Tell me something I don't know

[khaosworks]

Cheney: Attacks Almost a 'Certainty'

Vice President Dick Cheney said Sunday he is almost certain that terrorists will attack the United States again. "It's not a matter of if, but when," he said.

Cheney also acknowledged past failures in responding to signs of terrorism, but said he does not know if the Sept. 11 attacks could have been prevented "even if we had all those pieces together."

The vice president, in two talk show appearances, confirmed that U.S. intelligence is picking up hints that Osama bin Laden's terrorist network may be planning an attack. The information is vague, but should be taken seriously, he said.

"I think that the prospects of a future attack on the U.S. are almost a certainty," Cheney said on "Fox News Sunday." "It could happen tomorrow, it could happen next week, it could happen next year, but they will keep trying. And we have to be prepared."

Believe me when I say to you, in all sincerity, that Cheney is saying abso-fucking-lutely nothing that is not obvious, and yet at the same time, is pounding people into a unnecessary frenzy. Of course Al-Qaeda is going to try again. Until every last member of the network is reduced to a pile of dust, they're going to still try, like the Black Knight, to bite our arms off. It's like saying, "The Palestinians are going to suicide bomb the Israelis", or "Roger Ebert is going to hate Episode III." It's not a matter of if, but when.

And of course any threat by Osama Bin Laden is to be taken seriously. The man is a psychopath with religion on his side and an army to rival the countless number of dumb henchmen in every super-villain's gang (but I digress). And of course we should be prepared. No, on second thought, we should bend over, flip up our skirts, yank down our underpants and say, "COME AND GET IT, BIG BOY!"

All this is misdirection, folks. In case anybody out there doesn't get it already, let me spell it out. What Cheney is really trying to do is to divert attention from the real issue - that the initial attacks succeeded because of a failure of imagination. No one believed that using planes as missiles was conceivable outside of a Tom Clancy novel, and that is why security measures never took that into account. Now that we know it is possible, we can take steps to address that issue.

However, that does not take away the initial truth - that it was a failure of security and a failure of imagination. At least Cheney has the balls to admit this - but at a time where he should exude quiet confidence and say that yes, Al-Qaeda will attack, but we're going to do our best to make sure he doesn't succeed, all he's doing - and I grant that maybe it's the media slant - is to scream, like Chicken Little, that the sky is falling when it's just the regular rain.

It's okay to be afraid - but there are levels of fear, and there are levels where it can go into paranoia. And when you think everyone's out to get you...

Well, the terrorists have already won. Sleep tight.

Comments

Bleah.

[camwyn]

Was I the only one in the States who stayed away from airport windows (glass does nasty things when it explodes en masse) and considered the damage that could be done if the plane I was riding on dropped out of the sky (mostly because I work near a major metropolitan area with an airport *right* outside) before 11 September? There's no new danger. Everything that happened could've happened at any other time in the past. The only difference is that before 11 September, nobody thought of it except weirdoes like me, who just sort of filed it under 'gosh, I hope that doesn't happen while I'm on the plane'. Afterwards, everyone ran around shrieking like Ossie and his boyz sprang full-fledged out of nowhere on the 11th. The risk, the danger, the plots, everything was already there; it just took actual FORM on that day. Dickie boy isn't saying anything new. I wonder how many people realise that?

Re: Bleah.

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

No, but the number of people who thought this way is distressingly small. I kept saying this at work, that we've never been safe we just thought we were. Unsurprisingly, my coworkers didn't love hearing this.

[binkiegirl.livejournal.com]

What is most distressing, and downright infuriating to me isn't as much the fact that the anti-terrorism task force was disbanded when Bush took office, or the fact that he spent the first 8 months in office on vacation...only two examples of the gross misunderstanding of the serious nature of his job. This is deplorable, but not necessarily so unexpected...

What I find inexcusable is the pattern of outright lying we've seen in this administration from day one. Lying. Lying about the Whitehouse being trashed. Lying about Enron. Lying about the Energy meetings. Lying about Air Force One being a target on 9/11 and now lying about what was known when and crying in their beer when people are angry about it.

Would it have been so impossible to say, we knew Bin Laden was masterminding some kind of attack, but with the intelligence we had, we had no idea...and this is why we're issuing warnings so we hopefully won't be blindsided again. Yes it admits they fucked up. Yes it means some egg in the face. But frankly, blaming Clinton just isn't going to work this time. Even conservatives are aghast. (Who knew they could form independent opinions not based on sound bytes?)

We were supposed to restore dignity to the Whitehouse. Instead we're more a laughing stock internationally than ever before. Shame on us.

A thought.

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

From what I can see as a regular but not utterly devoted news-watcher-and-reader, the warnings of terrorist attacks were ramped up right after the news broke that the White House was warned about Bin Laden before 9/11. I was listening to NPR this morning, and Cheney actually said that this is not the time to "divert energies" to figuring out what happened and why, due to the "impending terrorist threat".

Spin spin spin....

Failure of Imagination

[hoo.livejournal.com]

I don't believe the airplanes-as-missiles is going to work again, at least not the way it did last time. Next time it'll be something else.

I no longer stand or stay near unattended police cars at public events. Just as 9/11 was hijacking+suicide_bomber, I can imagine car_bomb+police_car.

What aren't we thinking of?

Re: Failure of Imagination

[khaosworks.livejournal.com]

A living biological weapon, for one. Infect a man with a virulent disease that doesn't show up until he's past customs, and make sure he dies in a very public place. Take a disease that hasn't cropped up in a while, like bubonic plague, or worse still, imagine smallpox, something the doctors won't think of right off the bat, so by the time CDC comes around, it may be too late.