Thursday, December 29, 2005

WOT

After 9/11, I was one scared little puppy. Terrorists could be everywhere, and one would never know where the next attack could occur. I feel relatively confident writing that I wasn't the only one feeling this way. In fact, I would place money on it that pretty much 99% of the US population felt exactly as I did. I fantasized that we had the technology found in the film Enemies of the State, where the government could listen-in on every telephone call on the planet, and find the bad guys.

Of course, though, that was not reality. What chance did we have against such a tenacious enemy? But, I hoped that the government had a few tricks up it's sleeve. I didn't need to hear about them, but I slept at night convincing myself that they had technologies that would aid in finding those who dream of mushroom clouds over Manhattan. Certainly everyone, my fellow citizens would be similarly pleased that we had abilities to detect these monsters? Of course, in this belief - I was wrong.

Patriot Act- BAD.
Wiretaps on those in contact with areas known to be affiliated with terrorist activity- illegal.
Radiation Monitoring- a racist plot.

Writes CAIR :

We are concerned that, under this secretive program, our government has overstepped constitutional bounds by intruding on private property without any probable cause or valid court orders, said CAIR National Legal Director Arsalan Iftikhar. The targeting of so many Islamic homes, businesses and mosques will inevitably create the impression that American Muslims are considered suspect solely because of their faith.


The IMPRESSION? Because, you know, we have no reason -at all- to fear Muslims in America, right? Would CAIR be happy if we also monitored a few Mormon churches? Heck, we could even throw a Jewish temple into the mix. Because, it's all about appearances, isn't it? Tell me, Joe Public out there - where would YOU like them to monitor? While I'm sure it would please both the ACLU and CAIR if we completely stopped all monitoring, would you sleep better knowing that we'd dodged another bullet aimed at our civil liberties. I mean, cripes, we might turn a city into glass, but we'll be free from government interference up until the moment we get hit by the shock wave.

Fact is, anything Bush, or our current government does, is suspect automatically due to BDS -Bush Derangement Syndrome. And, between the ACLU and CAIR, just about every low enorcement technique aimed at finding bad guys is illegal or a racist plot. Even techniques that used behavior-based profiling is illegal. From Malkin:

As I've noted before, the ACLU has filed suit against Boston Logan Airport officials to prevent them from using behaviorial profiling to detect security threats. The suit stems from a snit fit one ACLU official had when he was asked to produce ID by Boston Logan officials.

If the ACLU has its way, the interrogation methods used by Diana Dean--the Customs Agent whose questioning of a nervous and sweating young, brown-skinned male trying to cross the Washington state-Canada border unraveled al Qaeda's LAX Millenium plot and saved untold innocent lives--would be banned nationwide.

If the ACLU has its way, we'd have no profiling of any kind.


Yep.