Entries Tagged with George W. Bush
January 1st, 2007
See if you recognize recent events in the U.S. in this passage talking about the history of the Catholic Church…
The Church turned to its own canon law to authenticate an agency which could enforce adherence to Church authority. In 1231 Pope Gregory IX established the Inquisition as a separate tribunal, independent of bishops and prelates. Its administrators, the inquisitors, were to be answerable only to the Pope. Its inquisitional law replaced the common law tradition of “innocent until proven guilty”with “guilty until proven innocent.” Despite an ostensible trial, inquisitional procedure left no possibility for the suspected to prove his or her innocence; the process resulted in the condemnation of anyone even suspected of heresy. The accused was denied the right of counsel. No particulars were given as to the time or place fo the suspected heresies, or to what kind of heresies were suspected. A suspected friendship with a convicted heretic was also a crime, yet no information was given as to which heretic the accused as to have “adored.” The names of the accusing witnesses were kept secret. One’s only recourse was an appeal to the Pope in Rome which was so futile as to be facical. The friar Bernard Delicieux declared:
…that if St. Peter and St. Paul were accused of ‘adoring’ heretics and were prosecuted after the fashion of the Inquisition, there would be no defense for them.
The inquisitor presided over inquisitional procedure as both prosecutor and judge. While he was technically to arrive at his decision after consulting with an assembly of experts of his choosing, this check to his power was soon abandoned. An inquisitor was selected primarily on the basis of of his zeal to prosecute heretics. He and his assistants, messengers and spies were allowed to carry arms. And in 1245, the Pope granted him the right to absolve these assistants for any acts of violence. This act rendered the Inquisition, which was already free from any secular jurisdiction, unaccountable to even ecclesiastical tribunals. [The Dark Side of Christian History, “Chapter 6: Controlling The Human Spirit”]
Take a moment to let that sink in and think about how many times in history that sort of thing seems to have repeated itself. Witch trials, Nazi Germany, McCarthyism, Kenneth Star ;)… Unchecked power using hate of some group or other to persecute and it’s all unquestioning, all unapologetic, all without regret. It’s all to get more power through fear.
Now think about what has happened in this country in the last five years. People both from this country and not have been taken from their homes, from airports, from their travels and spirited away in secret places, in American prisons, in Gitmo, who knows how many are innocent or how many are guilty. How do you prove you’re innocent when you are presumed guilty from the beginning? How do you prove you’re innocent when your only sin is that you look like you might be dangerous? How do you prove you’re innocent when you’ve been handed over to the Americans by foreign bounty hunters who insist you’re a terrorist? What do you say to prove you aren’t guilty when the American Inquisition doesn’t care really. It’s not about whether you’re innocent; it’s about gaining more power through fear and not even the fear of the arrested. It’s about gaining power through the fear of Americans like you and me, my dear Readers.
Tags: The Dark Side of Christian History, history repeats, George W. Bush, America
November 5th, 2006
52 - Percentage of Americans living in eastern states who’d rather have Bill Cinton as their dad than George W. Bush.
28 - Percentage who would pick Bush.
45 - Percentage of Southerners who’d choose Bush over Clinton as their dad.
29 - Percentage who would want Clinton.
Source: Health, June, 2006.
Tags: Bill Clinton, George W. Bush
October 3rd, 2006
On Terror-steria
mass hysteria
n. A socially contagious frenzy of irrational behavior in a group of people as a reaction to an event.
- The Suntan Menace — The Cunning Realist writes about another incident in our friendly skies where an innocent man is assumed by other passengers to be a terrorist because of “suspicious activities” like going to the toilet when he got on the plane and having an iPod. The most damning piece of evidence was the color of his skin, which was tanned due to the vacation the Jewish father of three was returning from. Mr. Stein was physically attacked by another passenger “claiming” to be a NY police officer and put in a head lock an hour into the flight while he was minding his own business reading a book and sipping his ginger ale. He sounds terribly dangerous. He’s suing the airline for failing to protect him since the cabin crew was aware of the passenger’s obsession with him. He should sue the passenger too.
As someone who travels a lot, owns gadgets, is dark-complected, and even uses the restroom, I keep waiting — with anticipation, I must admit — for some overeager vigilante/Charles Bronson-wannabe to try this crap on me.
- Please step to the white courtesy phone [for a brain] — Mac @ peskyapostrophe reports that a man missed his flight after being detained in an airport in Seattle because he was speaking a foreign language into his cell phone. Hmmmmm… That does sound suspicious. Apparently he was discussing sports, which is really suspicious. The language was Tamil, which is a language largely used in India, Sri Lanka and Singapore and the person who called it in was an off-duty airline personnell. The passenger indicated that in the future, he wouldn’t be speaking Tamil into his cell phone in the airport. That’s just a shame.
- The TSA sucks - hey, better detain me — Mac @ peskyapostrophe also has a post about a Wisconsin man who wrote “Kip Hawley is an Idiot” on a plastic bag containing toiletries said he was detained at an airport security checkpoint for about 25 minutes before authorities concluded the statement was not a threat. You know, because Kip Hawley is the head of the Transportation Security Administration. “A TSA spokeswoman acknowledged a man was stopped, but likened the incident to cases in which people inappropriately joke about bombs.” *snort* Talk about going overboard.
On Torture
- Is The U.S. A Rogue State? — Matthew Yglesias (op-ed writer for The American Prospect) @ CBS News wrote a brilliant opinion piece about how in 2003 President George Bush gave a speech indicating that the U.S. was committed to “world-wide elimination of torture” and leading the fight by example. He said it was an inalienable human right to be free of torture. He also said, “The Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment, ratified by the United States and more than 130 other countries since 1984, forbids governments from deliberately inflicting severe physical or mental pain or suffering on those within their custody or control….Yet torture continues to be practiced around the world by rogue regimes whose cruel methods match their determination to crush the human spirit.” Based on that statement from Bush’s own claims, Yglesias wants to know if the United States is now a rogue state since we now legally torture. Have we now become what we set out to eliminate?
Other countries, of course, practice torture in violation of international law. As has now been clear for a while, we have been in their company for some years. The latest twist, however, is that we now won’t show any shame about it. Rather than simply violating the laws to which we have agreed to adhere, we’re repudiating them, simply denying that the standard by which civilized nations operate apply to us.
The problems here will be widespread. One of the strengths of democracies on the international scene is precisely that it’s much harder for liberal states to violate agreements. Dictatorships can say one thing and do another with ease. Democracies feature free presses, free speech, the rule of law, independent judiciaries, legislative oversight, and other measures to ensure that laws and treaties are followed. This is, to the conservative mind, a weakness. In their view, cheating is a good thing, and America’s historical difficulty in cheating constitutes a problem. They’re dead wrong. Cooperation is a good thing — the best ticket to prosperity, security, and international peace. Democracies can cooperate with other countries — and especially with other democracies — more credibly and effectively, and that’s one of the reasons the world’s democratic block is so much stronger and more prosperous than the rest of the world.
But the rule of law is now off the table as far as Bush is concerned. What’s more, insofar as national-security policy is at issue, the United States increasingly doesn’t look like much of a democracy. As the congressional Republicans march in lockstep behind the White House’s torture agenda, they don’t even know what that agenda’s composed of. The Boston Globe reported Saturday that 90 percent of members of Congress don’t know “which interrogation techniques have been used in the past, and none of them know which ones would be permissible under proposed changes to the War Crimes Act.” Which is just to say that, in practice, absolutely everything would be permitted, since the only people capable of overseeing the interrogation program haven’t done it, won’t do it, and have no intention of doing it in the future.
Consequently, the United States now presents itself as what amounts to the globe’s largest and most powerful rogue state — a nuclear-armed superpower capable of projecting military force to the furthest corners of the earth, acting utterly without legal or moral constraint whenever the president proclaims it necessary. The idea that striking such a posture on the world stage will serve our long-term interests is daft. American power has, for decades, rested crucially on the sense that the United States can be trusted and relied upon, on the belief that we use our power primarily to defend the community of liberal states and the liberal rules by which they conduct themselves rather than to undermine them.
An America prepared to casually toss out the most fundamental principles of international humanitarian diplomacy, along with basic human decency and the rule of law as side helpings, is not a country others are going to want to cooperate with.
Hat tip: Sean Aqui.
- How long till they come and take your favorite blogger away? — Punkass Mac @ PunkAssBlog.com expresses concern that the inclusion of the term “leftist terrorist” in the NIE report may eventually lead to serious problems for leftist bloggers once the new torture/detainee legislation passes. Pain-in-the-ass lefty bloggers can be labeled as having “leftist terrorist agendas” and disappear into some CIA black prison or Gitmo.
On Iraq
- Batiste — Gregory @ The Belgravia Dispatch wrote an excellent piece, quoting former Major General John Batiste’s testimony before the Senate Democratic Policy Committee which presented a rather scathing review of Rumsfeld’s competence as a wartime leader. Gregory’s analysis is dead on, suggesting that the Bush-Chenney Administration is all talk but no real muscle to back it up, meaning they haven’t or can’t put the resources in to match their own rhetoric.
That is to say, the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld troika are only pretending to have the sang-froid and will and staying power and Churchillian courage to prevail in Iraq. But they are being dishonest with us. They are empty suits, presiding over a failing strategy, none of them with the energy or intellectual courage to own up and demand either that the nation sacrifice and devote adequate resources to the effort, or failing that pursue a convincing alternative strategy. Of course, it’s not all their fault, as they are bowing to some realities, one suspects. If Bush gave a speech calling for re-institution of the draft, or implemention of a war tax, or even less dramatic moves but nevertheless ones that demanded more sacrifice (sending another 50,000 troops in, with casualty rates inevitably increasing, especially if we adopted less conservative force postures in keeping with best counter-insurgency practice) one presumes the nation would turn on the war all the faster (though if such moves changed the tenor of the war for the better perhaps support would not drop as much as one might suspect, although one would need real leaders at the helm explicating the need persuasively, which we don’t). Worth noting too, Rove would allow none of it, with midterms looming in November.
Regardless, what we have now is not quite ’stay the course’, or the comically desperate sounding ‘adapting to win’, or some such soundbite. What we are doing, really, is half-assing along as best we can without truly summoning all the national reservoirs of power (military, economic, diplomatic, humanitarian) to really have a real go at prevailing, assuming one believes there is still a shot at eking out a victory, an issue where intelligent people (as the previous thread indicated) can disagree. At some point, we either step up, talk to the Iranians and Syrians so as to get more intelligent about pursuing a regional strategy, make clear and signal to Iraqis we’re there to truly prevail by sending in more forces, and otherwise get more serious (more robust force posture to truly “clear”, not via endless rounds of whack-a-mole, but with a convincing footprint and level of sustained effort through entire areas of concern simultaneously, more funds for reconstruction and infrastructure to effectively “build”, increasing American embeds operating with both Iraqi Army and even Police units so as to help develop more of an indigenuous “hold” function, and so on)–or we need to think much more about pursuing an intelligent withdrawal strategy–if perhaps we don’t think the additional effort is worth it (perhaps presiding over a confederation, but holding out the prospects of a unitary state in the future, a la Dayton, is worthy of more thought). Either way, the rough status quo, with a couple soldiers dying a day, dishonors their sacrifice, because it is a sacrifice made in vain. And our leaders are not honest enough to come clean with us about this, or if they think they are being honest with us, it is only because they are living in a deluded fantasy land where fundamentalist-style verities reign, rather than the grim realities presented by the empirical evidence around them.
Hat tip: John Cole.
Have an opinion on these topics to share or found a post you want to add? Add your opinion or the post link to the comments section. My inquiring mind wants to know!
Tags: John Batiste, Senate Democratic Policy Committee, George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Iraq, War, stay the course, adapting to win, propaganda, American soldiers, Middle East, Seth Stein, American Airlines, mass hysteria, terrorism, rogue state, The American Prospect, CBS News, torture, War Crimes Act, Geneva Convention, Congress, Seattle, Tamil, TSA, Kip Hawley, leftist terrorist agenda, NIE report, Guantanamo Bay
September 20th, 2006
- Thank a Democrat for Lower Gas Prices — Richard Cranium @ The All Spin Zone reminds us that it was Democratic Party Congressional candidate Larry Kissell who held a campaign rally at a gas station in Biscoe, NC on August 3rd to remind voters that the price of gasoline was $1.22/gallon when the GOP incumbent in his district took office. Ever since then, the price of gas has been dropping nationwide.
With third quarter oil industry profit statements due out just before the upcoming elections, it’s pretty easy to assume that the Gouging Oil Party boys in the backroom figured that something had to be done, even if (for the oil companies) it meant taking a bit of a hit on the bottom line for a few months. Ergo, gasoline prices have dropped by nearly 30% in the space of a couple of weeks, even as BP’s shutdown of their Alaskan pipeline continues, and middle east tensions continue apace, and (strangely) the cost of a barrel of crude has dropped by maybe 10%. The good news is that, based on my own water cooler conversation, even the most hard core neocons in our midst understand the play.
So, the next time you fill up your tank and you don’t have to sign over a second mortgage on house to do it, remember that Democratic Party congressional candidate Larry Kissell from NC-8, is more responsible for the drop in prices than anyone else on the planet. Here’s an idea on how to thank Larry: take $10 of that gas savings, and drop it in Larry’s campaign bucket.
- Gas Prices a Republican Dirty Trick — Becky @ Preemptive Karma takes a different look at how the Republicans are using their Big Oil friends to lower gas prices before the 2006 election.
More
Tags: gas prices, oil industry, privacy, CIA, CIA Interrogation Program, George W. Bush, Article 3, Geneva Convention, Congress, John Warner, Colin Powell, Jack Vessey, Lindsay Graham, John McCain, POW, torture, detainees, terrorism, White House, politics, anthrax, 9/11, phobic nation, J. Edgar Hoover, FBI, Martin Luther King Jr., Iraq, International Red Cross, Maher Arar, Canada, Syria, JFK Airport
September 15th, 2006
Pugly is very opinionated about his politics. George Bush makes a good chew toy when things get stressful in Puppy-world.
Don’t forget to check out this week’s Friday Ark!
Tags: Pug, the puppy, George W. Bush, political dog chew toy
September 13th, 2006
- The 9/11 Timeline — To mark the five-year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, ThinkProgress has created a comprehensive timeline documenting the key events since September 11, 2001. Their timeline charts five threads:
- The steady increase in international terrorism and the growth of al Qaeda
- The campaign to block and obstruct the work of the 9/11 Commission, and the failure to carry out the commission’s recommendations
- The failure to stablize and rebuild Afghanistan
- The downgrading of the hunt for Osama bin Laden
- The steady decline of America’s image abroad
- ABC’s ‘Path’ Not Taken — Ruth Marcus @ TheWashingtonPost.com writes a scathing review of ABC’s “Path to 9/11″ mini-series that was fraught with inaccuracies and blantant flaws.
The docudrama is an inherently flawed form, one that invites embroidery. The irony of “The Path to 9/11″ is that this dramatic license was so unnecessary, given the richly detailed narrative in a document available to the docudrama’screators. It was called “The 9/11 Commission Report.”
Hat tip: John in DC @ AmericaBlog
- More
Tags: terrorism, ABC, Keith Olbermann, George W. Bush, 9/11, Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Memorial, World Trade Center, Mark Juergensmeyer, al-Qaeda, 9/11 Commission, Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden, Condi Rice, George Tenet, Saddam Hussein, al-Zarqawi
September 11th, 2006
Remembering the Day
- For Thou Art With Us — Sarah Bunting @ TomatoNation.com was there.
We come up the rise to the corner where a crowd of people has gathered, all looking up, and the towers come into view — the south tower closer to us and to the left. “Ohhh, man,” we both say, and “Jeeeesus Christ,” and “This is not good. This is not good at all. This is fuckin’ bad.” So dumb. So dull. We sound like frat boys when the keg is dry, but there’s nothing else we can say about what we’ve got in front of us. In front of us, high above us, the south tower has a huge hole torn through it, a burning, screaming maw with thick black smoke pouring out. Occasionally, flames lick up one corner of the twisted mouth of the hole and then retreat, only to reappear on the other side. It doesn’t seem real. It doesn’t even seem that serious at first, actually, until I remember just how big the building is, how many stories high — and that the hole must therefore cover twelve stories, at least. “This isn’t the kind of history I want to be present at,” I say, lamely, to Bob. “Me neither,” he says.
More
Tags: 9/11, World Trade Center, terrorism, New York, American flag, Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden, Conspiracy Theories, George W. Bush, Matt Lauer, Rudy Giuliani, ABC, tragedy, patriotism, Ground Zero, We Will Never Forget, al-Qaeda, CIA, Pakistan, Taliban, Joint Special Operations Command, NSA, National Counterterrorism Center, Tora Bora, al-Zawahiri, Paul Krugman, NATO, Bill Clinton, Rush Limbaugh, Pentagon, healthcare, Iraq
September 9th, 2006
A Little Fun First
- Thursday Thirteen #2 — ribbiticus @ Pond Perspective offers some gems of advice. Here are my favorites:
5. It may be that your sole purpose in life is simply to serve as a warning to others.
10. Some mistakes are too much fun to only make once.
11. We could learn a lot from crayons. Some are sharp, some are pretty and some are dull. Some have weird names, and all are different colors, but they all have to live in the same box.
12. A truly happy person is one who can enjoy the scenery on a detour.
13. Nobody cares if you can’t dance well. Just get up and dance.
More
Tags: Thursday Thirteen, Crayons, terrorism, Logan Airport, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Congress, wiretapping, Osama bin Laden, Mother Jones, liberals, 9/11, religion, aetheists, women, virginity, Journal of Sex Research Western soceity, involuntary virgins, economy, America
September 6th, 2006
- We Know The Who And The What, But What About The Why? — The (liberal)Girl Next Door asks what I’ve been asking all along: “Why out Valerie Plame?” The media seems content to have the mystery of who did the outing solved without wondering as to the why. Now that new evidence has come to light that Plame was working on the task force to determine whether or not Iraq had WMD, why was it so important to get her out of the way?
- But Bush has nothing on at all! — lambert @ CorrenteWire theorizes as to why there haven’t been any more terror attacks on American soil since 9/11 since we’re told every other day that an attack is right around the corner. If the terrorists are so competent and dangerous, why aren’t we living in a war-torn country where things are being blown up on a weekly basis? It can’t be that our security is safer; we’ve prove it isn’t.
A fully credible explanation for the fact that the United States has suffered no terrorist attacks since 9/11 is that the threat posed by homegrown or imported terrorists — like that presented by Japanese Americans during World War II or by American Communists after it — has been massively exaggerated. Is it possible that the haystack is essentially free of needles?
More
Tags: George W. Bush, terror attacks, 9/11, Terrorists, economy, irresponsible government, failed policy, Valerie Plame, WMD, Iraq, Conspiracy Theories, Matthew Fenton, National Naval Medical Center, Bathesda, Walter Reed, War, American soldiers, 101st Fighting Keyboarders
September 5th, 2006
I just saw the funniest thing on a sign down the street. Wish I had my camera today.
“Frodo Failed. Bush has the ring.”
Tags: Frodo, George W. Bush, Lord of the Rings
September 3rd, 2006
Last month, while Israel was making war against Hezbollah, I kept wondering whether the death toll of Israelis and Lebonese was worth the lives of the two Israelis who were kidnapped at the beginning of the war. After all, it was their lives that started it all.
Is there a point where the cost of innocent civilians and the lives of patriotic soldiers outweighs the original loss? What I mean is, do the lives of the few outweigh the lives of many? What makes the lives of those two soldiers worth more than those Israel was willing to kill or send to die for them?
Closer to home, how many Americans lives need to be lost before we’ve spent more than it was worth to invade Iraq?
As The Martian Anthropologist reminded me today (not that I could forget), President Bush has repeatedly linked the tragedy of September 11th with the invasion of Iraq. According to him, the two are irreversibly intertwined in the War on Terror.
Whenever he invokes those emotional memories of the loss of lives on September 11th, he’s telling us that every American life he sends to die in Iraq is for those lives lost that day. He’s telling us that he’s sending more Americans to die, to kill innocent and not-so-innocent people in exchange for those lives already lost. Those are what the lives are worth.
I think it’s something to ponder today of all days consindering as of today more Americans have died in the War in Iraq than on September 11th.
(CNN) — As the fifth anniversary of the September 11, 2001, attack on the United States approaches, another somber benchmark has just been passed.
The announcement Sunday of four more U.S. military deaths in Iraq raises the death toll to 2,974 for U.S. military service members in Iraq and in what the Bush administration calls the war on terror.
The 9/11 attack killed 2,973 people, including Americans and foreign nationals but excluding the terrorists. The 9/11 death toll was calculated by CNN.
Tags: Israel, Hezbollah, Lebanon, Iraq, American soldiers, War on Terror, 9/11, George W. Bush
September 2nd, 2006
Posted
in
Politics & Causes,
In the News,
Geekery,
Blogging & Other Blogs,
The World,
Featured,
9-11 & Terrorism,
Iraq & Afghanistan,
Hurricane Katrina,
Conspiracy Theories,
Natural Disasters,
Women's Rights,
The Middle East by
n. mallory
First Some Fun
- Thursday Thirteen #3 — Baggage @ Baggage That Goes With Mine wrote thirteen reasons why the internet is better than real life. This is my favorite.
11. On the internet, you can pop into a forum or a blog and tell a person that their beliefs are dumb, they should be breastfeeding, they should never co-sleep, they should divorce their husband, they should shave their legs, and they should stop wearing mom jeans. In real life, people would punch you in the face.
In Memory Of Katrina
More
Tags: Thursday Thirteen, Internet, Hurricane Katrina, FEMA, aid money, Gil H. Jamieson, Daniel A. Craig, Gulf Coast recovery, New Orleans, Islamofascism, George W. Bush, Muslims, women in the media, Support the Troops, defense appropriation bill, Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center, Iraq, Afghanistan, Congress, Pentagon, Lower 9th Ward, National Hurricane Canter, 9/11, Max Mayfield, Osama bin Laden, Hezbollah, terrorism, Ann Jones, Taliban, NATO, Christians, American Dream, Martin Niemoller, Germany, Nazis, Rocky Anderson, Utah, Salt Lake Tribune, patriotism, lie, Walter Jones, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell, Dick Cheney, Caddam Hussein, Donald Rumsfeld
5 comments See also in
Politics & Causes, In the News, Geekery, Blogging & Other Blogs, The World, Featured, 9-11 & Terrorism, Iraq & Afghanistan, Hurricane Katrina, Conspiracy Theories, Natural Disasters, Women's Rights, The Middle East
August 28th, 2006
- Moral relativity and the “war on terrorism” — Kevin @ Preemptive Karma wrote an excellent post about the double standard of the this administration and the expectations of the Right that expect Rep. Cynthia McKinney to apologize to the police officer she had an altercation with earlier this year but accepts the fact that the U.S. has imprisoned and tortured innocent people in Gitmo and elsewhere without apology or explanation and that is just fine.
Apparently in the twisted world of rightwing freaks slapping someone requires an apology but busting out the teeth of a perfectly innocent Lebanese or torturing an innocent Turk, not to mention their imprisonment, is something that those particular victims ought to just suck it up over, be glad that they eventually regained their freedom and to hell with apologizing to them.
- Republicans: Making the world safe for bigots and racists — Jill @ Brilliant at Breakfast writes about recent incidents in the South where black children have been segregated to the back of the school bus and a church has voted not to accept black members and she wonders what has made this sort of thing acceptable as we approach the one year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, “leaving tens of thousands of black New Orleans residents stranded or dying, while the President of the United States was yukking it up with 2008 Presidential hopeful John McCain over birthday cake.”
You can trot Condoleeza Rice out there till the cows come home, it doesn’t change the fact that when it comes to black Americans who do not serve the Republican party, as far as that party is concerned, they might as well drown.
- Have Some Foil — chicago dyke @ CorrenteWire has a nice piece up about two whistleblowers, who uncovered secret wiretapping in cell phones around the world. They’ve been murdered, of course. More
Tags: terrorism, Cynthia McKinney, Guantanamo Bay, torture, detainees, rightwingers, Republicans, racism, George W. Bush, Condi Rice, John McCain, Hurricane Katrina, whistleblowers, wiretapping, American Society of Civil Engineers, JonBenet Ramsey, pedophiles, relationships
August 18th, 2006
The Boston Globe reports that the technology to detect liquid explosives is already available and, in fact, the White House and the Supreme Court are already using such equipment known as SmartCheck, a low-intensity X-ray scanner made by AS&E that “can spot a bottle of organic compounds in a passenger’s pocket.” That’s pretty impressive actually considering all the people who end up on airplanes with all sorts of things they aren’t supposed to. However,
The TSA has not outfitted airports with the devices, in part, because officials have to prioritize where they spend limited dollars, according to Frank Cilluffo, former special assistant to President Bush for homeland security and now director of George Washington University’s Homeland Security Policy Institute.
Meanwhile, while Bush and his staff were sure of their safety, this year the Bush administration was secretly seeking permission from Congress to divert $6 million that was supposed to be spent developing new homeland explosives detection technology — technology that would protect the rest of America from those terrorists President Bush is always warning us to be afraid of.
What I really don’t understand is why we aren’t focusing on the technology we do have and distributing it to the airports we have where terrorists might think to try sneaking bombs and weapons and liquid and non-liquid explosives in. I mean SmartCheck has been around since some time in the 1990s. Just think about if something like that had been in place on September 11, 2001.
The Transportation Security Administration, the federal agency in charge of airport security, is testing products from American Science and Engineering Inc. of Billerica; Ahura Corp. of Wilmington; and General Dielectric Inc. of Acton.
AS&E’s SmartCheck system uses low-powered X-rays to scan passengers for hidden items like bottles of liquid, while Ahura and General Dielectric use lasers or microwaves respectively, to identify the contents of a sealed bottle. The TSA is also testing seven other devices made by companies in the United States, the United Kingdom , and Japan. But TSA spokeswoman Amy Kudwa says that none are ready to be deployed because of reliability and feasibility issues.
But after this month’s foiled terrorist plot to smuggle liquid explosives aboard jumbo jets, the government may not have the luxury to wait. Charles Slepian , founder of the Foreseeable Risk Analysis Center, a transportation security firm in New York, said that technology for detecting explosives in carry-on bags is well understood and readily available, but the US Department of Homeland Security is reluctant to spend the large sums needed to deploy it at hundreds of airports.
So, which is it? Is the equipment unreliable? Or does it have to do with how much money they’d have to spend? Let’s think about it.
It’s reliable enough to use at The White House. They wouldn’t risk the President’s life, would they?
So it must be all that money they’d have to spend. That’s money they could use funding the war in Iraq. After all, it’s hard to fund things when you keep insisting on cutting back on taxes. You can’t pay for the important things like protecting the country if you don’t have any money coming in.
Tags: George W. Bush, politics, terrorism, Homeland Security, Boston Globe, airport security, AS&E, SmartCheck, TSA
August 16th, 2006
So, Monday and Tuesday was filled with news of various world leaders patting each other on the back as to who won in the latest Middle East Crisis, this Israel/Hezbollah Conflict.
“We are today before a strategic, historic victory, without exaggeration,” Hezbollah’s leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, said in a televised speech that was met with celebratory gunfire in the Shia suburbs of Beirut.
“We emerged from the battle with our heads high, and our enemy is the one who is defeated.”
In an impassioned address to the Knesset, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said “the IDF warriors always had the upper hand,” and promised to hunt down Hezbollah’s leaders. [“Israel, Hezbollah claim victory” (globalandmail.com)]
“Hezbollah attacked Israel, Hezbollah started the crisis, and Hezbollah suffered a defeat in this crisis,” Bush said. [“U.S. ‘freedom agenda; big winner in Lebanon War, Bush says” (Canada.com)]
Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claimed Hezbollah had emerged the winner in Lebanon and called the battles with Israel “God’s promise”. [“Iran president hails Hezbollah victory” (Ireland Online)
The President of Syria said today that the map of the Middle East had been redrawn by Hezbollah’s “victory” in its five-week war with Israel.
In a rare public speech, Bashir al-Assad said that the once invincible Israeli army had been humiliated and that the Jewish state would do well to seek peace and hand back occupied Arab land - or risk more defeats if it tried to pursue “terrorist policies” in the future.[“Syria declares victory in Lebanon conflict” (TimesOnline.co.uk)]
Probably the silliest thing to come out of Israel’s mini-war with Hezbollah in Lebanon is the posturing over who “won.”
Nobody won.[“No ‘winner’ in the conflict, but Palestinians are losers” (PensacolaNewsJournal.com)
This morning NPR was interviewing a family of Israelis returning to their homes for the first time since last Friday after it had been hit by a Hezbollah rocket. The father/husband/man of the house said what I think none of the news, military and government analysts get — except maybe The Pensacola News Journal — when asked about who he thought won the war, he basically said, “No one wins wars, there are only losers and losers.”
In the end, I wonder if governments and world leaders and terrorists and ideological fanatic folks and such stopped to ask those of us who are just trying to get through our lives every day if we would be interested in going to war and killing and destroying, I wonder how many of us would really be interested in the whole idea.
The king of Zor, he called for war
And the king of Zam, he answered.
They fashioned their weapons one upon one
Ton upon ton, they called for war at the rise of the sun.
Out went the call to one and to all
That echoed and rolled like the thunder.
Trumpets and drums, roar upon roar
More upon more.
Rolling the call of Come now to war.
Throughout the night they fashioned their might
With right on the side of the mighty.
They puzzled their minds plan upon plan
Man upon man
And at dying of dawn the great war began.
They met on the battlefield banner in hand.
They looked out across the vacant land.
And they counted the missing, one upon one,
None upon none.
The war it was over before it begun.
Two little kings playing a game.
They gave a war and nobody came.
And nobody came.
And nobody came.
And nobody came.
And nobody came.
[repeat and fade]
There is no pause:
The king of Zor, he called for war
And the king of Zam, he answered.
They fashioned their weapons one upon one
Ton upon ton, they called for war at the rise of the sun.
Out went the call to one and to all
That echoed and rolled like the thunder.
Trumpets and drums, roar upon roar
More upon more.
Rolling the call of Come now to war.
Throughout the night they fashioned their might
With right on the side of the mighty.
They puzzled their minds plan upon plan
Man upon man
And at dying of dawn the great war began.
They met on the battlefield banner in hand.
They looked out across the vacant land.
And they counted the missing, one upon one,
None upon none.
The war it was over before it begun.
Two little kings playing a game.
They gave a war and nobody came.
And nobody came.
And nobody came.
And nobody came.
And nobody came.
[”Zor and Zam”, The Monkees, 1968, The Birds, The Bees & The Monkees]
Tags: Israel, Lebanon, NPR, Hezbollah, The Monkees, Ehud Olmert, IDF, Hassan Nasrallah, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran, George W. Bush, Syria, Bashir al-Assad, Middle East, politics
August 8th, 2006
- Preparing for Martial Law - Jill @ Brilliant at Breakfast reports that President Bush is trying to secretly federalize the National Guard, a move that the National Governors Association is trying to put a stop to. This is the kind of thing a dictator would do, by the way.