Homeland Insecurity      Updated November 2007 Think the USA is safe from bad guys? Nope. George W. Bush and his  band of idiots have made the United States less secure than ever

"I am truly not that concerned about him."   - G.W. Bush, responding to a question about bin Laden's whereabouts, 3/13/02 

"Gosh, I don't think I ever said I'm not worried about Osama bin Laden. That's kind of one of those exaggerations." GW Bush 10/13/04

Bush and his team ignored terrorist threats from the beginning. As has been stated many times, denied by the Bush team all along, and finally confirmed by LOTS of sources (including Bob Woodward's book State of Denial), the Bush administration had plenty of warning about Al Qaeda, and chose to ignore it. Condi Rice, called by a leading neocon "the worst National Security Adviser since they invented the office," was given a report early on about the Al Qaeda threat. The Clinton team had passed on their concerns and plans. Clinton had at least tried to off Bin Laden, although his team was unable to do so. Bush never even tried. 

What did they focus on instead of terrorists? IRAQ. They never had their eye on the ball. They wanted tax cuts for the rich. Relax the laws on polluters. But safeguard the country? Oops.

Paul Bremer, the administration's guy running Iraq for the first year (and also the idiot who foolishly disbanded the Iraqi police and military), was quoted in a speech in early 2001 that the Bushies were not paying attention at all to terrorism.  When he was asked in spring 2004 about it, he says he was referring to the Clinton administration, which was already gone.  So he was talking in the present tense, but he really meant past tense.  Uh-huh.

Everybody hates the USA now

By acting unilaterally, dismissing the United Nations until he decides he needs them again to clean up his messes, making the case for an unnecessary war with unreliable intelligence, and by always waving a stick, George W. Bush has pissed away any sympathy and good will the USA had after 9/11. Even America's enemies understood the need for revenge and justice after 9/11, and said little to nothing as the USA blew the snot out of Afghanistan. But then along came secret prisons, kidnapping foreign nationals on foreign shores (even those of our American allies), and the Iraqi invasion. The world looks bigger and the USA looks smaller, each and every day. Many other countries own chunks of American debt, and some of those chunks are HUGE. The USA is deeply in debt, its military is stretched too thin, and it has a big fat target on it. Little pissant countries with tin dictators, such as in Iran and North Korea, think nothing of flipping off the once-great USA. All thanks to Bush.

September 2006, a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that the gummint's been sitting on since April indicates that the Iraqi conflict serves as a recruiting cause for terrorists, and therefore worsens the terror situation. President Musharaf of Pakistan, a strong ally, agrees completely with this assessment. The only part not agreeing with this is Bush, who's been hiding the doc.

July 2007: The latest National Intelligence Estimate says that Al Qaeda is stronger now than before 9/11. Hundreds of billions spent, many thousands of lives lost, years of "effort," and they're stronger than ever. And why is that? Because Bush took his eye off the ball. Instead of cleaning up in Afghanistan, he diverted resources to Iraq, where the terrorists were NOT, and opened the place up (by breaking the borders and disposing of Saddam, who feared Al Qaeda even more and therefore kept them out), giving them a training ground. U.S. intelligence now says that foreign fighters to to Iraq to train on the latest techniques, then take this newfound wisdom to other countries. Terrorists in the UK trained in Iraq. Car bombers and suicide bombers in Afghanistan trained in Iraq. And so on.
 

"I don't like leaks."
 

October 2007: An intelligence-gathering company that has many times in the past provided advance info on Al Qaeda messges and actions provided, in advance, a copy of a Bin Laden video to the White House. The company specifically told the White House not to leak this video until Al Qaeda themselves did so, so as not to tip the bad guys off that they'd been breached. Well, within MINUTES, the White House spread this video al over the damn place, and allowed their cronies at Fox News to broadcast the thing. Al Qaeda then knew they'd been tapped, and changed their operations to prevent future leaks. Way to go, assholes in the Bush administration and at Fox News.

Bush reacted very strongly when told that somebody in his administration had leaked secret info to reporters. He said those leakers would be taken care of. Well, it turns out that Karl Rove had something to do with leaking. So did Cheney's right hand man. And in April 2006, it turns out that BUSH HIMSELF authorized the leaking of info to another reporter. Only the White House calls it "declassifying," not leaking. Okay. So the way Bush declassifies info (which he's legally entitled to do) is to tell Cheney to tell a crony (Scooter Libby) to drop that info in a reporter's lap. They didn't publish the secret info, and it wasn't even officially declassified until many days after it was leaked. They let it slip out, secretly, anonymously (SO anonymously that the reporter spent months in jail rather than reveal Libby as her source), with the specific purpose of screwing over a critic (Joseph Wilson). Even when Bush's role in this leak was revealed, the White House still countered that the purpose of the leak was to contradict Wilson's assertion that Iraq was not trying to buy uranium in Africa. Well, it's already been known for a looooooong time that Iraq was NOT trying to buy uranium.

Long story short, Bush doesn't like leaks unless he himself is the leaker, and even then he calls it something else.
 
 

"We're fighting the terrorists over in Iraq 
                       so we don't have to fight them HERE."

June 2007, a GAO report found that the US does a lousy job fighting terrorism in other countries, where it also found that the US spent more money fighting drugs than fighting terrorists.

September 2006: A National Intelligence Estimate that the Bush administration has been sitting on since April says that the war in Iraq serves as a great recruiting drive for more terrorists. The USA is creating more terrorists. 

Summary: the war in Iraq has nothing to do with the "war on terror." There are insurgents in Iraq. These are not the terror-exporting types. There WERE no "terrorists" in Iraq until the US invasion made it possible for foreign fighters to enter the country.

It's this crap Bush keeps saying, over and over. Cheney too. Problem is, it's a big fat lie. We're fighting INSURGENTS over there. Those people aren't traveling over here. The professional, dedicated terrorists are the ones who travel to other countries, not the vermin who crawl around in holes, making roadside bombs. We're fighting in Iraq ONLY because Cheney, Rove, Wolfowitz, and the rest of the neocons wanted the war to happen, with or without evidence, as has now been shown. They were only looking for the excuse to go after Iraq, even after they knew that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11 and also had no WMD.

This dumb quote of his also subscribes to the "flypaper" theory: if we kill off all the bad guys over there, they'll all be dead and can't come to the USA. But as even General Casey, the commander of US forces in Iraq admits, the US presence is fueling the insurgency, meaning "creating more bad guys." Foreign fighters are flocking to the place, from a number of countries.

The bad guys in Iraq are not taking a bus through Baghdad that ultimately brings them to the USA. The bad guys who will come to the states to do damage won't bother stopping in Iraq first. 

Iraq wasn't the frontline in the "war on terror" until the United States made it that way. Oh, and way to go by standing at the podium, Bush, and telling the terrorists to "bring it on." Cuz they did. SINCE Bush made his dorky proclamation of "Mission Accomplished," the USA has lost the majority of its 2300-plus dead.

Besides, the administration doesn’t differentiate between terrorists and insurgents. Terrorists blow shit up in other countries. The insurgents the US military faces in Iraq are just trying to get the USA out of there.
 
 

Cronies in Homeland Security

Every person in power hires old lackies to fill spots, but Bush has mastered the art of hiring complete idiots to fill IMPORTANT slots. And so we ended up with a goofball running the SEC for a time, a hack running the EPA, nameless ciphers getting nominated to the Supreme Court, a trade show guy running FEMA, and complete buffoons running the Homeland Security department.

Tom Ridge gave us color-coding, which is a joke. If the colors MEAN anything, then why, when they change the colors, do they have to explain to us what the new color MEANS? Ridge also informed us that, in the event of a biological or gas attack, we should have on hand plenty of duct tape and plastic wrap with which to seal up our houses. Jesus Christ!

The guy Bush picked to succeed Ridge was Bernard Kerik, whose shady financial dealings (including not paying taxes for a nanny who was in the country illegally) got him booted from the job before he could even take it. A little over a year after ethics questions sank his nomination, Kerik pleaded guilty to taking tens of thousands of dollars in gifts from a company that wished to do business with New York City while he was a top official there. The organization has alleged links to the mob. Holy shit! This is the guy that Bush and Giuliani wanted to run security?

Then along came Michael Chertoff, whose relationship with his FEMA lackey Mike Brown went from great to not so great to awful, all in the space of one hurricane. Chertoff has little experience in such a job. Why is he in charge?

Brian Doyle, a deputy something or other at HSA, was arrested in April 2006 for child porno. Turns out he'd been nailed at a previous job for downloading porn. Doesn't anybody there do BACKGROUND CHECKS ??????    After all, it's a SECURITY job.
 
 

Federal Spending

Congressmen have spent more time trying to get a slice of that homeland security budget as pork than in putting into places that make sense. They pick targets for that cash based on spreading it around, instead of where the greatest risk is. Nobody’s going to blow up shit in South Dakota, right? And yet plenty of GOP lawmakers got security money to protect turkey farms, railroad museums, all sorts of shit that nobody was ever going after. PORK PORK PORK. 

January 2006: Michael Chertoff, the idiot who brought us Michael Brown of FEMA, actually started changing this policy. People were bitching, but too bad. Hey, that's one right, ninety-nine million wrong. But it's a start.

The home page for TSA has the tag line TSA ... VIGILANT, EFFECTIVE, EFFICIENT.  What a bunch of garbage. They've been caught wasting all sorts of money, just like FEMA. And if they were effective, then new airport security measures wouldn't just be completely reactionary, and sudden.
 
 

Illegal Wiretaps

The New York Times revealed that the Bush administration has been illegally wiretapping thousands of Americans for a couple of years. Bush and his band of buffoons have been stretching the definitions that he says are implied in the Congressional order allowing him to take action against the USA's enemies. They authorized the use of force. He has taken that to mean he can kidnap people in other countries. And the CIA has done just that, and in some cases has grabbed completely innocent people, who were later deposited in other countries and left to fend for themselves. He extended this authorization to somehow include illegal wiretaps. A secret court has allowed presidents for years to get such wiretaps, but only through a specific court order of that court, which they've even been able to get in the middle of the night. In addition, the president is allowed to perform a wiretap WHILE WAITING FOR THE COURT ORDER. It's pretty much carte blanche.

In over 4000 instances, the vaiours administrations have been turned down ONLY 4 TIMES. And yet this isn't good enough for Bush. he wants to instantly start a wiretap, without the instant court order, without the implied permission BEFORE a court order, and without any checks or balances. This is the danger of the imperial presidency as defined by Bush and Cheney. They are destroying the Constitution they have pledged to uphold.

January 2006: A Congressional analysis indicates that Bush is on very shaky legal ground with the wiretaps, and that Congress would likely never have approved them. Arlen Specter himself says the prez was outta line, and even said that presidents get impeached when they trample the Constitution. When John Ashcroft was in the hospital with a bad gall bladder and a blackened soul a couple of years back, his own deputy declined to approve the wiretaps. Also this month, an Associated Press poll indicates that a majority of Americans wants Bush to get a warrant before getting a wiretap.

March 2007, an audit reveals just how casually and improperly the Patriot Act has been used. Whatever happened to the conservative values of government non-intrusion? That's been totally turned on its head under the Bush administration and his toady Congress. The FBI has been failing to provide the right paperwork to ensure that the Act is not abused. Fully TWENTY PERCENT of the required requests or followups were not done. They also requested instant wire taps, access to emails and financial records, subpeonas, warrants, etc. as emergencies when in many cases they were NOT. 

Under Bush, anything goes. Laws that should be enforced are NOT. And other laws are made up on the fly. Civil liberties go out the window.
 
 
 
 

Airports

November 2006: THe latest studies indicate that airport security is no better stopping weapons from getting through than they were prior to 9/11.

September 2006: I fly out of O'Hare to Philly. I'm one of the few with their liquids in a bag. They really don't seem to care at security. One day later, I'm flying home out of Philly, and they REALLY care about the liquids THERE. Why the inconsistency? O'Hare is a helluva lot busier. 

August 2006: The UK catches a bunch of guys who were planning to blow up planes using liquid explosives. The FAQ up on the TSA web site was the worst source of information available. British Airways' website told you everything you needed to know. The United Airlines site was okay, but not perfect. TSA's is worthless. First, they had a page called "Checkpoint Expections."  What the hell's an expection? What language is THAT? 

The TSA site tells you sort of what's not allowed. But the list of what IS allowed is actually very short. How about printing THAT list? If you have to travel, and only have the TSA web site to tell you what you can bring on a plane, you're screwed. These dumbasses have no clue what they're doing. Their website is a whole lotta marketing anyway. Pictures of people's faces, families, blah blah. Hey, this is serious shit. 

August 2006: Flew to Heathrow the week after the big liquid explosive scare. Da wife bought me plastic bags to put my stuff in, but they eased up the rules by the time I went. Got to O'Hare three hours early, and there was NOBODY ELSE IN LINE. So I got checked in within two minutes, and sat at the airport. On the way back from London, I went through three security lines, including one hefty body search. After all that, and lots of waiting, at the gate they sent us down some stairs to wait for a bus. OUTSIDE THE BUILDING. There were other folks walking around. After all that security and being patted down and having my bag checked three times, I was sent outside to a non-secure area at Heathrow, to be bussed to my plane. Jesus Christ.
 
 

Shipping containers and other port of entry issues

Lots of countries inspect every single shipping container that comes in by boat or plane. The USA inspects less than two percent. We're hoping that we'll catch somebody shipping nuclear or other weapons by pure f____g luck. No budget has gone into this at all. Bush has even avoided questions on the subject.

February 2006, Bush says he's just found out that the Treasury and other departments approved a deal for a Dubai-based company to take over management of ports in six major U.S. coastal cities. Other countries, including China, run U.S. ports. Nobody's ever complained too much. Security is still largely in the hands of Americans. BUT ..... the Congress (especially Republicans still in a rush to distance themselves from an idiot president before mid-term elections) and other interested parties are crapping all over this deal, saying that Dubai was the base of operations for two of the 9/11 hijackers, that Dubai money financed them, that Dubai was slow to condemn the Taliban government. On the other hand, Dubai has handed over Al Qaeda suspects, and changed their banking procedures to stop the flow of cash to terrorists. If the deal goes through, everybody will be paranoid that Arabs are running U.S. ports. If the deal does NOT go through, the USA will further inflame the Arab world. Bush is screwed no matter what. The Correct Opinion is ..... once again, Bush appears out of the loop, and once again, Bush's cronies have let him down. Not a damn one of them was smart enough to see the potential political problem and alert the boss, who appears to have known about the deal months after it was public knowledge that Dubai was in the running to get the job. 

The way to have handled the Dubai situation was to never let them win the deal in the first place. But that horse is out of the barn, as Bush might say.
 
 

Securing the border 

Not only has Bush done nothing to secure the USA's southern border, he's encouraging people to jump the Mexican border with amnesty programs and guest worker programs. "Hey, I only gotta get over the border and hide for six months, and then I'll get amnesty." That's exactly what these people are telling their relatives. He's also put in no new agents. The states, and even the local municipal governments, are putting their own people, using their own budgets, on the border. When the Minuteman patrols started up, he had the nerve to call them "vigilantes." Several analysts have said it's only a matter of time before the USA gets nailed with some stolen Russian nukes, brought into the states via Mexico. The border with Mexico is actually more porous than ever, thanks to Bush.

April 2006: Bush had screwed the pooch on illegal immigration. He wants to make it easier for illegals to stay in the USA, which only invites more illegals. Can you TRUST all those people to be hard-working, honest landscapers, George? Don't you think the bad guys are watching how easy it is to get into the country?

Just like his dumbass Social Security plan just had to include private investment accounts, his immigration policy just has to have a "guest worker" piece. Screw that. Secure the border first, THEN worry about gifts to felons.

August 2006: Bush finally sent National Guard troops to the border. He was very quick to say he's fulfilled his promise, even though he sent fewer than promised, and it wasn't changing any of the numbers. And he QUICKLY said, "Now that I've sent the troops, we need to talk about making these illegals legal."  That's what it's all been about from the beginning. Quick, let's get more illegals to stick. It's a JOKE.  To Bush, there is no border security without amnesty. 
 
 

Stabbed a CIA agent AND a security expert in the back 

When former ambassador Joseph Wilson went public with his knowledge that the Bushies deliberately put out intelligence they knew was completely wrong, regarding Saddam Hussein's alleged attempts to buy uranium, they outed Wilson's wife, a covert CIA agent. They put her, her husband, and her contacts in jeopardy, for the sake of pure revenge.

Richard Clarke has been running security for a large part of the government for a long time. On 9/11, with Bush on a plane going in circles, and Cheney in a bunker, Clarke is the guy who took over the security situation, even giving the order to ground all the planes. He'd been telling Condi Rice for months about Al Qaeda, and she seemed clueless. He couldn't get the Bushies to stop focusing on Iraq, Iraq, Iraq. When he finally started calling them on their mistakes, they started denigrating his reputation and importance. If you weren't with the program, you were The Enemy.
 
 

The US military is stretched WAY too thin

If another conflict was to flare up, the US military would be unable to deal with it. Recruitment is way down (no surprise), we're abusing the hell out of our reserves, we're sending people on one overseas assignment after another, and we're cancelling people's rightful exits from military service.

Time and again, we've heard from commanders saying that both the military and the National Guard are not combat ready throughout many divisions, because most of the equipment they use to train on is over in Iraq, and likely won't be coming back, EVER.

November 2006, the head of the Marines said that his branch of the military is now at the point where they cannot fulfill their mission.

There has been a huge increase in the number of soldiers asking out of extended duty due to extenuating circumstances. It's in the tens of thousands, as opposed to in the low four figures. Who the hell wants to have their tours extended indefinitely? HOW many soldiers thought they were going home, only to find out they were staying? How many soldiers finally made it back to homebase in Alaska, thinking they were hanging out awhile, only to find out they were going right back to Iraq?

The plan was to pare forces down to as little as 120,000 by end of 2006. Now the plan is to keep at least 140,000, if not more, in Iraq through all of 2007.
 
 

Better living, quicker dying, through chemistry

Two months after 9/11, government docs came out listing more than 100 locations where a terrorist attack or accident could release poisonous clouds of chemicals that could kill or injure more than a million people. The chemical, petroleum, trucking, and other lobbies got together to fight various proposals that would force these industries to adopt safer technologies, because it would cost them more. The Bush administation and its Congressional cronies supported these initiatives, because they love Big Business, even at hte expense of the security of the American people.
 

Giving up the hunt for the bad guys

It was bad enough back in 2002 when Bush announced that he just didn't care that much about Osama Bin Laden, the evil mastermind who plotted the murders of thousands of Americans and others. But then very quietly in 2006, he allowed the CIA to call off the effort to specifically find Bin Laden. The guy who should be #1 on the American most-wanted list is officially not relevant, apparently. And Bush is the guy who keeps telling the country that the Democrats will make us less safe. Yeah, sure.
 

Let's scare the PISS out of everybody

The main weapon this sleazebag administration has used in dragging people onto their bandwagon is FEAR. Nobody makes use of this more than Dick Cheney, who has repeatedly invoked images of dead Americans, mushroom clouds, dirty bombs, anything and everything he can think of to suggest that if we don't all listen to him and his boss, everybody will DIE. 

In November 2006, the GOP, in typical Rove-style sleazy fashion, trotted out a campaign commercial with images of Bin Laden, terrorist training camps (the usual footage with the monkey bars), fireballs and the like, and reminded voters, "this is what it's all about." 

November 2007, Bush got testy when Democrats decided they didn't like his new nominee for Attorney-General any longer, since the guy, Mike Mukasey, couldn't give a straight answer on whether simulated drowning (waterboarding) could be considered torture. The whole torture issue turned out to be a very sticky thing for the previous A.G., the lying and incompetent Alberto Gonzalez. So Bush, in a speech before the kindred mouth-breathers at the Heritage Foundation (he and Cheney always have to speak in front of hardcore conservative groups, to avoid heckling), Bush hinted that if the udiciary Committee did not confirm Mukasey, the USA would be without an AG "in a time of war," and boy, we'd all be up a shit creek. Like Cheney, Bush invoked images of attacks and horrible things. The truly funny line was when he suggested that "people in Washington DC" were trying to scare people into voting a certain way, then he immediately launched a fear pitch of his own. The stupid son of a bitch doesn't read his own speeches in advance, apparently. "These evil guys are trying to do what I'm doing right this second." Unbelievable.

November 2007, one day after the speech described above, info came out on Donald Rumsfeld's ubiquitous "snowflakes," the endless supply of Post-It notes and memos he used for distributing his worthless ideas around the Pentagon during his ruinous run as Defense Secretary. Turns out he specifically told his staff to "keep elevating the threat." He also wanted them to "link Iraq to Iran" and come up with "bumper sticker statements" to boslter public support for the war as it dragged on and became more unpopular. Elevate the threat, he told them. Sell the fear.

November 2007: Idiot GOP candidate Tom Tancredo put out a TV ad in which a guy in a hooded sweatshirt blows up a mall, with the taglin, "Tancredo, before it's too late." Holy shit, it's the daisy ad all over again. This guy is a slug, and the only one on the tube promoting this garbage is CNN's chronic embarrassment, the dumbshit Glenn Beck.