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

To: Ilaine who wrote (53617)	10/21/2002 9:29:11 AM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Another post in my neverending quest to clean out State. I mentioned earlier watching an interview with our Ambassador to Indonesia, in which he stated that he had closed down the Embassy at one point due to Terrorist activity. We never warned our Citizens. From NRO. Misleading Americans The State Department's travel warnings. By Stephen Bryen The U.S. State Department issues travel warnings and advisories when the State Department "decides, based on all relevant information, to recommend that Americans avoid travel to a certain country." There is a State Department-run website where the information is available to the public. Unfortunately, the travel advisories are not providing proper warnings, as the recent bombing in Bali, Indonesia demonstrates. The most recent travel advisory on the State Department website for Indonesia prior to the Bali bombing is dated August 10, 2001. The advisory states: "The tourist destination of Bali has been largely free of the disturbances seen in other parts of Indonesia. All tourist facilities are operating normally, and to date foreigners have not been the specific target of any group." Unfortunately the State Department was giving out advice it knew was wrong.<<<<<< >>>>It looks more and more that political and commercial interests took precedence over terrorist warnings. How else to explain why warnings through intelligence channels were disregarded both by the State Department and by the Australian government. As a result, many have paid the price. Nearly 200 people probably died in the explosion. The bulk of these were Australians, but there were more than 30 British and others from friendly European and Asian countries. The first duty of governments is to protect their own citizens from harm. Indonesia was not a Conventry situation ? that is, we did not need to protect the source of the intelligence we had, which is what Winston Churchill had to do when he allowed Coventry to be bombed in 1941. Nor did we have to kowtow to Indonesia and keep private our concern about a looming danger. American citizens, and the citizens of America's allies need accurate and timely warnings of danger. When we have credible intelligence we need to get it to the public without delay. <<<<<< nationalreview.com