Please tell me when this threat will be gone so I won’t have to be constantly afraid anymore? Oh wait, I’m not the one who is hiding under the bed and hoping that Fearless George will catch the all the bad guys.
I’m relieved to see I’m not the only one who thinks this “failed terror plot” is pure bullshit lies. Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy. Maybe there is hope after all.
With the fundamentalist government in Iran able to provide money and support, probably a decade or more. Syria is most likely providing covert support as well. As are Wahabbi Saudis. There are mullahs preaching all over the middle east that it is the duty of every good muslim to kill as many Americans as possible.
And they aren’t doing it because the recount wasn’t done in Florida or Ohio. They aren’t doing it because they hate GWB’s accent or his philosophy. They aren’t even doing it because the United States military is currently under arms in arab countries.
They are doing it so they can divert the attention of a neglected and undereducated population away from their incompetent governance and toward the bugaboos of Israel and the “Great Satan”. And they are doing it because they are high on the opiate of power.
They have money and committment. They have followers that are willing to die. And they aren’t going away.
What’s the solution? It’s not hiding under the bed. It’s to pragmatically recognize that the threat exists and to acknowledge that steps have to be taken to combat the problem that might be idealogically painful. It’s to resist the temptation to play “gotcha” politics in favor of the long term greater good. And when the next attack comes, it’s to clean up and move on.
I’d say it was aimed at getting the voite for the Patriot Act
The information presented by the President coincides with events that occurred after 9/11. There was a concerted effort (presumably by Al Quaida) to explore the use of commercial aircraft for similar attacks. From what I could gather by interviewing people there was a concerted effort to take pictures of the modified cockpit doors and also to test how crews would react to certain behavior. They may have also been trying to see if they could flush out an air marshal by behaving erratically. It seems to have fallen off in the last 6 months but then I’ve also stopped actively trying to gather that kind of information. I do know that additional procedures have been put in place to secure the cockpit because of what occurred.
True; I’d say it beats just about any “leak” scenario I could imagine. Being the occasional cynic, though, I don’t want my public officials to “relax” in their brainstorming efforts at keeping my hairy white ass alive just 'cause they know their families are relatively “safe” should a terrorist plot come to fruition.
Putting their faimilies into the same general basket as the rest of us peons gives them incentive to get (and stay) inventive and innovative in their thinking, being it ways to keep attacks from happening, or how to respond effectively to minimize casualties, or how to effectively treat mass casualties and handle evacuations.
it’s kind of catch 22 the way you set it out.
hope these guys are on their toes for more than just to keep their girlfriends alive…
So you don’t consider a big press mosh photo op conducted like the triumphant final scene of a Jerry Bruckheimer film claiming (inaccurately) to have completed all major operations in Iraq to be Bush “tooting his own horn”?
Bush (like virtually every other political figure of either major party) never passes the opportunity to promote his own (alleged) successes when it best benefits his agenda. I don’t think we’ve had a president since Ike who didn’t make a major press event out of a claimed successful program or operation. The only disctinction here is that he claims to have averted catastrophe without offering the tiniest sliver of evidence that there was ever a threat to begin with. Wag that dog, George.
Stranger
The second of my two words is “osh!”
Daniel
*what I could gather by interviewing people *
um, you wanna expand on that a little?
for starters:“interviewing”…is that like “interrogating” or like Larry King.
“people” would that be our people (not really a good source on the topic explored ) or some other side’s “people”
if that latter, would these interviews occur on cross country bus rides (like the time Nick Berg borrowed the Al Q guys laptop on the bus…) or in more confined venues, as it were.
Nicely done. Only a hint of vermouth.
Stranger
Sorry about that. I thought that my sarcasm was self-evident, but I forget that not everyone knows that I’m convinced Bush is a megalomaniac who’s concerned only with himself and incapable of looking at the world from perspectives other than his own, and also I forget that not everyone knows I really like dry humor, esepcially when it’s slightly ironic and self-referential.
I was trying to forestall any argument that Bush might be saying this stuff for reasons other than the self-aggrandizing: his presidency has been built on self-aggrandizing, often, it seems, at the expense of foreign policy.
Daniel
There is “discussion” about the Patriot Act in Congress. There is “discussion” about illegal wiretapping. There was the recent “revelation” that Cheney “authorized” Libby to leak Plame’s identity to the press. There is still some resentment over the mishandling of Huricane Katrina. There is resentment about the failure of the Medicare “reforms”. There will be “mid term elections” in 2006. This failed terror plot (which supposedly happened back in 2002) is a way to distract and divert attention away from real issues. There is that whole Abramoff thing. This failed plot story is a way to yell “Nine One One” so all the good patriots will give Bush yet another carte blanche.