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Gold/Mining/Energy : Big Dog's Boom Boom Room -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dale Baker who wrote (21630)	4/14/2003 10:19:30 AM
From: kodiak_bull	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 206114

OT (and then I have to get back to work thinking about these stocks): You wrote: "OT - Then no one is to blame from either party for not seeing 9/11 sometime in advance and heading it off? But I have heard that charge from all sides over and over and over. The Middle East was a major focus for US foreign policy in the mid-1980's yet we didn't take adequate security measures at vulnerable public US facilities. Something here is remarkably inconsistent." Vulnerable public US facilities? How many are you going to put armed Marines at? How many are you going to rip up construction and put in concrete barriers at? Bulletproof windows, metal detectors? The embassy? Okay. How about the separate embassy compound? Okay. And all the separate embassy residences? The US AID building? Branches of US banks? Expatriates from Nike, Morgan Stanley? Their offices? Their homes? The local Peace Corps office, Food for Hunger, Catholic Relief Charities branches? The "US" list of potential targets is huge, and it extends down to college kids on a junior-year-abroad and Americans (with other visitors) on fly 'n bus vacations and vacationing at a beach resort (which, see, Bali). As for looking for blame for 9/11, I think that's a fool's errand. The hate America crowd wants to target "American arrogance" and "American success" but that's pretty silly. Anyone looking for paternity for 9/11 might go back to Clinton's policy of flaccidity, or GB 41, or RR, or Jimmy Carter in the desert, or back to Vietnam, or Kennedy or Eisenhower or Truman. As I said, that's a fool's errand. Blame a political party for this? Do you think the Democratic National Committee or the RNC get security briefings, or make anything but a "protect America" plank on the platform every 4 years? What would political parties have to do with pre-visioning 9/11 (or Timothy McVeigh)? As for assigning blame to the police and security apparatus for failing to thwart it, that's at least closer to an assignment which could result in proper prophylactics next time. But no one except a suspense novelist could have imagined, pre 9/11, that 20 well trained and dedicated suicide attackers could, with precision and armed only with what the airlines would let pass (a little wire and some box cutters) commandeer 4 747s and use them as guided missiles. After 9/11, we don't have to imagine it, we can remember it. Police and security (FBI, CIA, etc.) should be running neural network programs to find statistical oddities (What are the odds of 5 Saudis taking jumbo jet flying lessons at the same time in this country, is it within the norm or outside? Call the flight schools and see if this seems to be square or weird. What are the odds that 4 jumbo jets on 1 morning are overbooked and filled with no shows except an exceptionally high percentage of Saudi nationals? Hold the planes at the gate, pull the outside-the-norm passengers and search their belongings and luggage). But even though I think some really "with-it" types at the FBI or CIA, had they been cooperating, might have been able to put together the puzzle beforehand, the nasty plan itself was so perfect in its simplicity (and our naivete) that it probably was going to happen anyway. The blame game is counter-productive, but the learn-from-experience game is always productive (or it can be). End of rant, Kb