Computer disc found in Iraq contained floor plans, other data on schools i

[Jon8503]

Friday October 8 2004 7:34

Do you notice any close races here?

WASHINGTON (AP) - Education officials in six states were put on notice last month that a computer disc found in Iraq over the summer contained photos, floor plans and other information about schools in their districts, two U.S. government officials said.

The downloaded data the U.S. military found in July - all publicly available on the Internet - included an Education Department report guiding schools on how to prepare and respond to a crisis, one official said Thursday, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The officials said it was unclear who downloaded the information and stressed they had no evidence of any specific threats involving the schools.

The districts mentioned were in California, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, New Jersey and Oregon, officials said, adding that the FBI alerted local education and law enforcement authorities of the finding about three weeks ago.

Officials did not provide the names of the districts. But Kay Baker, superintendent of Oregon's Salem-Keizer district, confirmed hers was among them.

"Local law enforcement has no knowledge of a specific threat to any of our school buildings,'' she said. "We will work collaboratively with law enforcement on any further developments.''

Homeland Security Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said, "We are unaware of any specific information that indicates terrorists are plotting or planning an attack at a school here in the United States.''

http://www.kmbz.com/listingsEntry.asp?ID=261985&PT=Top+Story

[leftofthedial]

1. found this summer

notified a month ago

and news three weeks before the election

nothing suspicious about this

[July]

5. Publicly available information, too.

Nefarious, indeed.

[TheFarseer]

2. Wow! That does it. I'm voting for bush

cause everyone knows only he can protect the children j/k

[DemocracyInaction]

3. I've seen a number of threads on this today and thus feel Bush is

going to throw this out tonight. All he has left is to scare people some more and attacking kids is the ultimate big time. Therefore, I wonder how Kerry is going to take the issue away from him. He cannot down play it or call it a plant. I'm thinking John should use it to eimphasize just how Bush has done nothing to make our schools safer and propose some things of his own. Perhaps funding enough cops so that there could be a cop at every school with training in terrorism and/or a Homeland security blitz to reach all school boards and have them have special training for principals and staff on how to be alerted to things 'not right' in a school.

[maine_raptor]

6. I think you have hit the meme for kerry's answer

Cops on the Street program....failure to fully fund......cutbacks in counter-terrorism pre 9/11......flip-flop on Homeland Security Dept, etc.

That's how Kerry answers that.

[4morewars]

4. We better cancel the elections...

at least in these states.
WON'T SOMEBODY THINK OF THE CHILDREN !!!!!!!!!!!!!
</sarcasm>

[July]

7. Is this for real?

I just read the whole article. Watch out for panhandlers, shoe shiners, flower vendors near schools? This is like the "go shopping" advice after 9/11.

Do these dumbasses realize that a great number of schools in this country are on suburban campuses where anybody hanging around on a single day, let alone engaging in long-term surveillance, would be spotted in 5 minutes, not just by teachers, security, neighboring residents, and local cops, but by the 30% of kids (ok, I'm making the percentage up) who are looking out the window at any given moment?

It would be funny if it weren't so cynical.

[RaleighNCDUer]

8. Oohh! Scary scary!

What proportion of Iraqi professionals were educated in the states? If they saw our ed. system, and benefited by it, wouldn't they want to emulate it? How better, than to take sample schools from widely different regions, see how the compare.

Also, how US schools deal with crisis. Any thoughts on why Iraqi educators would be interested in finding out about how US schools deal with crisis? Considering how many Iraqi schools have been bombed? How many teachers and administrators (required Baathist membership) have been arrested?

This isn't south Russia where dozens of terrorists who are of the same ethnicity as the locals can slip across the border to take over a school.

Let's be real.

[DesEtoiles]

9. Kerry Moms - strike back with this - don't let W use us for his purposes:

http://bigpath.net/politics/Security/SecurityMomsforKerry.html

Mini version:


And in a few days this site should be up and running as well:

www.securitymomsforkerry.com

[Moderator]

10. Jon8503

Per DU copyright rules
please post only four
paragraphs from the
copyrighted news source.



Thank you.

DU Moderator

[Jon8503]

13. OK, thanks, will do.

[lasttrip]

11. must be slipping-they forgot ohio.

[ladybugg33]

12. Aren't we in Iraq to build schools? Floor plans are the first step

How do we know these weren't being used to design schools for Iraqi children?