The Liar-in-Chief is furiosly trying justify his illegal NSA scheme to collect domestic political intelligence (yes, I believe that's what it is) by ratcheting up the Fear-O-Meter with fairy tales of boogeymen.
He said that Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks who was captured in 2003, had already begun planning the West Coast operation in October, just after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. One of Mohammed's key planners was Hambali, the alleged operations chief of the al-Qaida related terrorist group Jemaah Islamiyah. Instead of recruiting Arab hijackers, Hambali found Southeast Asian men who would be less likely to arouse suspicion and who were sent to meet with Osama bin Laden, Bush said.
Under the plot, the hijackers were to use shoe bombs to blow open the cockpit door of a commercial jetliner, take control of the plane and crash it into the Library Tower in Los Angeles, since renamed the US Bank Tower, Bush said.
The president said the plot was derailed when a Southeast Asian nation arrested a key al-Qaida operative. Bush did not name the country or the operative.
...
Bush's speech in October cited two other attacks inside the United States that were foiled, including one to use hijacked planes to attack the East Coast in mid-2003.
The third was the case of Jose Padilla, a former Chicago gang member who converted to Islam and allegedly plotted with top al-Qaida commanders to detonate a radioactive "dirty bomb" in a U.S. city. Padilla, whose plot never materialized, now is being held without bail in civilian custody on charges that he was part of a secret network that supported Muslim terrorists.
Padilla of course was arrested amidst much televised fanfare and sat in jail, not accorded a single one of the rights afforded him by the Constitution as a citizen, except perhaps not to be summarily executed by a gleeful and totally execution-crazed Preznit.
The "Global War on Terror" is primarily a law-enforcement excercise, and we have to tools for conducting it in our codes and courts. There has never been a need for things like the "PATRIOT act" or other extra-judicial means to fight it. It certainly is not a military war, and it's fast becoming the kind of a white elephant the the "War on Drugs" has become...bureaucratic, mishandled and shortsighted. Sort of a testament to the day-to-day incompetance of the administration running it.
I expect that one day Congress will figure out that the money spent on the "GWoT" has pretty much been wasted in the name of "expediency" but by then it'll be too late to stop the inertia of the machinery that the 1600 Crew has put in place. Reevaluating it will be attributed to being "soft" on subject and someone who wants to make a meaningful evaluation of it will be considered "wrong on security", because by the Hairy Thunderer we can't be having Contractors losing contracts over incompetance, inefficiency or anything like that now, can we?
posted by Jo Fish on 02.09.06 at 11:37 AM
Comments:
When the 'patriots' finally get through with us there won't be any money left to evaluate anything.
posted by: denny on 02.09.06 at 05:23 PM [permalink]
Jo, you're the pilot so I'll put this in the form of a question. Don't you need feet and hands to fly a plane? How do you blow open the cockpit door with a shoebomb without to say the least compromising your ability to control the rudder? If you take the shoes off, how do you secure them to the door?
They have thrown a mishmash of terrorists themes together "Liberty Tower" "Shoe bombs" without establishing any kind of plausible narrative. This one needs a script doctor, and fast.
my local paper had the headline ' spying foiled plot' when there is no evidence the wiretapping foiled anything. but like wmd they are trying to infer.
If I'm not mistaken, neither of those speeches mentioned the NSA program, and the NSA program didn't have anything to do with the arrests.
Look, I'm OK with the president cutting corners sometimes in the name of national security, but it should never be policy. The Constitution's served us well for 229 years.
posted by: Dean on 02.11.06 at 04:35 PM [permalink]
The "Global War on Terror" is primarily a law-enforcement excercise, and we have to tools for conducting it in our codes and courts.
Yeah, right. That's the approach Clinton took from the 1993 bombing of the WTC through Khobar Towers, the embassy bombings in Africa, the USS Cole bombing in 2000, and it got us ... what? It got us 9/11, that's what. One of the Clintonoids in the DOJ put up an unnecessary "wall" between the FBI and the CIA that prevented them from breaking what clues we had about the 9/11 plot.
Now, how many times have we been attacked since 9/11? Exactly zero.
So much for the "law enforcement" approach.
posted by: bean on 02.13.06 at 02:00 PM [permalink]
Bean, you know damn well that 9/11 happened on Bush's watch. He didn't prevent it. The PDB stating, "Bin Laden determined to attack inside the US," was handed to GW Bush. He was responsible to take action to prevent an attack. He could have ordered tighter security at airports and other facilities, ordered the US law enforcement network to coordinate efforts to shake the intelligence tree, ordered a higher state of readiness even if it failed to stop the attack. Hell, he might have shown SOME interest by flying back to the White House instead of continuing his habit of vactioning his life away. Instead, we get an oblivious George asleep at the wheel (repeated the performance for Katrina).
Re: Global War On Terror stop Still awaiting publication of the congressional declaration stop FDR said we have nothing to fear but fear itself stop Easy hopeful needed to be heard concept stop GWB says embrace your fear[s] stop Wants you to thrive on his War On Endless Fear stop His PP hand will protect you stop That's Paternalistic Presidential hand, you naughty boy stop The Western Union wires are cut sto......
"We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat."
--- Don Rumsfeld, March 30, 2003, comments about Saddam's WMDs
posted by: diktraysee on 02.14.06 at 11:23 AM [permalink]
