Three Texans arrested in Mackinac (Michigan) Bridge terrorism charges

Paul Krugman had a column about that today. I would link it, but I don't have NY Times select.

Hell, even George Will is ripping the administration.

You all just sit back in Oz and dream of sugar plums and lollipops if you want, though.

 

21 --
I'll let George Will, liberal hack, answer part of your question.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/14/AR2006081401163.html
And then I'll go on to say that this administration has squandered whatever good will it had on this topic years ago, by politicizing terror policies (Olbermann was good on this last night), underfunding real security concerns, and embarking on a useless, ruinous war against the wrong country. That's dangerous, because there are real threats, not as many as we're led to believe there are. (Jim Fallows in The Atlantic has a good piece on al Qaeda this month.) But there is no longer any compelling reason to believe the administration when one of these events comes bubbling to the surface. Their fault, not mine.

 

I would add, no longer any compelling reason to believe the administration or the media.....no business like show business.

I'm reading the Fallows piece, as was suggested to me on another thread...fascinating.

 

Look, Iraq is a mess. It's a mess because we went in there with good intentions (no more Saddam) but no recognition of the law of unintended consequences (i.e., you might just ignite a civil war).
But 9/11, and the first WTC attack, and the Cole, and the bombing of the African embassies, and Lebanon in 1982 -- all that happened before Bush made a hash of Iraq. All of it. So you can feel free to quit pretending that neocon ardor got all this started.

 

I know I wasn't asked, but I'll answer anyway:
a) Yes.
b) No.

I say "Yes" to (a) because since 9/11 we've heard several things repeated. One of the repeated comments is "We need to be creative in how we stop terrorists." Another thing we've heard is "They need to be right one time, while we need to be right all of the time." Both of these statements are true.

The problem is that nothing this administration has done demonstrates that they are being "creative" or acting with any forsight. A great example of this would be the most recent issue in London.

Decades ago, liquid explosives were an issue on an airline. Japan, since then, spent time and money developing a means by which to detect them. Earlier this year, when Japan provided the US with the technology, even demonstrating it to them, the administration was incredibly slow in performing their own tests in order to implement this as quickly as possible. (Source: Newsday Link)

You can't walk around the World Trade Center site or stand atop an aircraft carrier and trumpet how well you are doing to fight terrorism when you are dragging your feet in the process of detection.

The issue at Heathrow airport was incredibly insane. A woman went into Heathrow on Saturday to obtain a release from a scheduled flight so that new tickets could be obtained at Gatwick. Upon walking in, she had to go through an extremely large amount of surveillance just to reach a customer service counter. "You need to realize that we are in the middle of a war zone," was what the customer service rep said. People stood outside for four-hours in the rain on Saturday because they weren't even allowed to enter the airport for their scheduled flight (which took even though it was nearly empty 30-minutes after they left for a local hotel).

While this is all extremely troubling, much of these threats are limited to air travel. And a lot of police and intelligence agents are far more informed than they were before.

So, we are not in as much danger as the government would like you to believe, but the danger still exists.

 

And the Heathrow issue is America's fault how?

 

Interesting response. I don't recall blaming anyone in particular for Heathrow, let alone America.

Maybe you can explain how you would even come up with the idea that I blamed America for anything, let alone the Heathrow incident.

 

Twob'
People stood up and screamed about what was going to happen if these clowns went into Iraq the way they did. (Brent Scowcroft comes immediately to mind.) They had their patriotism and their fortitude ridiculed by a passel of chickenhawks who were as wrong as wrong could be. The consequences were plain as day to Bush 41 in 1991 and they were plain as day to everyone who was ignored and scorned in 2003, so don't run "the law of unintended consequences" by me. These people walked into this clusterfuck with their eyes open and their minds closed.
Who was president when 9/11 happened anyway?

 

Nobody's really arguing Iraq, save for the final holdouts on the far, far right.
You don't think these were unintended consequences? You think Bush & buds wanted a civil war? Sorry, but that's not going to sell. They thought they knew better. They were wrong. You get to be right about that.
Your attitude toward terrorism, however, has consistently demonstrated the same sort of blind idealism the neo-cons carried with them to Iraq.

 

I find it hard to believe that a Yugo is still running (well, I guess it's not anymore).