When All Else Fails, Start Fear Mongering

Bush on Terror Plots: More Numbers that Don't Add Up
Bush on Terror Plots: More Numbers that Don't Add Up
Arianna Huffington
10.07.2005

In his never-ending attempt to link Iraq and 9/11, the president made the claim this week that America had no choice but to remain in Iraq, lest Al Qaeda be able to use it as a terrorist base. Gee, I've lost track, what is this now… White House Excuse for War #178?

And pardon me for asking, but didn't Al Qaeda set up shop in Iraq only after we invaded? Just checking.

I've said before that when it comes to understanding how the war in Iraq is going, it's all about the numbers. After parsing Bush's big foreign policy address on Thursday, it's clear the same can be said for the war on terror. So get out your al-Qaeda workbooks and let's do the math…

Looking to bring back the Fear Factor that worked so well in the 2004 campaign, the president boldly declared that the U.S. and its partners "have disrupted at least ten serious al-Qaida plots since September 11 -- including three al-Qaida plots to attack inside the United States. We have stopped at least five more al-Qaida efforts to case targets in the United States or infiltrate operatives into our country." Holy Moly -- that sounds impressive… and effective… and scary.

That is, until the details of exactly which "serious" plots the president was referring to came out. Hours after the speech, the White House released a helpful worksheet… and the experts started scratching their heads. Check out this L.A. Times article and see if you can't hear the law enforcement officials quoted offering up a collective "Huh?"

For instance, one of the three U.S.-targeted plots cited by the president involved plans to use hijacked airplanes to attack targets on the West Coast in 2002 -- plans hatched by 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. This was part of the so-called second wave of suicide attacks disclosed by the 9/11 commission, attacks that never materialized because Mohammed became "too busy" to see them through. The 9/11 commission reported that the hijacking plot never got beyond the theoretical stages. Which raises the philosophical question: If a plot never moves beyond the spitballing stage, is it even possible to foil it? And does a terrorist abandoning his plans because he has too much on his plate qualify as America having "disrupted" him?

The L.A. Times quotes a federal counter-terrorism official as saying of the hijacking plots: "I don't think we ever resolved these… [they] were on the boards, but they never got anywhere." Yet the White House listed them as the top two "serious" plots that had been thwarted. And it went downhill from there.

Top plot number 3 cited by the White House was the case of reputed "dirty bomber" Jose Padilla. But the "senior federal law enforcement officials" interviewed by the L.A. Times said "they hadn't found any evidence… that the plot had developed into any kind of operational plan." As for the remaining "serious plots", here is the New York Times' assessment: "It was not immediately clear whether other items on the list represented significant threats".

In other words, it was a Top 10 list more suited to Letterman than a major presidential speech.

Well, what about those 5 instances of "casings and infiltrations"? Unfortunately, these were even less detailed than the 10 plots, including one "in which an unnamed person was said to be given the task of collecting information on unspecified tourist targets." We are, of course, glad those were stopped. But they are hardly compelling evidence as to why we need to stay the course in Iraq. If this is the best the White House has, then I'm really scared.

When asked why the White House would include so many alleged, vague, and seemingly half-baked schemes in a triumphant list of thwarted terrorist plots, yet another federal counter-terrorism official said: "Everyone is allowed to count in their own way."

Especially if they are President of the United States. And have an approval rating of 37%.

"Today Americans would be outraged if U.N. troops entered Los Angeles to restore order; tomorrow they will be grateful. This is especially true if they were told there was an outside threat from beyond, whether real or promulgated, that threatened our very existence. It is then that all peoples of the world will plead with world leaders to deliver them from this evil. The one thing every man fears is the unknown. When presented with this scenario, individual rights will be willingly relinquished for the guarantee of their well being granted to them by their world government." -- Henry Kissinger speaking at Evian, France, May 21, 1992 Bilderburgers meeting. Unbeknownst to Kissinger, his speech was taped by a Swiss delegate to the meeting.

blueflame1
blueflame1, yep, and Kissinger learned that from Herman Goering.

BBB

Bush's risky flu pandemic plan
October 8, 2005
Bush's risky flu pandemic plan
By George J. Annas, chairman of the Department of Health Law, Bioethics and Human Rights at Boston University School of Public Health and author of ''American Bioethics."

WHENEVER THE world is not to his liking, President Bush has a tendency to turn to the military to make it better. The most prominent example is the country's response to 9/11, complete with wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. After Hurricane Katrina, Bush belatedly called on the military to assist in securing New Orleans, and has since suggested that Congress should consider empowering the military to be the ''first responders" in any national disaster.

On Tuesday, the president suggested that the United States should confront the risk of a bird flu pandemic by giving him the power to use the US military to quarantine ''part[s] of the country" experiencing an ''outbreak." So we have moved quickly in the past month, at least metaphorically, from the global war on terror to a proposed war on hurricanes, to a proposed war on the bird flu.

Of all these proposals, the use of the military to attempt to contain a flu pandemic on US soil is the most dangerous. Bush says he got the idea by reading John Barry's excellent account of the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, ''The Great Influenza." Although quarantine was used successfully in that pandemic, on the island of American Samoa, Barry in his afterword suggests (sensibly) that we need a national plan to deal with a future influenza pandemic. He said last week that his other suggestions were the only ones he hoped public health officials and ethicists would consider, but they read like policy recommendations to me and apparently the president. Barry writes, for example, ''if there is any chance to limit the geographical spread of the disease, officials must have in place the legal power to take extreme quarantine measures." This recommendation comes shortly after his praise for countries that ''moved rapidly and ruthlessly to quarantine and isolate anyone with or exposed to" SARS.

Planning makes sense. But planning for ''brutal" or ''extreme" quarantine of large numbers or areas of the United States would create many more problems than it could solve.

First, historically mass quarantines of healthy people who may have been exposed to a pathogen have never worked to control a pandemic, and have almost always done more harm than good because they usually involve vicious discrimination against classes of people (like immigrants or Asians) who are seen as ''diseased" and dangerous.

Second, the notion that ruthless quarantine was responsible for preventing a SARS pandemic is a public health myth. SARS appeared in more than 30 countries; they all reacted differently (some used forced quarantine successfully, others voluntary quarantine, and others no quarantine at all), and all ''succeeded." Quarantine is no magic bullet.

Third, quarantine and isolation are often falsely equated, but the former involves people who are well, the latter people who are sick. Sick people should be treated, but we don't need the military to force treatment. Even in extremes like the anthrax attacks, people seek out and demand treatment. Sending soldiers to quarantine large numbers of people will most likely create panic, and cause people to flee (and spread disease), as it did in China where a rumor during the SARS epidemic that Beijing would be quarantined led to 250,000 people fleeing the city that night.

Not only can't we evacuate Houston, we cannot realistically quarantine its citizens. The real public health challenge will be shortages of health care personnel, hospital beds, and medicine. Plans to militarize quarantine miss the point in a pandemic. The enemy is not sick or exposed Americans -- it is the virus itself. And effective action against any flu virus demands its early identification, and the quick development, manufacture, and distribution of a vaccine and treatment modalities.

In 1918 the Spanish flu was spread around the US primarily by soldiers, and it seems to have incubated primarily on military bases. It is a misreading of history that a lesson from 1918 is to militarize mass quarantine to contain the flu. And neither medicine nor public health are what they were in 1918; having public health rely on mass quarantine today is like having our military rely on trench warfare in Iraq.

What has not changed in the past century, however, is the fact that national flu policy will be determined by national politics. In World War I, as Barry recounts, this policy demanded that there be no public criticism of the federal government.

That policy was a disaster, and did prevent many potentially effective public health actions. Today's presidential substitution of a military quarantine solution for credible public health planning will also be counterproductive and ineffective in the event of a real pandemic. It would leave US citizens sick with the flu to wonder -- like the citizens of New Orleans told to go to the Convention Center and the Superdome for help -- why the federal government had abandoned them.

Public health in the 21st century should be federally directed, but effective public health policy must be based on trust, not fear of the public.

"As you are noting, the dark use fear, the only weapon they have to continually control you" http://thegalacticpost.blogspot.com/2005/10/st-germain-as-you-are-noting-dark-use.html