There is a very good series of posts at Progressive Musings (4 parts as of this writing) giving FDtate313's thoughts on the handling of the ricin incidents from the viewpoint of people working in facilities at special risk.
And there's this piece from Orcinus (Ricin attack: What homeland security? 02/06/04) that for me was kind of a slap-my-forehead experience, as in, "Why didn't that occur to me?"
"That" being the question: why wasn't the national terrorism alert status wasn't raised after the ricin attack on the Senate? I mean, if the alert system means anything at all, shouldn't an actual terrorist attack on the national government warrant at least a couple of days of heightened alert?
The answer to the latter question is, the color-coded terror alert system doesn't serve much of any useful purpose that I can see. Some some of public alert system is needed. But this one is obviously isn't it. Orcinus' post is well worth reading. Here's how he poses the question:
After all, the nation's capital -- indeed, the United States Senate -- was just a few days ago the victim of a terrorist attack. Problem is, no one in charge of securing the nation from terrorist threats seems even to recognize it yet. ...
I'm not sure you can get much higher a risk than actually suffering a terrorist attack. But then, maybe that's the problem. Do we need a Code Flaming Magenta or something?
He does have a theory: that the Dept. of Homeland Security doesn't consider potential terrorist threats from domestic, home-grown terrorists to deserve as much focus as those from foreign terrorists, especially Islamic ones. And that's a very problematic stance for the government to take.
1 comment:
Orcinus raises a very interesting point. I've always had a problem with the terrorist alert system: Why is the middle level of the chart the normal status? The Defcon system doesn't work this way. What would it take to get all the way down to the lowest level (Green)? Will we ever see the day?
Post a Comment