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Originally Posted by Brianna
This is the country that we are living in. This is the pendulum swinging waaaaaaaaaay to the right. Unreal.
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The word is 'swung'. Remember after the Madrid bombing? The FBI arrested a lawyer in Oregon and held him for (if I remember) 9 months in jail. Why? The Spanish police found a partial fingerprint that matched the lawyer's fingerprints. When the FBI (using principles in the Patriot Act) searched his house, they found Spanish messages. They arrested the lawyer on this other 'just as flimsy' evidence.
The FBI is so poorly run internally that it still takes a long time to translate that Spanish. It was his kid's Spanish homework.
How did we solve the problem? How many FBI agents were on the verge of discovered the 11 September attack if not stopped by their supervisors? At least four teams that we know of. So how do we fix this management defect? We made another layer of bureaucracy called Fatherland Security and passed all kinds of laws to give that Fatherland Security the right to violate basic American rights. At what point do we go after the only reasons for security failures - incompetent top management? To an administration dominated by the principles taught in B-schools, management is never the problem. Blame the terrorists, weak laws, people who advocate human rights, money shortages, a military too small, nuclear armed missiles, a universal hatred of Americans ... anything except the incompetent top management that made these problems possible.
Jail a lawyer for nine months because his son was writing secret terrorist messages in Spanish. Same reasons to justify torture of what we now know were innocent people in Guantanamo Bay, Iraq, and Afghanistan - by the administration. This is the 'we fear everything' mentality that has even recreated something from 30+ years ago - the Ugly American.