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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: i-node who wrote (190429)	6/12/2004 9:38:34 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1586737

Bush's efforts, at the very least, are far better than anything from the previous administration. I just posted you the findings from the 9/ll commission and you post the above to me. I give up.

To: i-node who wrote (190429)	6/14/2004 2:47:37 AM
From: Amy J	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1586737

David, I'll have to agree with you on the point that Clinton did indeed let strange things happen in this country, without taking aggressive corrective action. The Israeli "art" students (that were actually engineers) arrived on Clinton's watch in rather large numbers and they reportedly had gained access to military sensitive areas, and military contract firms (as well as hightech firms selling into military companies.) Bush deported them. You have to give him a lot of credit for that. We no longer have such strange things occur like that in Silicon Valley since Bush has been in charge so he definitely deserves a lot of credit for getting rid of all that type of weird stuff. It's very truthful to say Bush was much more attentive and protective of this country, in such regards. But he has missed the boat on the methodology of the war with Iraq. I believe he has created more terrorist wannabees in his strategy and methodology in Iraq. He doesn't even grasp the culture. In fact, one could probably argue that the military as a whole is inadequately trained on international culture. Understanding their various cultures (Iraq is a highly diversified country) should have been the first step. The bottom-line is, terrorism will never be won with force. It can only be won by removing the tools for recruitment. But to remove the tools, there needs to be an understanding of recruitment of terrorism in the context of another culture. Not in the context that you or I might think it to be. This is where Bush has seriously erred. I certainly hope this country never has another President that is so isolated in their knowledge of international cultural understandings. As a country, we are truly ignorant to the methodologies of terrorism, which means we may not be sufficiently protected. For example, countries like Israel do a superb job at understanding that terrorism is unexpected and random and this translates into their airport security being much more random in nature than ours is. We are too "systematic" of a culture that we don't execute protection well enough in the areas of randomness. For example, we will put a systematic plan to protect New York. But most likely New York wouldn't get attacked next, but probably something unexpected or more random. You can also sense Americans are putting guards down, claiming "we haven't had a terrorist attack in 3 years so things are safer." That comment is truly ignorant to bin Laden's style of terrorism. Look no further than Pakistan and India where people there immediately recognized 9/11 was bin Laden's style of attack and those countries believe bin Laden's theatre-style terrorism would most likely occur 3 to 4 years due to the intensive planning. Unfortunately, that means we're about due to get attacked. Having said that, it would be more like bin Laden's style to attack 21 days after an election (or some random day when everyone's guard is down) than to attack immediately before an election (when everyone's guard is up.) That randomness is something countries like Israel understands much better than our country. This might mean our enforcement is potentially more lax in protecting us. It needs to do what Israel does - they include intensively random protection, in addition to systematic planned protection. Also, this country has a lot of outstanding hightech technology but Times had an article showing how outdated the gear the MN lady FBI agent had, beefing it up in enforcement and intelligence should be this country's top priority in protecting itself. When you think about it, the CIA was smart enough to be able to identify some of the terrorists beforehand, but the laws prevented the FBI from taking action. And then the MN FBI agent (forgot her name, but the one who asked to search the terrorist's computer), her request was denied. With a change in laws to be consistant with battling terrorism in the technology-centric 21st century (not just geographical wars), and then an upgrade on technology, imagine if the FBI had a database where they could link all the high risk things together with other enforcements. A cop should be able to search a database to see if he's giving a speeding ticket to a terrorist suspect. These types of things shouldn't take five years to implement. I think my generation doesn't have an issue with security protection at the expense of privacy like the previous one, probably because we're not aware of the privacy abuses that apparently happened in the 50s (am not even sure what they were but am interested in learning.) Regards, Amy J