Entries Tagged with Homeland Security
August 25th, 2006
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n. mallory
- ‘Liquid Bombers’ - The Impossible Bomb — A lot of websites have been linking to this explanation as to why the most recent terror plot from the UK could not have worked and why all of the fearmongering and passenger harrassment by the UK and American governments in the airports is unnecessary. I say, read it for yourself and decide for yourself.
- Homeland insecurity 2.0 — Pam @ Pam’s House Blend wrote one of the best reports of what travelling immediately after the latest terrorist plot scare was like that I’ve read.
Again, the PA came on, this time it was for another flight — on Continental — that was boarding. This announcer, I’m not kidding you, went on for about 2-3 minutes warning people about taking on liquids and gels (”liquid” chapstick is a no-no, solid is OK), no coffee or soda will make it on board. Random checks at the gate would be performed. If they find contraband on you, you will be asked to give it up. If you don’t give it up, you’ll not be able to board, he boomed, and you would have to go on a later flight. “Not later today,” he warned, “maybe not even this week…maybe not for a couple of weeks.” OK, at this point, people are laughing, including the two of us. This is ludicrous.
Our flight is finally called and we board. The plane is about to close up and a couple of late arrivals get on. This time we have a woman taking her sweet time, coming down the aisle with a steaming hot cup of Cinnabon coffee, which she proceeds to balance on an armrest as she casually loads her bag in the overhead bin, blocking the aisle as a couple of people wait behind her.
Clearly, my friends, US Airways has let on the Cinnabomber.
More
Tags: liquid bombers, airport security, Continental, U.S. Airways, crime rate, terrorism, morning-after pill, women soldiers, American soldiers, pharmacists, JonBenet Ramsey, Abeer al-Janabi, Jessica Lynch, Jim Bensman, Army Corps of Engineers, FBI, Duarris Perez, Guantanamo Bay, Gitmo, Cuba, Homeland Security, Bosnia, Algeria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Hamas, al-Qaeda, Hurricane Katrina, pink food coloring, food industry
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Politics & Causes, In the News, Geekery, Blogging & Other Blogs, The World, Featured, 9-11 & Terrorism, Iraq & Afghanistan, Hurricane Katrina, Natural Disasters, The Middle East
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 4th, 2006
- Tin Foil Hats And Tiaras For Everyone! — The (liberal)Girl Next Door talks about the recent poll revealing that 1/3rd of Americans believe that 9/11 was “an inside job” and what that staggering fact could or should mean for our future as a country.
One out of three people think the Bush administration could very well have organized the deaths of 3,000 innocent Americans for the sole purpose of furthering their foreign policy objectives. In other words, a third of this country’s citizens believe that the Bush administration is a terrorist organization. How is it possible that impeachment isn’t even on the table if that many Americans think he’s a killer? Yes, it’s a rhetorical question and we can all say in unison, “it’s possible with the help of a lapdog press.”
- Internet “Conspiracies” — In contrast Red Bull uses the same poll to champion Net Neutrality. More
Tags: Conspiracy Theories, 9/11, net neutrality, gay hate crimes, Homeland Security, FAS, disaster preparedness, Israel, U.S., Hezbollah, Lebanon, Middle East, Military Families Speak Out
July 28th, 2006
- Special Analysis: The Sacrifice of Pawns — Big Brass Blog has a memorial to the 1967 bombing of The USS Liberty. For those of you who don’t know you’re history, it was throroughly laid to waste with 34 dead and 174 wounded on June 18, 1967 off the coast of Egypt. The attackers were our allies Israel and to this day there remain questions surrounding the why and whether it really was an accident.
- Pentagon sells excess military gear to anybody — Homeland Stupidity has a post about how Auditors from the Government Accountability Office have discovered just how easy it is to buy sensitive military equipment such as “ceramic body armor inserts currently used by deployed troops, a time selector unit used to ensure the accuracy of computer-based equipment, such as global positioning systems and system-level clocks, a universal frequency counter used to ensure that the frequency of communication gear is running at the expected rate, two guided missile radar test sets, at least 12 digital microcircuits used in F-14 Tomcat fighter aircraft, and numerous other sensitive electronic parts.” And where would you buy such things? From the Department of Defense, of course. Makes you wonder if thd DoD is on Homeland Security’s watchlist.
Tags: USS Liberty, Israel, Conspiracy Theories, Defense Department, Pentagon, Homeland Security, Government Accountability Office
July 23rd, 2006
- Censorship is “Just a Policy” — All Spin Zone blogged about how FEMA won’t let trailer residents give media intervies without a FEMA chaparone.
- Third time’s not the charm: Sunday-morning talk shows still imbalanced — Media Matter’s study proving that Sunday talk shows are far from so-called liberal media. In fact, it’s been over a decade since they’ve been anywhere near balanced near that direction. The statistics clearly show that if it’s Sunday, it must be a Conservative guest.
- There was another report of Homeland Security’s TALON database being misused to store student anti-war and anti-military recruitment protestors in the news. (Hat tip AmericaBlog)
- Right-Wing Attacks American Evacuees: ‘Ingrates,’ ‘Whining,’ ‘Spoiled-Rotten Little Children’ — ThinkProgress.org reported on Fox News childish, incompassionate, extremely unprofessional journalism. No wonder, the average right-winger thinks this is appropriate behavior. The comment section is worth a read, but be sure you have some time set aside to sit and read it all.
- Israelis and Lebanese talking…on the net — ThinkProgress.org also reports abouts about Israelis and Lebanese who would rather not be bombing each other but would instead prefer something more peaceful reaching out to each other via the Internet. Too bad those aren’t the ones in charge…
- 128 — the number out of 400,000 frozen embryos that have been adopted, according to ThinkProgress.org. I suppose that leaves 399,872 that could be used to help find cures for cancer, AIDS, and who knows what else that’s killing Americans and other people across the globe.
- Italy is considering serving the US with extradition papers for 26 CIA agents for the abduction of an Islamist cleric, Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, known as Abu Omar, who was seized from Milan 3 years ago, taken to Egypt, and tortured. [Guardian Unlimited]
Tags: FEMA, liberal media, TALON, Homeland Security, Fox News, Israel, Lebanon, Veto, World Peace, stem cell research, Middle East, Italy, Abu Omar
April 7th, 2006
Well, in case you thought that sexual perversion in government officials was isolated to Homeland Security…
A high-ranking Defense Department IT official has been arrested and indicted on child pornography charges.
Charles Lynch, director of the Defense Information Systems Agency’s Internet Protocol version 6 transition program, was arrested March 8 and indicted in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia the next day on one count of possessing child pornography.
According to a statement by the DOD Inspector General’s Office, court documents allege that Lynch had been operating a peer-to-peer file-sharing program on a computer in his office at DISA. Agents confiscated several computers and more than 1,000 CDs from Lynch’s office. Agents found child pornography in computer file folders, the IG’s statement said.
Lynch, 44, is on leave without pay from DISA. If convicted, he faces up to 10 years in prison.
The investigation is being conducted by the Defense Criminal Investigative Service, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the DISA OIG. Officials with those agencies, as well as the U.S. Attorney’s Office, declined to comment on the ongoing investigation.
In apparently unrelated cases, a Homeland Security Department official was arrested earlier this week for soliciting sex over the Internet with a minor. And last week, federal agents seized computer equipment from the desk of a NASA official March 29, based on information developed during a U.S. Postal Inspection Service undercover investigation of Internet trafficking in child pornography. [“DOD IPv6 director arrested for possession of child porn” (GNC)]
Remember when the Rebublicans thought a President having a blowjob in the White House was the most immoral thing a man could do? Why aren’t we hearing as much of a fuss from the same right that launched a witch hunt for that same President about all of these government officials who are preying on innocent children on government time and government equipment and taxpayer money?
Hat Tip to Suburban Guerrilla.
Tags: Bill Clinton, NASA, Homeland Security, FBI, Defense Department, child predators, Charles Lynch
April 5th, 2006
Everyone who’s supposedly anyone in the blogsphere is reporting that there’s a second case of a Department of Homeland Security Sex Scandal today — this is the case of Frank Figueroa senior law enforcement official who used to run DHS’s Operation Predator and who was busted last October after exposing himself to a girl in a food court.
Obviously no one was paying attention to me when I reported earlier that there was a DHS federal agent arrested through Dateline’s child predator special program.
So there’s three.
Kind of lends itself to my theory that Homeland Security has a special club for them, doesn’t it?
Tags: Homeland Security, child predators, Frank Figueroa, Dateline
April 5th, 2006
When I worked for the government, I was worried about using the office copier for personal business lest I get fired.
This guy was using his work computer and work cel phone paid for by taxpayer dollars to seduce a little girl. How gross and wrong and evil is that?
Oh, yeah and did I meantion, that he’s not just some underling like I was, he’s the Spokesperson for Homeland Security.
Do you feel safer now? How do you feel about your kids?
WASHINGTON (CNN) — A deputy press secretary for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security was arrested Tuesday at his Maryland home on charges he used his computer in an attempt to seduce a child and transmitted harmful materials to a minor, according to the Polk County, Florida, Sheriff’s Office.
Brian J. Doyle, 55, is charged with seven counts of use of a computer to seduce a child and 16 counts of transmission of harmful material to a minor, according to a sheriff’s office statement.
In interviews with police, Doyle confessed and has agreed to waive extradition to Florida, Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said.
On March 12, according to a police statement, Doyle contacted a Polk County computer crimes detective posing online as a 14-year-old girl “and initiated a sexually explicit conversation with her … Doyle knew that the ‘girl’ was 14 years old, and he told her who he was and that he worked for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.”
Judd said that Doyle, in the first conversation, told the detective his position with DHS and “started immediately into pretty vulgar language. He explained in graphic detail the sexual acts he wanted to perform with this 14-year-old.”
As the two continued chatting online, police said, Doyle gave her his home and office phone numbers, and the number to his government-issue cell phone. He also had explicit telephone conversations with a detective posing as the girl, authorities said.
In addition, he used the Internet to send “hard-core pornographic movie clips” to her, and also used an America Online instant-messaging service to have explicit online conversations with her.
“The investigation revealed that the phone numbers given to the detective were in fact Doyle’s, and that the AOL account was registered to him,” police said.
Doyle also sent photos of himself that were not sexually explicit, but said he would send nude photos if the “girl” would buy a Web camera and send him nude photos of herself. In one photo, Judd said, Doyle’s DHS security tag is clearly visible.
“Many of the conversations he initiated … are too extraordinary and graphic for public release,” a statement from the sheriff’s office said.
“I read the transcripts,” Judd said. “I wanted to see if this was just as outrageous as the detectives depicted it … It shocked all of us who have worked vice, narcotics, organized crime, homicides.”
A DHS spokesman said the agency would cooperate in the probe.
“We take these allegations very seriously,” Russ Knocke said, “and we will cooperate fully with the ongoing investigation.”
Doyle, Judd said, is divorced and has children. Authorities believe he could have held similar conversations online with others, Judd said, because at some points during online chats he would address the detective by the wrong name. [“DHS spokesman arrested in child sex sting” (CNN.com)]
What struck me as interesting is that he isn’t the first Homeland Security person to get netted in such a scandal. Dateline reeled one in during their “To Catch A Predator II” series this year. Though you really haven’t heard anything about that federal agent. I guess he wasn’t a big enough fish. Makes you wonder if they have club meetings though.
Gives me the heebie-jeebies. There is a special hell for men who prey on children.
Tags: child predators, pedophiles, Dateline, Homeland Security, Brian Doyle
March 6th, 2006
I have a good imagination and I watch more than my share of t.v. and movies. I also admit to such geeky activities as role-playing games and despite having earned the nickname “conspiracy girl” like it’s my superhero name or something, I am probably not the most paranoid of my geekier friends.
So, you can imagine that my view of what Homeland Security’s officies are like is pretty high-tech and bleak. I imagine retnal scans and fingerprinting and all sorts of trials and tribulations just to get into the coffee break room. I expect that the best of the best trained soldiers are onsite to protect whatever it is that’s going on there.
More
Tags: politics, Homeland Security, outsourcing
March 3rd, 2006
Well, it’s long been joked that credit card debt is the real American Dream just like Mom and Apple Pie. The government must think there’s some truth to it because apparently if you pay off or even just down your credit card debt, it sets off alarms in Homeland Security. Yup. You don’t have to even try to carry a lighter on the airplane or use your cel phone to call the “wrong” person overseas. All you have to do is try to be a responsible adult and Homeland Security could be investigating you, holding your bank account hostage, looking into your every little charge whether it’s at Publix or Fredrick’s or the place that mails you things in the brown packaging.
Feel safe yet?
(Hat Tip to All Spin Zone)
Tags: Terrorists, Homeland Security, stupidity
February 27th, 2006
Holy crap.
Halliburton Subsidiary Gets Contract to Add Temporary Immigration Detention Centers
By Rachel L. Swarns
New York Times
February 4, 2006
WASHINGTON, Feb. 3 — The Army Corps of Engineers has awarded a contract worth up to $385 million for building temporary immigration detention centers to Kellogg Brown & Root, the Halliburton subsidiary that has been criticized for overcharging the Pentagon for its work in Iraq.
KBR would build the centers for the Homeland Security Department for an unexpected influx of immigrants, to house people in the event of a natural disaster or for new programs that require additional detention space, company executives said. KBR, which announced the contract last month, had a similar contract with immigration agencies from 2000 to last year. [“Halliburton detention camp contract: cause for alarm?”]
This just sends a chill down my spine. When I read it, all I could think was “Where have I read this before?
Oh, yes.
In 1984, FEMA tested it’s wartime crisis strategy in conjuction with Pentagon maneuvers. Their “readiness exercise” was code named Rex-84. FEMA’s part of the simulation had to do with an international crisis set off by a U.S. invasion of Nicaragua which resulted in a swarm of refugees coming in over the Mexican border into the U.s. According to an article in Penthouse (August 1985), during the exercise FEMA would simulate rounding up some 400,000 fictional “aliens” in a six-hour period and detaining them in military camps thoughout the U.S. FEMA justified the detention camps by suggesting that terrorist moles could be among the refugees. However, according to one of the co-authors of that Penthouse article, the terrain of the Mexican border made such a huge influx of hundreds of thousands of people highly unlikely.
If that’s the case, who exactly was FEMA interested in rounding up?
Some critics believe that Rex-84 was actually a simulation to practice rounding up Americans in large numbers — probably those “flaming hippies, militant minorities, and draft-dodging radicals of the 60’s and early 70’s, not to mention possible protestors of a controversial government invasion of Central America. Not a far leap in logic when you consider the fact that in 1970, Giuffrida had written a paper devising a hypothetical plan to detain black radicals in detention camps. [“FEMA’s Dark History”]
The “plan” last time was to set FEMA up to declare martial law during any kind of crisis and have it take over the government — comforting considering how well it’s been doing with hurricane disaster and recovery.
Forget Gitmo, Bush & company are blatantly planning and building concentration camps for dissidents now — and remember, dissidents are anyone who doesn’t agree 100% with every single thing that Bush’s administration claims is the right thing, even if it totally disagrees with what they said last week.
1984, anyone?
Folks, this administration is very semi-quietly putting everything in place so that one day we are going to wake up and discover that we are living in a police state and our civil liberties are gone! And if you think that living like that is worth the empty promises of a President and his political party that terrorists won’t attack again on our soil, you might as well be a slave now. What kind of life is that? Let me tell you something. The terrorists are winning. They’re winning because what they wanted was to affect us, to change us, to enslave us, to force us to give up our freedoms. They might not be sitting on a throne dishing out the rules from our own capital, but they might as well be if we are willing to sacrifice the very freedoms that we prided ourselves on, taunted the Iron Curtain with, and claim we want to bring to the rest of the world.
Say goodbye to the Land of the Free. There’ll be a law against freedom soon.
Tags: politics, Halliburton, Conspiracy Theories, Homeland Security, immigration, FEMA
October 4th, 2005
Well, this is a little disturbing. Remember when Bush and his adminstration promised to help rebuild the Gulf Coast, including it’s economy? Remember how “reconstruction” was going to boost the Gulf Coasts local economy?
Companies outside the three states most affected by Hurricane Katrina have received more than 90 percent of the money from prime federal contracts for recovery and reconstruction of the Gulf Coast, according to an analysis of available government data. [“Gulf Firms Losing Contracts (Washington Post)”]
Among the contracts analyzed, 3.8 percent of the money went to companies that listed an Alabama address, 2.8 percent to firms in Louisiana and just 1.8 percent went for Mississippi contractors. Taken together, that amounts to less than $200 million. [“Gulf Firms Losing Contracts (Washington Post)”]
It’s not surprising that locals and local officials are unhappy with this raw deal. They rightfuly fear that most of the money will flow out of state and out of an area that was already economically suffering before Hurricane Katrina.
The Department of Homeland Security estimates that as of early last week, 72 percent of the $1.6 billion that the Federal Emergency Management Agency had committed so far to contracts for Hurricane Katrina relief went to small firms nationwide in either prime or subcontracts, said department spokesman Larry Orluskie. But he said only 6 percent of the funds have gone to companies in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama — a region where small firms make up a disproportionately large share of the economy. [“Gulf Firms Losing Contracts (Washington Post)”]
I keep thinking of the old saying about how if you give a man a fish, he’ll be hungry tomorrow but if you teach a man to fish, he’ll feed himself. The Gulf Coast needs help rebuilding but it shouldn’t be done for them by outside businesses that will take the money away and then abandon the area. The Gulf Coast needs to rebuild it’s own structure and the government needs to help them do that, not by providing overpriced contractors who underpay locals and take the profits somewhere else, but by giving local companies the chance to survive — plus, I’m willing to bet that local companies are more interested in doing things right because at the end of it all, they’ll still be there in the community.
Meanwhile, many local firms that want to work with the government say they continue to meet with frustration. Kendall Prewett said he has been trying for weeks to get government subcontracting work for his Mississippi-based debris removal firm, B & P Enterprises, but that neither the government nor the prime contractor, Florida-based AshBritt Inc., is returning his calls. “I don’t understand why all these people not from here are working, and the Mississippi contractors aren’t,” he said.
AshBritt referred requests for comment to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which said it is encouraging the award of subcontracting work to local companies. [“Gulf Firms Losing Contracts (Washington Post)”]
Hmmmm…so it’s not like people can just say all of those Southern people are all lazy and want everything done for them and handed to them by the government like I’ve been hearing/reading of late. There are people who want to work, want to help their communities, and want to get on with their lives, but the government is ignoring them in favor of bigger, more expensive, outside companies…makes a lot of sense really when you consider how much money FEMA spent driving all that ice around the country only to part it in New England.
Even so, the overall small percentage of contracts with local firms “suggests a lack of advance planning to tap local small business partners in an effective disaster response strategy,” Sen. Olympia J. Snowe (R-Maine), who chairs the Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, said in a statement. [“Gulf Firms Losing Contracts (Washington Post)”]
Have I mentioned lately how much I like Olympia Snowe?
Tags: Gulf Coast, Hurricane Katrina, economy, Homeland Security, Olympia Snowe
July 11th, 2005
Really, this is just more proof that the government doesn’t have a clue. We certainly aren’t safer. Immigration hasn’t gotten stricter. Most imported cargos are still not thoroughly checked. People are still getting on airplanes with all manner of ridiculous items and there hasn’t seemed much interest in making certain other modes of transportation are safe.
Senate likely to restore cuts to rail security funds:
Three weeks before London’s bus and subway bombings Thursday, a Senate committee voted to slash spending on mass transit security in the United States, a decision sure to be reversed when Congress returns next week.
And yet, most of the Homeland Security Funding has been misspent on things like air-conditioned garbage trucks, sending sanitation workers to a Dale Carnegie course that has nothing to do with emergency preparedness ($100K, btw), a computerized car towing service, and other things that don’t seem to concern Homeland Security.
What a mess.
Tags: Senate, immigration, Homeland Security
June 30th, 2004
Talking politics is a quick way to make friends and enemies these days. Personally, I have tried not to discuss politics or religion in my journals or with my friends “back home”. For the most part I discovered that some people tend to take both subjects way too personally and feel the fanatical need to convert everyone they know to the “right” way of thinking which is of course always their way. Some of my friends “back home” had a penchant for getting into loud, angry, pissing matches over politics, religion, and sometimes even books and movies and while I enjoy a good debate, I don’t like shouting matches or banging my head against a wall.
For the most part, many people either make up their minds and cling to those opinions no matter what the facts or opinions of others or they do as their parents or spouses do and believe what their parents or spouses believe. Sometimes both options play a part. Unfortunately many people never let exeriences or newly learned facts to change their opinions; they cling to the belief that they are right despite everything.
Some of my friends “back home” are like that which is why I don’t allow such topics on the mailing list we all use to keep track of each other. People become too easily offended, emails fly back and forth because people are offended or they want to force others to see things their way. It’s all very unpleasant and sad.
I like to keep an open-mind. I won’t say that I don’t think I’m right. I just admit that I could be wrong. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me. In fact, my opinions on many things have changed over the last 33 years. Things I believed in with all my heart when I was a teenager have proven themselves not true or have become questionable as my experiences and new facts have reared their ugly heads. I may still be a bit naive. I may still not understand every facet of everything going on in the world, but at the very least I have an open-mind and I accept when I’m wrong and I find talking, debating with others either strengthens my beliefs or changes them.
I think it’s a sign of a mature individual…though I don’t know that I’m all that mature or that I’m even mentally healthy at times. 
So, I’ve come to enjoy in my new life the ability to have mature, adult conversations about politics with people here and people I’ve met online — people who don’t just shout rhetoric back and forth and people who have a clue not only about what is going on in the world but don’t believe everything they hear or read.
So, here is my political stance for those of you who are interested:
- I have voted for every President who has been in office since I started voting at 18 years old — I’m 33 now.
- I have been registered as a Republican, a Democrat, and an Independent at various times in my life. Currently, I am registered as a Democrat though 3 months ago I was an Independent.
- I have never believed that we should invade Iraq. I never thought they had weapons of mass destruction last year. I can’t believe the Bush Administration keeps insisting that is why were are there. I don’t know why other countries who do indeed have weapons of mass destruction have been left to their own devices. I believe we were lied to and if we weren’t lied to then the Bush Administration can’t admit they made an error in judgement and I don’t know which is worse.
- I was for invading Afghanistan but very disappointed that Bush didn’t finish the job.
- I am offended that Bush doesn’t think the outsourcing of American jobs to other countries is an issue. The companies might be saving money but they aren’t passing along that savings to the unemployed masses.
- I am offended that Bush’s administration thinks that the 1.25 million jobs they “created” in the last few months should quell the rising voices when the jobs that have been created are not equivallent in skill or money to the ones that millions of Americans have lost over the last 4 years.
- I am horrified that Bush wants to change the law to keep Americans who love each other from any kind of union, whether you call it a marriage or not, and the rights and benefits such a union should have.
- I am against abortion but believe it’s not my place to tell anyone they can’t have one for whatever reason.
- I am against the draft.
- I am against any merge of church and state and yet Bush’s administration is constantly dragging religion into their politics.
- Bush’s administration scares the hell out of me. I really believe they are out of control and believe that they are too powerful to be ruled by the laws, standards, and beliefs they hold everyone else to.
- It scares me to talk to people who still believe there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. It scares me to listen to people who swear by every word that comes out of Bush’s mouth.
- It scares me that people still think there was a connection between Sadaam and 9/11. I never thought there was and it makes me sick to think that propaganda was used and so widely believed.
- It scares me that people don’t realize that some of those prisoners in those Iraqi prisons were innocent bystanders who were arrested by accident, tortured and humiliated, and even killed. People were killed in inhumane and compassionless ways and yet we are justified because other people that look like them caused 9/11 and other people who look like them have been killing hostages in the Middle East — ironically, the terrorists weren’t in Iraq before we arrived and opened the door but their presence now is used as a reason why we invaded…
- I am afraid of the Homeland Security and the Big Brother concept that it is.
- I am afraid that the terrorists have won by causing us to step closer to losing the freedoms they hate us for.
Tags: politics, dysfunctional drama, George W. Bush, outsourcing, Afghanistan, Gay Rights, abortion, pro-choice, WMD, innocent, detainees, Homeland Security, Terrorists
