So let me first say that I wouldn’t want to be head of homeland security and emergency management for the city of Washington, DC. It’s an incredibly hard job, and not just because it means protecting a city that is a terrorist’s fantasy land. The thing that makes it hardest of all is the fact that it is home to at least two dozen competing law enforcement agencies, many of which don’t really like each other very much.
In any city, getting police and firefighters (or the FBI and the CIA) to get along before, during and after…
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Disaster after disaster has shown that regular citizens are the first-responders, so it’s nice to see federal reports acknowledging this reality. The recently released, first-ever Quadrennial Homeland Security Review Report places a much-needed emphasis on a resilient and psychologically prepared public:
“Despite our best efforts, some attacks, accidents, and disasters will occur. Therefore, the challenge is to foster a society that is robust, adaptable, and has the capacity for rapid recovery. In this context, individuals, families, and communities—and the systems that sustain them—must be informed, trained, and materially and psychologically prepared to…
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OK, as I sit here waiting for Pres. Obama to speak (again!) on the attempted airplane bombing, I find myself perplexed by a very basic question. Perhaps I am missing something. But the indictment of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab alleges that he carried a device containing PETN and TATP, among other ingredients, onto Flight 253 in Amsterdam.
The indictment doesn’t say how much explosive material he was allegedly carrying, but news reports consistently cite 80 grams of PETN--which is just under 3 oz. (Not clear how much TATP he is charged with having carried.) In any case,…
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In the Washington Post, Stephen Flynn has a nice round-up of the nation’s Top 5 shared delusions on homeland security. Flynn has spent the past several years tirelessly pointing out the great irony of 9/11: The only people who prevented a terrorist attack that day were regular people. The passengers on Flight 93 likely saved the lives of some of the very same DC politicians and pundits who have, for the past 8 years, utterly ignored the contribution that regular people make to homeland security.
Meanwhile, the Best Comment Award…
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In case you missed it, David Brooks had a cogent critique of the homeland-security hysteria in the NY Times the other day:
In a mature nation, President Obama could go on TV and say, “Listen, we’re doing the best we can, but some terrorists are bound to get through.” But this is apparently a country that must be spoken to in childish ways.
It does seem that we have become a nation of pansies when it comes to terrorism. It’s curious because we don’t expect the same paternalism when it comes to protecting us from…
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Josh Gerstein at Politico has a nice side-by-side comparing Bush’s reaction to the shoe bomber in 2001 to the Obama’s reaction this week. It’s an interesting notion, since both Richard Reid and Abdulmutallab, the suspect in this latest case, were said to have used PETN, a powerful explosive (more on PETN below). So what happened after that Dec. 22, 2001 bombing attempt (foiled by flight attendants and passengers) on an American Airlines flight from Paris?
[I]t was six days before President George W. Bush, then on vacation, made any public remarks about the so-called shoe…
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I have a rant in TIME Magazine this week about the attempted bombing of Northwest Flight 253--and the ways in which the usual suspects (including the White House, Congress and the media) are totally missing the point.
Our national conversation about terrorism needs to become more sophisticated. We cannot expect zero terrorism attempts to ever happen in our airplanes ever again. We can and must work harder to reduce the chances. But this kind of crap drives me crazy:
“I’d rather, in the interest of protecting people, overreact rather than underreact.”--Sen. Dianne Feinstein, chair of…
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A Nigerian national allegedly attempted to blow up a Northwest Airlines jet as it descended into Detroit today around noon. The small explosive device burned the suspect’s hands but did no other serious damage, it appears. It’s too early to know exactly what to make of the incident, but a few thoughts to help sort through the frenzy of news that is already whipsawing into circulation.
* Who dunnit? Nigerian suspect, Yemeni device, al-Qaeda connection...?
The bomb, which the New York Times is saying was made partly of…
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