Well, that petered out kind of embarrassingly. But they all do.
I guess it’s easy to intercept when you have a conference call #
So is your claim that this is impossible from some kind of technical standpoint, or that it’s an obviously bad lie- and if it’s the second, why didn’t they just make up a better lie?
How does buying the adjacent property allow you to keep vehicular traffic farther away, exactly?
Any could you point me to the post(s) where I said “taking a couple of days off fixes this”? Either I can’t keep my arguments straight, or you’re making things up.
Its a good thing terrorists don’t have projectile type weapons, like something that could lob an explosive into the embassy at a distance further than about twenty feet. Lucky break, there.
Sure. You really haven’t seen many cities, have you? Buy up several entire city blocks. Evict the present owners / tenants and their legitimate businesses. Re-route multiple thoroughfares as needed. Maybe bulldoze some places to create free-fire lanes. And then what do you do with all the rest of the empty buildings? Station Marines in them? I’m going to characterize your suggestion, charitably I believe, as unrealistic.
I don’t think Embassies are built primarily to resist attack, except on a sliding scale based upon the perceived threat when the Embassy was first constructed. Embassies are built to facilitate the business purposes of American diplomats and travelers.
It’s a good thing baseball is not popular in that part of the world. Period.
And NSA? Pull the other one.
Buildings constructed as embassies certainly are ‘fortified’, but that’s a relative term.
Car bombs have gotten bigger and better over the years, it’s a developing technology.
So – you’re not disagreeing, you’re just augmenting my point?
And zealots willing to drive them at breakneck speed through gates and checkpoints have gotten more common too. Just further evidence that the “Embassy as a fortress” model has serious practical difficulties.
Shhhhh! Ixnay!
Its not just CT sites doubting the official line. Article with quotes from Washington Post reporters doubting the “legion of doom” conference call.
I love the idea that it makes sense to buy out block after block of central Paris, Tokyo and Johannesburg in order to build massively fortified ultra-secure facilities.
Embassies are embassies. They are office buildings. We tend to build fairly secure ones, as US embassies are targets, but we can’t build our own little green zones in every country in the world.
Not to worry articles such as yours, Did the CIA Just Run an Intel Operation on the Daily Beast? or The Guardian’s own US embassy closures used to bolster case for NSA surveillance programs will be mocked and ignored.
While I am stilled convinced Obama was a better choice the McCain, US foreign policy remains basically the same: take all what we can get. And them some – while we speak some pretty words about “democracy.”
That said, is it not true of any empire? Nascent or dying? May take 10 years*, might take 30…but US hegemony is overcooked.
Heck, I might live to see it happen. Sad really…I honestly felt the US had a chance to make a difference.
So how come people will accept at face value government assertions that a huge terrorist threat was detected and (apparently - still no explosions?) avoided without a single bit of proof, but will bend over backwards demanding proof of things like … oh, I don’t know, UFOs? Since when did taking the government’s word, it’s say-so, become not only accepted but defended? Was it sometime in 2008 (just a guess)?
Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof. Unless you want to believe the claims for some other reason.
Ok, so where’s the proof this is a fraud intended to distract the public?
Sitting in the drawer next to the proof that embassies in 21 nations were under imminent threat of attack.
See, that’s the thing - we’ll never REALLY know for sure either way, so you just have to accept the government’s story at face value. I’m sure you’d agree, that’s not a good precedent to set.
It’s like the TSA (among many others) - “Since we were set up, there hasn’t been another attack like 9/11 so We’re Working For You ™!” - except that prior to 9/11 and the TSA, there hadn’t been either… so are they really preventing anything?
If we’ll never know either way, you’re not accomplishing anything by being dubious. Particularly not when the alternative is saying you know this is a fraud because… well eventually I’m sure someone who says it’s a fraud will offer a rational reason. We’re not going to see actual classified intelligence, but think about what we’re hearing.
sigh yes, I know, I can’t prove it either way - but neither can you. So it comes down to personal choice… what do we choose to believe? I believe there may very well have been something to it but I do not unequivocally claim there was - or wasn’t - and then disparage others who have questions about it. I’m just pointing out (ha, that old canard) that it could have been - it could not have been - but we’ll never know until it’s too late.
Of course. Everyone is.
“Extraordinary claims”?! What extraordinary claims? That bad guys in Yemen are up to no good? I think it’d be pretty extraordinary if that wasn’t the case. Is it really so shockingly unbelievable that they might be up to no good in a somewhat immediate way? I mean, presumably they are going to try something again at some point, right? What do you think these terrorist organizations are doing?
You guys are really going a little nuts on the scale here. We closed some office buildings. We didn’t start a war, we didn’t produce a musical, we didn’t do much of anything other than give some middle-managers the day off. Office building close all the time. My office closes every time we get an inch of snow. Try calling in a bomb threat to your office- chances are they will evacuate and stop business until the figure it out. It’s an utterly mundane reaction that is completely in line with threats much smaller than what is being claimed.