Home Again
As with my last unannounced break, a bout of supreme idiocy has brought me out of my slumber. The root cause may ultimately be proved to be George Lucas's latest horror-show Episode II, but for the moment I have been set off by our esteemed FBI director Robert Mueller. "There will be another terrorist attack. We will not be able to stop it[.]" Perhaps this is a true statement. Certainly post-9/11 we are all willing to believe that terrorism is now a fact of life on American soil. Given that's there only been one attack on us, and that one was (and I'm not kidding at all here) preventable, I find it more than a little pathetic that our FBI director has thrown in the towel. This week seems to be the one where we're all warned that suicide bombers will soon be attacking our pizza parlors, malls and busses. This is inexusable and if Mueller has his job by the end of the week, congress should investigate who he is blackmailing to keep his job. All of our investigative and tracking agencies need to be chopped off at the head and ripped out by the roots. If one, as seems to be the trend now, wants to blame the system, then one must necessarily hold the heads of the system principally accountable. The bemoaning of an unfixable system strikes me as the pathetic scene in "Nixon" where the madman is accosted by a girl who divines that he, the President, couldn't stop the war in Vietnam even if he so desired. Total nonsense. Toss Mueller and Tenet tonight (since they should have been ousted on 9/12) and throw in Condi Rice for good measure. Why Condi? Well her comments that warning the general public about hijackings on US soil may have disrupted the entire US air travel system was one of the most ridiculous comments uttered by a non-Fleicher member of the administration. Two follow up questions should have been lobbed Ms. Rice's way: (1) Was the post-9/11 airline fallout tantamount to what you were concerned with instigating? (2) While potentially disrupting the system, do you think warnings proir to 9/11 might have caused the passengers on the three flights that hit their targets to take action like those on flight 93?

A final thought on this comes to mind. The protestations that there was no way to know, or even anticipate, that 9/11 attacks is clearly disingenuous and the politicos must be called to account for the ability of the past administration to discerne and rout out the "Millenium Plot" to blow up LAX and their inability to discerne or even have a clue about plots against this country's soil a scant 18 months later. How did the intelligence agencies know about one plot involving foreign elements attacking US soil and, having stopped that plot, then fall asleep at the wheel when the stakes had clearly been raised. As I noted before, the plotting of the 9/11 attacks took place in this country and took a serious amount of flying both around and out of the US. For some reason, the government had stopped looking closely. Yes we now benefit from hindsight, but second-guessing, investigating and holding authorities accountable (something that is so en vouge with teachers but seemingly not for this administration) is necessary and appropriate. The people watching over our safety botched it big-time. It's now the time to determine their errors, send them on their way and get it right next time. Terrorism can be prevented and a chief of the FBI that can't see that should no longer be the chief.
- posted by levinson @ 5/20/2002 02:56:00 PM