Quote:
Originally posted by jaguar
I still think ships are the biggest risk, either blowing on up, particualry LPG or Oil tankers while in port or loading one with someing very nasty. SO much space, fly it under a flag of convenience and the acutal owner etc is virtually un identifiable.
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No protection, detailed paperwork, or investigation into who runs the ships because that is what the United States wanted. For example, Liberia as a flag of convenience was proxy for US shipping interests. Then the US got laws to be voted on based upon tonnage registered. This gave the US Proxy, Liberia, major voting power. And so shipping laws were manipulated per the whims of the US. We have international shipping laws that WE wanted.
Previously the US only wanted everyone to know only of the Bill of Lading - therefore an international standard. Now the US wants to change the rules again - to demand full disclosure of all shipping companies and even their finances before ships are permitted 'reservations' in US ports.
In WWII, a Navy ammunition ship exploded in Halifax harbor damaging virtually the entire town. Shipping as a terrorist weapon is long understood. It was just another of a long list of reasons why the George Jr anti-ballistic missile system is the defensive system of mental midgets. It is while Turkey refuses to let oil from the Central Asian Replublics be shipped from the Black Sea into the Mediterranean, in front of homes for 10 million people. It is why some ports have special 'clear the entire port' procedures when a LNG tanker arrives.
Currently one of the world's largest producers of Natural Gas is now a net importer of at least 1%. That number will increase sharply in the next decade meaning that American ports will be full of LNG tankers. Under to pre 11 Sept George Jr agenda, nothing special was required because terrorist would use incontinential ballistic missiles and nuclear warheads. (Sound like Reagan who never saw a technology he did not endorse).
Shipping has always been a major problem. Containers must be at their destination anywhere in the country within three days of arriving in a US port. The US government response has always been to ignore the problem but worry more about terrorist with intercontiential missiles, and illegal immigrants who both want to work and whose labor is desperately required by their employeers.
Even worse is a now almost daily hijacking of ships at sea. Certainly even Hollywood has a movie about hijacking a ship to be used as an attack weaspon. And yet, international navies have no effort to reduce this problem nor any known procedure to detect and intercept such crimes. Many hijacked ships are found deep uprivers in China or in S American ports. It is only a matter of time before a terrorist does same with a tanker.
Makes you wonder if it was just middle management that was really ignoring the Phoenix memo and was stifling investigators in MN. Ahh, but we must worry about a statue with a naked breast. That statue is a serious problem? A Coast Guard so underfunded that it cannot even maintain navigation buoys is not a problem? Maybe we could post Centurian artillery to protect American harbors - to justify the costs.