The Christian Science Monitor's Weblog for 01/02/04 has a roundup of news related to the latest Orange alert, and the various cancelled flights that have yet to produce a single arrest of a terrorist suspect.
It turns out the terrorist watchlist(s) being used has a number of problems (see links at CSM) in terms of being able to flag potentially risky passengers on foreign flights to the US.
Kevin Drum (aka CalPundit) seems to have concluded, with some sadness, that there really are serious questions about how meaningful the current color-coded alert system really is.
In theory, the Iraq War didn't have to be a trade-off in the "war on terrorism." Or at least, the United States could have proceeded full-speed-ahead putting together the kinds of systems (like better detection devices in ports) and mechanisms for alerts (like terrorist watchlists) that would allow the kind of thorough screening of vulnerable points in the infrastructure that we need to prevent terrorist attacks.
In practice, though, the Iraq War was a huge distraction from efforts to set up permanent and effective measures against terrorist attacks on the United States. So far, we've been lucky domestically in not seeing a major terrorist strike. But with domestic terrorists assembling weapons of mass destruction in Texas, we need to be making faster progress.
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