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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: D. Long who wrote (78232)	10/17/2004 12:49:06 AM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793843

I have sat around and made rational calculations about the cost of a dirty bomb to me and my family. I agree that the risk is relatively small in general. Unless you are nearby you probably won't be killed outright. The radiation may cause cancers but those take a while to develop. Rain will wash away and wind will blow away most of the radioactive dust over time. I do have masks which will filter the dust, and Rad-Block, and lots of bottled water, and various other things stockpiled. I guess this seems weird, but that's the way it is. It won't be The End Of The World As We Know It. Same analysis for a smallish nuclear bomb at ground level. We live 15 miles from the Pentagon, more from the Capitol and the White House. I have to admit, if I had a job on Capitol Hill, I'd be more worried. Those guys are sitting ducks. I saw them running out in a panic once during an off course plane scare, pouring down the Capitol steps like ants after you kick over an ant hill -- pretty scary to watch even from a distance. Me, I like being about a mile from the boys' schools, ready to swing into action if need be. Wish this thing was over, but I guess it never will be.

To: D. Long who wrote (78232)	10/17/2004 5:40:49 AM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793843

No sane person sits around thinking that a dirty bomb detonated over Westminster is no big deal, because the risks of actual harm are minimal. You may be prepared to automatically expend 300,000 American lives to stop a dirty bomb over Westminster to make a statement about the unacceptability of such immorality but I think that the metrics have to be at least considered before rushing to war. The criminal justice system does not settle on an optimum level of murders - it seeks to stop all murders. I think that you are mistaken about that. And it does so by a. hunting down and imprisoning or (as in Texas) killing those that murder and b. seeking to de-incentivize murder by making the sanction cost very high (death or life imprisonment). And this is what it takes to "stop all murders"? Not hardly. What it does is mitigate the murder rate. If we wanted to stop all murders, we would have to make a much greater effort, draconian effort, and incur much more cost, an unacceptable cost. We don't do that. We don't because society has, indirectly and passively, established a threshold for the number of murders it unhappily tolerates. When the murder rate goes up, we get campaigns that up our efforts temporarily. When the rate stabilizes, we go back to regular policing. Society does this for all immoral acts. I know of no reason why we would treat terrorism differently. Terrorism is abhorrent. We must go after the low hanging fruit and the most rotten of the fruit mercilessly and the medium hanging fruit with vigor. And we must grudgingly accept that there will always be some fruit that is out of reach just as we accept that people will be murdered.