100% Chance of BS

By Cernig

The WaPo reports today that a bipartisan Congressional study, six months in the making, has concluded that "it is more likely than not that a weapon of mass destruction will be used in a terrorist attack somewhere in the world by the end of 2013.

My initail reaction is much the same as Steven Taylor's:

It is not that I do not think that the US security apparatus shouldn’t be concerned about potential WMD attacks, it is just that I would like a better sense that there is a realistic assessment of the situation. We have heard for years about the threats of suitcase nukes or nuclear bombs in shipping containers and such and they have been presented as the rationale for any number of anti-terror policy. After all, who can complain about trifles like warrantless wiretaps, unlimited detentions and militarization of domestic security if there is a 50% chance of a nuclear terrorist attack?

Really these estimates come across, to me at least, as a combination of fear-mongering designed to forward specific policy initiatives and cowardly policy-making made by people who would rather over-estimate threats rather than have a finger pointed at them down the road in case their estimates end up to be wrong.

However, we're lucky to count some actual experts on the subject among our blog friends - in particular Cheryl Rofer of WhirledView, who has worked in the field of non-proliferation for years. I'll be interested in seeing what she has to say. I suspect it will be along the lines of that we've known everything in this new report for a long time and it would have been nice if the Bush administration would have funded programs designed to make nuclear materials safe and increase checks at ports of entry, but maybe now we'll get some real action on these matters and on a new non-proliferation agenda.

Comments

[Da Buffalo Amongst Wolves]

I think Edger at OOIBC has an appropriate take on the recent report and a critique:

"I don't recall the 9/11 Commission ever doing any "exploring" of the root causes of the 2001 terrorist attacks or of the root causes of the oppression and imperialism and the general foreign policies of messing internally with other countries militarily and via CIA fomented insurrections, destabilization campaigns, and false flag operations to fog the minds of Americans over the past six or more decades.

I don't recall the 9/11 Commission ever doing anything other than their job: creating justifications for the "war on terror" fearmongering and propaganda campaigns that replaced the "cold war" mentality of 'political rule on behalf of multinational corporate stripping the earth bare like a swarm of locusts the rest of the world's human beings are our property and resources to be used till exhausted with no regard for their humanity' American Exceptionalism that was behind all the lies and deceits of the ten year sanctions war and eventual invasion and occupation of Iraq that was directly responsible for the deaths, maimings and poisonings of over a million Iraqis; men, women, and children.

But "explore the causes"? Deluded misinformation at best, and pure manipulative propaganda at worst.

Boo! The boogeymen are out to get you.

This story is all over the left blogs today, and most of what I read is people lapping it up as easily and thoughtlessly as the 26 percenters lapped up all of Bush's years of Rovian manipulations, and using it as justification for "pragmatic" hide their heads in the sand denial of Barack Obama's obvious militarist tendencies and full intentions to continue the war on terror memes and determination to militarily dominate the earth while blaming the blowback on "terrists" on behalf of the corporatocracy that rules America.

Have we learned nothing in eight years?"

In full: http://ooibc.blogspot.com/2008/12/whats-left-of-blogs.html

I'm Da Buffalo Amongst Wolves, and I approve of this message.