Finally, Someone Tells the Truth -America is Indefensible to Terrorism

[Blackhatjack]

As reported by RawStory, Ron Suskind tells Salon - America is indefensible to terrorism

The journalist strongly criticized President George W. Bush for declaring yesterday that America was safer than it was before 9/11. "The president probably knows that he shouldn't make that claim with any real enthusiasm," Suskind told Salon. "The understanding that is shared by most of the folks right at the very cutting edge of the counterterrorism community, is that the United States mainland is in significant measure indefensible. Al-Qaida will attack at a time and a place of its choosing."

And nothing Bush has done since 9/11 has made this country any safer.
In fact, we are less prepared to respond than on that date.
But we do have a hugely bloated, financially irresponsible new bureaucacy named Office of Homeland Security, which cannot even mobilize assistance after a hurricane to thank Bush for.

We also have fewer rights and liberties today than we had on 9/11 as a result of The Patriot Act, and other secret executive orders signed by Bush.

[MrCoffee]

1. Amen Bruddah! KnFnR

We forget this basic fact whenever we have to throw our lotion away. Airport screening, cargo container inspections, irradiated mail...these are in no way, shape or form keeping us "safe from terror." As long as the fear is there, mission accomplished.

[snappyturtle]

2. Amen and hallelluia! Suskind is a good man. Maybe voices

like his will put an end to this idiotic policy. IMHO this administrtion is a lot more interested in offensive tactics than defensive ones anyway.

Edit: wording and KR!

[SammyWinstonJack]

3. K&R

[RaleighNCDUer]

4. And we will continue to be defenseless as long as we treat terrorism

as a military problem rather than a police problem.

Nobody had ever succeeded in defeating terrorists with their military. Those who have faced the problem as a criminal enterprise, and fought with police solutions, have all succeeded. Baader/Meinhoff, Red Army Faction, Red Brigades, etc., were all stopped with good police work, not by moblilzing the military. International cooperation, sharing of police intelligence is what brought them down.

In places where terrorists were treated as a military threat, they grew more and more powerful. Sendero Luminoso, the PLO, and so many others morphed from terror groups to guerilla armies to, in some places, alternate governments. Point to any place that's been fighting guerillas for 25 years, and you will see a place that mobilized its military to take down a terrorist group in its inception.

[Marie26]

7. e.g. Hizbollah. nt

[Tin Man]

13. Ding-ding!

...we have a winner, folks!

[Zodiak]

15. Interesting observation

I sure would like to see a one-page bulletpoint paper on it.

Perhaps another thread?

[Marie26]

5. Yes, exactly.

No one can make you safe. The gov. has been using this faux-paternalistic line to scare us into submission & acceptance of the restrictions on our freedom. In a free country, there is no guarantee of 100% safety. We shouldn't even want it.

[The Backlash Cometh]

6. Just ask Timothy McVeigh. Oh, that's right. That's one terrorist who

won't be naming any names.

[paparush]

8. Just imagine how many GI's are coming back from Iraq this time..

with ISSUES.

[The Backlash Cometh]

12. It scares the shit out of me.

[Virginia Dare]

9. This is the absolute truth...

folks, there WILL be another major terrorist attack in this country, and NOTHING and NOBODY will be able to stop it. There will also be another major hurricane, another epidemic, another earthquake, etc. etc. etc. That's why we need to be pouring our money and resources into FIRST and SECONDARY response to these disasters. We need to have an adequate public health and emergency system in place to deal with it. THAT is what will save lives. The coward-in-chief will do NOTHING for you when the time comes, he'll be off eating cake, playing the guitar and drinking himself into a stupor.

Get it through your thick heads, it's the fire department, police department, EMS, national guard, and public health professionals who are going to save your ass. The stupid and delusional sheep in this country just don't get it.

[bloom]

10. That's good.

Now if we could just have people in charge that understood reality.

And that the more reasons you give people to terrorize - the more likely they will be to do it. And of course - the CIA and their training of terrorists like OSB didn't help either.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

11. As reported by SALON:

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/08/11/suskind/

Have you spoken with any of your sources in government, or now out of government, and if so, what are they saying?

Well, they're saying a variety of things. They're saying this sort of event would actually fit with the general thinking as to what al-Qaida has planned for a so-called second wave to 9/11: numerous airplanes blowing up over the airspace of the United States would, in the mind of the terrorism experts I'm talking to, comport with our view as to al-Qaida's playbook in terms of a second-wave attack to follow 9/11. It would be very visible, there would be lots of casualties, and planes blowing up over large urban areas would of course create havoc.

I thought one of the really fascinating points in your book was that al-Qaida may not have been thwarted from attacking us after 9/11, but they may have made a strategic decision to focus their efforts elsewhere. Are you hearing, or do you think, that this is a strategic shift back to the American mainland?

Well, the thinking is that al-Qaida has the ability to attack us at any time or place of their choosing, that we should not view the passage of time as a kind of proxy for victory and view it in any kind of self-satisfied way, that we're doing something that's stopping them from this next destructive moment. What we know about al-Qaida is that they think very long-term. We think in news cycles; they think in decades.

[philly_bob]

14. Truth-telling! /NT