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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JohnM who wrote (30210)	5/21/2002 12:42:55 AM
From: Rollcast...	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Didn't imply it was... I agreed with the previous commentary (even yours) that the piece carried a racist tone. My comment was based on agreement with another comment to you... "It's kind of amusing, John, the way you post liberal columnists who use very partisan language without even noticing it, but remain so thin-skinned to any use of partisan conservative language, even when it's not being used in a particularly polemical fashion." Some of us find it less than "kind of amusing"...

To: JohnM who wrote (30210)	5/21/2002 7:50:56 AM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 281500

Isn't it nice to post something from somebody you agree with? Who Knew It should be obvious now that official Washington collectively knew that Osama bin Laden wanted to hijack a plane and smash it into a big building. Unfortunately, no single individual--least of all the president--knew, and that remains a searing indictment of the national security state. Bits and pieces of information, each secreted in its own "need-to-know" box, clearly pointed to some pilot-initiated big boom from bin Laden in the summer of 2001. Yet all that made it to the upper levels of government was an indistinct buzz of activity. Analysis of the intelligence did not seem to be a priority. The emphasis, instead, was on gathering ever more intel, evidently in the hope that the evildoers would spell out in great detail, and in real time, what they planned to do. This preference for quantity over clarity is also apparent in the numerous post-9/11 moves to make it easier for the feds to gather information about everyone. Some of the plans, such as creating a Washington-based "super squad" to go after terrorists, will make things worse. Funneling all intel up to a central point guarantees that it will not be diffused among lower-level agents, who have shown themselves to have decent noses for fishiness, as when student pilots don't want to learn how to land. Now Vice President Dick Cheney has been trotted out to argue that whatever was known pre-9/11 is irrelevant. When Cheney says another attack is certain, the administration is setting up an all-purpose absolution for acts of terror past, present, and future. FBI Director Robert Mueller is reading from the same sheet when he declares that walk-in suicide bombers like those who have attacked public places in Israel will inevitably hit the United States. If the situation is so dire, then something radical, such as sharing less intelligence with more people, might be in order. Fur Fight Two weeks after the fact, it still isn't exactly clear what motivated Volkert Van der Graaf, the man charged with assassinating Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn. But it appears that fur farming, and not immigration or other "far right" issues, was very important to Van der Graaf. Dutch police found animal rights leaflets and computer files on Van der Graaf when they arrested him. The authorities have since clammed up. From Web postings it is possible to piece together that Van der Graaf was a vegan who felt that fur farming should be illegal. Fortuyn had no problem with fur farming. This is not enough evidence to make a definite connection, but surely more than was present to justify the conclusion that some traditional left-right political blood feud was to blame. Should animal rights prove to be the motivating factor in the crime, it will be interesting to see how that is spun and exactly which groups step up to condemn the violence. reason.com