Monday, November 25, 2002
Following up...
To expand further on Tom Tomorrow's cartoon below, the new Homeland Security bill and department isn't going to make us safer, especially when we want to hear the only intelligence data that suits our needs. Snip below.
Many current and former intelligence officials worry that the department, soon to be the second largest agency in the federal government after the Pentagon, will drain experienced analysts from their existing agencies and further reduce the C.I.A.'s role as the principal agency for analyzing intelligence.
With limited financing, the department will have to staff its intelligence department with analysts not only from the C.I.A., but also from the National Security Agency, the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency — all of which report to the Defense Department — and other offices. These agencies are already stretched thin, after years of budget cutting, and losing a dozen or so important analysts could be devastating.
Others in the national security area are concerned about the growing possibility of "analysis shopping" — in which White House officials and other senior policy makers pick and choose where to go for their analyses depending on what result they want. If the C.I.A. comes up with a report not to their liking, they can then go to the Pentagon, or the Department of Homeland Security. This follows reports this fall that the Pentagon set up its own secretive intelligence unit to try to find links between Saddam Hussein and the Sept. 11 attacks after the C.I.A. concluded that none appeared to exist. "They are politicizing intelligence, no question about it," said Vincent M. Cannistraro, the C.I.A.'s former counterterrorism chief, referring to the Pentagon.
Meanwhile, CNN reports this morning that pilots will be allowed to carry guns onto the plane with them, undoubtedly fueling Rambo fantasies of a single (white) man slaying attackers with just a handgun and a dry, cool wit. Never mind that an airplane is a pressurized vehicle flying 600 miles per hour at roughly 30,000 feet. Start firing rounds through the fuselage and let's see how fast the cabin rips open and the plane starts to plummet. Plus, there's the added entertainment value of a gung-ho pilot using the gun as the symbol of law and order against air-raging passengers (Sir, you will return to your seat or I'll blow your fucking head off).
And no one is mentioning the two 800-pound elephants in the room. Pachyderm one: The alleged shoe bomber Richard Reid supposedly wired explosives to his feet. He wasn't about to make a mad dash for the cockpit, waving a box cutter. He was sitting with his seat in its upright and locked position, trying to send he and his planemates to the Great Beyond.
Pachyderm two: Having the pilot armed won't stop a swarm of coordinated hijackers from either ganging up on the pilot or taking hostages. The 9/11 hijackers were ready to die, and if some John Wayne sky jockey shot one or two terrorists, the remaining three or four would surely get to the pilot.
But the "pilots with guns" is a perfect symbol of this whole Homeland Security debacle. All action with precious little thought committed beforehand. The New Grand Age of Security has come. Thanks to farming out jobs to corporate hyenas, gutting union protections, giving the CIA and FBI by-proxy absolution for 9/11, protecting corporations from lawsuits if their vaccines or anti-terrorism security goes bad, inventing a hydra of a bureaucracy that will take at least a year to rearrange all the deck chairs and (in the spirit of the bill) creating a massive security folder on every American under the watch of one of the most infamous characters from the Iran-Contra scandal, you can lie to yourself and say you're safe while being watched on every street corner by the prying eyes of the new Homeland Security Department, just one scrawl away from becoming reality.
posted by skobJohn |
10:11 AM
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