um. yeah.

[sisyphusshrugged]

Let's see if we can figure out why this person insisted on being anonymous. Now let's see if we can figure out why the Times agreed...

Intelligence officials listed several dozens pieces of information that they said Qaeda operatives had collected in their reconnaissance missions on security procedures and vulnerabilities at financial institutions. These included the flow of pedestrian traffic, possible escape routes, elevator schedules, neighborhood landmarks, the patterns and number of security personnel, details on surveillance cameras and architectural details that would influence how a building might fare in a bombing, officials said.

"The new information is chilling in its scope, in its detail, in its breadth," said a senior intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity. "It also gives one a sense the same feeling one would have if one found out that somebody broke into your house and over the past several months was taking a lot of details about your place of residence and looking for ways to attack you."

Well, no. It gives one a sense that someone whose plans you already knew something about a year earlier broke into your house almost three years ago and there have been periodic stories in the press about their plans to go back but instead of getting new locks installed, you spent the time phoning in anonymous tips about insufficiently militant nuns and installing an expensive alarm system on your second home in Wyoming.

countfloyd Ooooooh, scaaaaaaary. /countfloyd

Just maybe not quite in the way that you think.

The Times, possibly squeezed by space considerations, did not point out that our per capita funding for fighting terrorists, already badly stretched by the coming Republican convention, is one of the lowest in the country.

Comments

per capita terrorist funding

[(Anonymous)]

You decry per capita spending on terrorism in New York. Is the $ spent per person necessarily a proper statistical way to gauge protection afforded? The NYC metropolitan area has one of the most densly populated business districts in the U.S. There are many tall buildings with great numbers of employees. Would the money spent securing a 10 story building with 500 employees differ greatly from a building 5 times taller with 10 times the employees? Other than flying a plane into either bad guys probably have to enter from the 1st floor in both. Space and my knowledge of this subject don't permit much fleshing out here, but someone comment on this. I don't think we protect people so much as we protect the places and objects where or in which they are found.

Re: per capita terrorist funding

[jmhm.livejournal.com]

Quite true. There are fewer of both in Kansas.

Re: per capita terrorist funding

[(Anonymous)]

There are times when per capita is meaningless. If a nuclear reactor in the middle of nowhere were blown up the damage, while terrible, would be limited to exposure by relatively few people and buildings. The same size reactor in a densely populated area would cause far more death and destruction if properly sabatoged. If both reactors employed 100 people would it be prudent to match the per capita spending protecting each? If one million$ a month in extra security precautions would equally insure the operating safety of each would you make a case 100 times as much needed to be spent on the one outside NYC due to 100 times the potential deaths (per capita casualties, if you will)? Wouldn't the last 99 million$ be wasted to satisfy your per capita approach to spending if the 1st million$ spent was sufficient to do the job?

Re: per capita terrorist funding

[jmhm.livejournal.com]

and there you've made my argument for putting the money into the largest concentration of businesses and people there is, which is to say New York.

[(Anonymous)]

We in New York City have known that we have been the President's battered, neglected bitch, dragged out only for photo ops, since that day in September, 2001, when he grabbed a megaphone as soon as the cameras were rolling, and then as soon as they were off, got the f*** out of here as fast as he could, and came back only for more photo ops and fundraising.

He promised several times what he has delivered money-wise, and in the latest insult, scared the crap out of millions here who live or work at or a stone's throw from terrorist "targets" Citigroup Center and the NYSE (including myself).

Just another boondoggle and excuse to float money to Alabama and Montana and TEXAS and other high profile targets, while ignoring major cities, and especialyl ignoring NY and CA, despite our Republican governors.

In short, bid'ness as usual: we've been saying it for some time, you and I: the President's campaign was going to come down to a repeated mantra of 4-syllables: nine eleven. And then repeat: nine eleven nine eleven nine eleven... We'll forget that it happened while he was asleep at the switch, and that his actions only compounded a bad situation... because this is about a subliminal straight to the gut attack-- "you can't trust the war hero... you can only trust the deserter and the draft dodger... 9-11 9-11 9-11"...

The good news is that doing this shit IN AUGUST shows they are kind of desperate, and pretty much know that other than Kerry pulling off a mask and revealing that he is really Osama bin Laden (or Jane Fonda... or Al Gore), this one is just about over-- by not firing Rummy after Abu Ghraib, the American people will fire the guy who didn't fire Rummy.
While you have to admire their sheer balls, given that it results int the expense of creating mortal havoc in my gut, let's just say I'm less than pleased.

--TTD

[jmhm.livejournal.com]

Well, you know, I'm not a huge fan myself.

Funny that.

However, now that it turns out that they're blowing even more of the security money that they aren't giving us on a publicity stunt, I'm even slightly annoyeder.