Well, That Should Make Everyone Feel Safer
The database used to produce the government’s terror watch lists is “crippled by technical flaws,” according to the chairman of a House technology oversight subcommittee—and the system designed to replace it may be even worse.
In a letter to the inspector general at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence last week, Rep. Brad Miller (D-NC) complained that the National Counterterrorism Center’s “Railhead” initiative, designed to upgrade the government’s master database of suspected terrorists, “if actually deployed will leave our country more vulnerable than the existing yet flawed system in operation today.”
Miller, who chairs the Investigations and Oversight Subcommittee of the House Science and Technology Committee, cited “severe technical troubles, poor contractor management, and weak government oversight,” which he said had brought the Railhead program to the “verge of collapse.”
[ source ]
It seems they can’t lie right either
The National Security Archive released a report Friday Aug. 22, 2008 that sheds even more light on the premeditated lying and deception that took the United States to war in Iraq. The findings are based on new evidence compiled by Dr. John Prados and published by the National Security Archive. (See “White Paper” Drafted before NIE even Requested , “Scoop” Independent News, Aug. 24, 2008)
Most notably, Prados shows the depth of the deception perpetrated against citizens and Congress regarding the alleged threat to U.S. security posed by Iraq. It had appeared that the White House rewrote the Oct. 1, 2002 National Intelligence Estimate and then issued that doctored report to Congress on Oct. 4, 2002. Prados reveals convincing evidence that the Oct. 4 White Paper had already been written by July 2002. He shows that it was only slightly altered after the final NIE arrived. This White Paper served as the basis for the war.
The unavoidable conclusion is that the Bush-Cheney White paper “justifying” the invasion was developed a full three months in advance of the intelligence data and analysis that should have served as the basis for that justification.
(emphasis mine)
Bush’s legacy just keeps getting bigger and bigger – someone needs to build a wiki to keep track of this stuff.
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But apparently its only and impeachable offense if one can show Dubya got a blow job while this was going on….
Hey, not to worry about the terror watch list. The DOHS are busy harrassing 76 year old ex-war heroes in ill-health. The terrorists can breathe easy.
The “watch list” is a sidebar. The Thugs Standing Around have all the tools they need to harass citizens without it.
Your second point, though… this is the same Dr. John Prados who has spent decades “debunking” every foreign policy decision made b y the US government from the Gulf of Tonkin onwards. Sure, his scholarship and 20-20 hindsight has brought a few acorns to light, but always and only it seems in such a way as to advance his personal agendas. I know more than my share of academia nut fruitcakes like him (don’t know him personally, but have read some of his work) to want to sift his source documents for myself.
Let’s have a Mel Brooks-ish “Conspiracy Theory II” from a pastiche of his past works. That’d work for me about as well as reading his conclusions, IMO. It’d at least have entertainment value (although how Brooks could top “Spingtime and Hitler”–from “The Producers”, of course–for a sendup of “Hoodwinked” I just can’t imagine).
(Call me an iconoclast if you want. Heck, I even like to point out Kurt Aland’s biases–and concommitant dishonest scholarship–to NT Greek students. Sacrilege! *heh*)
Granted, the Iraq adventure in Neo-Jacobinism was ill-thought-out. The fact that Iraq had many multiple serial violations of the Gulf War cease fire gave the US adequate reason under international law to resume the Gulf War, but not adequate reason to finish what Bush I wimped out on. No, the real crime here was not the war itself but the waging of the peace, such as it was not. Stupid Neo-Jacobin policy resulted in the even stupider Bremmer administration in Iraq that led directly to the mess the Bush admionistration has wallowed through since. *sigh* Any one of a multitude of foreign adventures into the area for the past several millennia could have informed the administration of the folly of Bremmer’s policies. But, Santayana’s Axiom,
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,”
has a corollary,
“In a democracy, those who refuse to learn from history are in the majority and dictate that everyone else suffer for their ignorance.”-third world county’s corollary to Santayana’s Axiom
(Of course, in general, whatever faction rules in any government, it is generally dominated by those who refuse to learn from history. It’s a human condition. Worse, perhaps, in rule by mob though.)
Western Civilization is doomed by those truths, IMO, though Burnham’s postulation that,
“Liberalism is a philosophy of consolation for Western civilization as it commits suicide,”
is, of course, false on its face. Liberalism is no problem at all. It is those who today falsely call themselves liberals (or progressives or whatever catchphrase will palatably substitute for “faux commie elitist anarcho-tyranists”) who provide a “philosophy of consolation for Western civilization as it commits suicide.” (Burnham does make a good case for his comment in his analysis of modern so-called liberalism.)
And, after reading a bit of Parado’s work, he smells a tad of just such ripe, phony liberalism. Just a tad, mind you, but how much manure does it take to taint a glass of milk?
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