectly, but...fuck it, history will speak for itself in terms of the way us new yorkers don't think about terrorism anymore).

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Can we get the administration to answer for this?

That's a good point because of course everyone has completely forgotten about 9/11 and never talks about it anymore.

What are you thinking": a random one-off attack?

I'm thinking maybe it's something that takes a lot of time and money to plan and pull off. I'm thinking that most attempts fail long before they get that far and that this one time they got lucky because the people in charge of stopping them forgot to read the memo entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States."

that is, if you think numbers are the only relevant identifying characteristics.

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Well, considering the US was attacked by al Qaeda, and their stated goal was to get the US out of the middle east (specifically away from Saudi Arabia), I would imagine they've reverted to their primary target: Americans in the middle east. I mean, why fly to another country, do all kinds of paperwork, do some training, and attack something when you can just drive to somewhere nearby and abduct or shoot at some soldiers? It's been shown that the 9/11 attacks were originally planned for an earlier date and were pushed back in the timeline, that the planned members of the plot changed, and that it almost didn't happen. If anything, it wasn't that the information to notice an attack wasn't there, it was just that it was poorly coordinated.

I think security is a little tighter in the US despite some ridiculous missteps (national ID card now? wtf?) but that doesn't mean it's magically foiled some attacks.

..and the reverse is true: the way to show terrorists that they are not a threat is to be orderly, cautious, and change as little as possible. Minimize the terrorism in the public eye. If people go on living their lives and any violent acts are only momentary interruptions, you can be a lot more perceptive and objective in rating threats and reacting rationally. If there's a plane and everyone screams "OH SHIT" and runs around really fast instead of going calmly to the basement in a single-file line, then, to use a catchphrase, the terrorists have already won.

you have to stop thinking of "AQ" as an organisation comparable to the IRA or SMERSH what have you. the bali bombers had very tangential links with the 9/11 crowd, but more to the point the aim of "AQ" is so much more diffuse and unstated than the IRA's. it has no political programme to speak of. and its seeming inaction deosn't tell you anything about it either way. what i would be interested to know is how far the US has managed to stop *payments* to AQ, etc. this is surely a more significant and apropos fight than fucking ID cards.

It's never pointed out that freezing and cutting off the money supply was one of the first and most effective things we did after 9/11. It's because there's no political gain in trying to point out that the people who were working in the intelligence community prior to and immediately following 9/11 were actually highly competent, the confidence builder is in incessantly going on and on about how we failed at "information sharing" between agencies that are inclined, by nature of mission and according to Executive Orders, to be paranoid.

The longer you work for the government, the more you learn to absolutely despise nearly every man and woman who works for the legislative branch, because they are all completely full of shit. Seeing all of them sprinting for daylight while everybody else in downtown sat in their offices totally unaware of any airplanes whatsoever is kind of par for the course. I'm kinda disappointed the news stories today aren't more focused on how utterly unbelievably stupid this looks.

This is indeed one of the greatest achievements of the post-9/11 era, but I think it also only goes so far, especially where powerful Saudis are concerned. How much of the "Golden Chain" still exists in some form, I wonder?

a grenade in the UK consulate here didn't mean shit.