The Department of Homeland Security for Dummies

[carols]

Somewhere in the bowels of the behemoth Department of Homeland Security, there is a guy named Al Martinez-Fonts. As we recently learned, Mr. Martinez Fonts makes his living calling business owners to ensure that they are prepared for the next terrorist attack. In other words, Al Martinez-Fonts is a taxpayer-subsidized telephone solicitor and the product he sells is called "fear."

...The long-term goal of this new DHS project is to reach out and touch every business in America - from mega-corporations like Microsoft to your local dry cleaner - in order to ensure that they have taken all the proper precautions against terror. And while we cannot rule out the possibility that some poor dry cleaner deep in the heart of rural Kansas may find himself face-to-face with a dangerous, swarthy individual who wants some extra starch in his bomb, we think it is unlikely that America will ever fall to an attack by WMM (Weapons of Mass Martinizing).

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[Miss Authoritiva]

1. Well, I'd give Mr. Martinez Fonts a gold star sticky...

For a government employee, Martinez Fonts is pretty industrious. Unfortunately, most of his work is probably wasted effort. One of the key things to remember about pre 9-11 intelligence is that it wasn't the people on the lower rungs of the power structure ladder who failed to do their jobs. It was the people on the highest rungs.

[teryang]

2. Bend over, grab your ankles and...

...kiss your ass goodbye. This used to be the Pentagon response to directives to have NBC warfare defense training. In the Navy they conducted one "drill" a year without equipment and without a drill. They called it gundecking. In the Army when you join, they make you put on a mask and walk through a tent filled with CS gas. That was it. I think they had it right.

Now what is it that DHS does that would have prevented 911? Would they have advised the CIA not to give visas to terrorists? How about safe houses? Perhaps they could have advised the CIA not to show terrorists how to organize crooked financial institutions and NGOs to finance operations and launder funds. Or how to traffic in guns and heroin to finance private wars. Would they prevented "rogue employees" of a well known bio-warfare defense contractor from designing anthrax delivery by mail "drills?" Would they have shut down CIA infiltrated flight schools from training terrorists how to fly? Would they have told the Israeli intelligence run security firm at the airport to tighten up?