10 November 2010 Too close for any comfort

10 November 2010 Too close for any comfort


“London, England (CNN) -- An explosive device found in a cargo plane in England last month probably would have exploded over the Eastern Seaboard of the United States if it had not been discovered, Scotland Yard said Wednesday.

The device was primed to explode about six hours after it was found, a senior U.S. counterterrorism source told CNN.

"Forensic examination has indicated that if the device had activated it would have been at 10:30 hrs BST on Friday, 29 October 2010," the Scotland Yard statement said. "If the device had not been removed from the aircraft the activation could have occurred over the eastern seaboard of the U.S."



http://us.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/11/10/britain.cargo.explosives/index.html?hpt=T2



The GOP can't be led by Sarah Palin. But can it live without her?

By Kathleen Parker

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

“The GOP can't be led by Sarah Palin. But can it live without her?

“Despite its considerable gains in the midterm elections, the GOP has a problem looming in the margins named Sarah Palin. “…

“Thus, Republican Rep. Spencer Bachus of Alabama recently had the audacity to assert what heretofore had been relegated to whispers behind closed doors: "Sarah Palin cost us control of the Senate."

Bachus, who is likely to replace Barney Frank as chair of the House Financial Services Committee, noted that Palin endorsed some Senate candidates who couldn't possibly win, such as Christine O'Donnell in Delaware…”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/09/AR2010110905008.html

Cassi Creek. If you were aboard the cargo aircraft that was carrying the toner cartridge bomb; or if you live or work along the projected flight path for that aircraft, you can very accurately define a “lifetime.” You can also define “too close for comfort.” The failure of the various agencies and organizations tasked with preventing bombs to be loaded and shipped as airfreight is immense in nature. While cargo craft fly with minimal crew aboard they fly over and land in densely populated areas of many nations. Even if I knew the destination for this plane and its exact flight path from take-off to landing, I would be unable to predict with any accuracy the number of people killed or injured in this attack.

The good fortune that resulted in this bomb being found before it was armed and detonated is just that, good fortune. It is not an occurrence we can count on happening the next time someone slips a bomb aboard a plane, a truck, or a train. There are some exceedingly lucky people who win a lottery jackpot more than once; the probability of the first win is infinitesimal. The repeat win is so uncommon as to defy calculation. We allow our security agencies and intelligence-gathering services to congratulate each other and take credit for thwarting a bomb attack. But our enemies are more patient than we are and are willing to wait until our public forgets the real threats while focusing on the non-existent threats of new Islamic centers and false reports about Sharia law, which are continually being spread by our hate-mongering American version of the Taliban. Lightning strikes some places repeatedly if we watch long enough.

Our ports and air cargo terminals are sieves. We’ve collectively traded convenience and speed for security. We make the traveling public increasingly paranoid, make flying an increasingly undesirable experience as screening for bombs meets corporate willingness to squeeze more passengers into seats that grow closer together each week. Our cargo terminals are an invitation to smuggle bombs aboard as we let shippers avoid any significant detection by technical or canine methods. Anyone who wants to load a bomb into a cargo container and fails isn’t really trying all that hard.

The fundamentalist Muslims are going to keep making bombs and trying to smuggle them in as cargo, as carryon luggage, checked baggage, or as would-be martyrs, anxious to meet Allah in a blaze of glory. They are going to keep using aircraft as weapons because it has worked for them in the past. With hidebound religious thought processes go hidebound thought processes for non-religious things.

We will have to outlive these men. Their dreams of jihad and a new Caliphate will not go away. We can’t defeat them militarily. Bullets and bombs don’t destroy ideology. We can use international police agencies in combination with our own police forces to thwart them. The best means of thwarting them is to treat the searches for them and their weapons as a criminal investigation. Then once they are located, ruthless military action, sudden, sharply limited in scope and force, is the best means of eliminating that small cell. UAV’s with Hell Fire missiles are quite adequate to use preceding or in follow up to on the ground teams.

The GOP has allowed its own American Taliban to grow and flourish. Christian fundamentalists form a large part of the voter base for both the GOP and Tea Party mobs. Like the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan, they are insistent that their religion become the way of the nation. Our Taliban and teavangelists are mimicking the demands of their Asian cousins who are trying to limit education to that needed to read sacred texts; and deny females any education. Both groups deny that education is necessary, believe creation myths in lieu of science-based empirical education. Both groups are frantically opposed to any progressive political agenda. Both are willing to kill anyone who opposes their religious tenets. Both groups are spearheaded by people who claim to be in direct communication with a mythical deity. Both groups support forced conversions and believe heresy and blasphemy are civil crimes.

The Asian Taliban has gained control of one nation and hold large amounts of power in another. The American Taliban seek control of this nation and are willing to destroy our current government, and to replace its founding documents with religious doctrine in order to obtain that control.

In looking for that control, they launched a demagogue in 2008 who reveled in her lack of intellect, her lack of ethics, and her willingness and ability to stir up hatred by using lies. Find power to her liking, she refused to relinquish any power to those with even slightly more rational minds.

In 2010, she tried to influence many electoral campaigns by using the same demagoguery and hate mongering that worked in 2008. Fortunately she over-reached by backing other examples of utterly un-qualified women who were frankly of questionable abilities and faculties. The most unworthy of those she backed were defeated. She, of course, blamed those defeats on a working media that did its job poorly but got some truth out. Members of her own party have begun to see that her lack of qualification for office in 2008 has not been corrected and that she needs to be stripped of power if that party is to survive the next four years. They’ve realized, perhaps too late in comparison to those who knew from the first sight of her, that Palin is the sort of demagogue who topples working governments and offers nothing to replace them. The GOP has suddenly seen that the unholy alliance of Palin and Huckabee, along with Fox News is not only bad for the nation; it is bad for the GOP. The latter is, of course, their greater concern.

They’ve loosed a monster, a vicious demagogue unfamiliar with and not concerned with truth in any form. They have to stop her cold. Given the poor preparation of the American voter, she’s already too close for comfort.