How vulnerable are we? Tinfoil hat time...

[mkregel]

I am just the messenger on this one - let me know what everyone here thinks on this:

"We joke among ourselves that its lucky we just like looking and taking
pictures, because if we wanted to it would be child's play to totally
shut down virtually any city. There are just _too_many_ critical services exposed in too many places, almost all of them with little or zero security (and virtually impossible to provide security.)
In the present 'crisis', there have been some ostentatious (but not very
effective) upgrades to security at prominent landmarks and key facilities.
For instance, the Sydney Harbour Bridge now has a few security guards
on foot patrol, and a few more video cameras. But even that national iconwould still be vulnerable to a determined and creative attack. Elsewhere, at less visible but still critical locations, there have been precisely zero changes in security arrangements."

http://www.politechbot.com/p-04947.html

[htuttle]

1. I've actually been thinking that since a few months after 9/11

When no other terrorist acts happened, I started to get very suspicious. The more they warned about them, and the apparent LACK of them started to seem like a glaring contradiction.

The person who wrote the politech post is exactly right -- our modern infrastructure is simply impossible to protect, if there were actually someone trying to attack it.

I don't want to go into any details, but I will say this: I grew up in farm country amongst plenty of completely insane farm boys (in that way that only farm kids can be). They used to enjoy shooting things that weren't meant to be shot, and blowing things up with whatever found and improvised explosives they could come up with.

If half a dozen of them decided to go on a rampage with nothing but the items they'd acquired around the farm, they could easily shut down a small sized city if they planned it out -- probably without getting caught (except that they'd probably be drunk all the while, so they would get caught).

Not to mention the glaring (but very welcome!) lack of those 'normal' terrorist acts that people who live in parts of the world where there IS terrorism have to worry about, ie., exploding buses and pizza restaurants, drive-by shootings, etc... None of that has happened here either.

[notadmblnd]

2. So what should we do?

Should we build walls around everything? Move Underground? Personaly I don't think there are many measures that we could take that would ever make us safe or even safer. Oh, putting up fences, walls and barriers. Building our homes underground or lining our rooms with duct tape and plastic might give us a little warm fuzzy feeling for a while. But if you just stop and think about it, none of the measures anyone takes is going to stop someone who really wants to do harm.

Take Isreal for example. They're building about a 20 foot wall between them and the Palistinians with ditches dug on both sides to keep their terrorist out. But dang it, those pesky little suicide bombers keep sneaking on their buses and killing thousands annually.

It really bothers me that our "leaders" (politicians, judges, laywers and corporate execs) in this country worship the dollar. That they're willing to lie and sneak and cheat and kill to get their hands on it.

They make their little wars so they can siphone off more from the taxpayers of this country and shove in their pockets. They laugh their butts off all the way to the bank. But its never enough, so we all get to pay for it. Our children get to die, we get to go to the unemployment line, bankruptcy court and finally into the streets.

We've gone to war in two countries in two years. The reasons we were told we were going to war (Osama and Saddam) are still running loose. Most of the rest of the world now hate us but there have not been any more acts of terrorism commited on US soil. I dont think its because our government has suddenly got good at preventing them.

Our government likes to keep us frightened with threats because when we are afraid it's easier for them to commit their crimes in our names. Their excuse then can be "we had to save the people from the evildoers." So there's always going to be "evildoers" one right after the other Iraq, Iran, N. Korea, then who? Syria, Egypt. We'll never be safe. They don't want us to be.
:tinfoilhat:

Edit: I forgot my hat

[mkregel]

3. Exactly...

Actually I can make a promise. I promise that if we stop behaving like spoiled little children, or insane cowboys...less people will want to destroy us.

Too simple you say?

What if we...

....stopped sending Israel weapons by the sh-tload until they start seriously negotiating for peace?
...stop trying to colonize Iraq, Afghanistan, wherever and just mind our own business?
...f*cking-A, just finally admit that we AREN'T the world and start playing ball with everyone else? Yes, that means we should go metric, dammit! (OK...going metric isn't going to change anytyhing, but it all goes hand in hand with the idea of not being so unilateralist.)

[Brian Sweat]

4. We are very vulnerable,

because almost all of the resources that should be devoted to preventing future terrorist attacks against U.S. targets have been diverted to fighting the war in Iraq. In fact, I think this may be one of the reasons the September 11 attack was so successful. I think Bush was already planning to invade Iraq in the summer of 2001 and as a result a lot of the intelligence resources that might have helped to prevent the attack were busy planning for an attack on Iraq.

[mkregel]

6. EXACTLY!!!!!

nuff said!

[Yentatelaventa]

5. America has over 100 million gun owners

If manpower is ever need to guard these things then America will come through. That's why we are Americans and not lemming servents.