Cowardice of Dem leaders confirmed: DHS list CONFIRMS Bush govt. treats National Security as excuse to REWARD supporters with PORK BARREL $$

CONFIRMING, yet again (as if more proof was necessary) that Republicans look at Democratic COWARDICE as an opportunity to unleash MORE outrages and atrocities on the American people and the world, Tuesday the DHS - Department of Homeland Security - released the NATIONAL ASSET DATABASE, the list which is used to apportion counter-terror funding.

Or, in short, what we might call "The Terrorist Wish List." The idea that if we can determine which targets the terrorists most likely would like to attack, we can spend limited funds (even if out of the multi-billion dollar Homeland Security budget) to prevent those attacks.

Which is why the geniuses of the Bush administration have included << Old MacDonald’s Petting Zoo, the Amish Country Popcorn factory, the Mule Day Parade, the Sweetwater Flea Market and an unspecified “Beach at End of a Street >>in the NatAssetDatabase, according to this article by Eric Lipton of the New York Times.

Besides sheer, clownish, comical incompetence, there is another explanation for assigning (for example) the State of Indiana with more than twice as many such potential terror target sites as California, and almost 50% more such designated potential targets as New York: that would be that the Bush administration is TRYING TO INCITE a terror attack - for example, on New Jersey's vulnerable chemical plants - as a opportunity to declare a State of National Emergency, and thereby declare martial law.

- unlimited, dictatorial, "the Martians are coming!" military powers under dictatorial government decree.

Taking a step back from the comical, the absurd, the farcical, the black comedy, the tragic, we can assign an ACADEMIC DETACHMENT to this very real possibility:

What the Bush administration is looking to do is create a CLIMATE of CRISIS, as for example the "Firebreathers" in the Deep South created after the election of President Abraham Lincoln in November 6th of 1860. By December 20th, 1860, South Carolina was the first state to secede the Union, and by Feb. 9, 1861, the Confederate States of America was formed with West Point (US Army) graduate Jefferson Davis as President.

That is, in the space of a few short months, a regular US election had been turned into a crisis, and the Confederate States and Confederate Army had been created. In the war to come many Southern cities and towns would be destroyed - Vicksburg, Atlanta, the farms of the Shenendoah Valley come to mind - but it was a cost that those who created the crisis (secession) made willingly in the hope of achieving their political aims - just as, 84 years before, colonial Americans had pledged their homes, families and lives to the Revolution against Great Britain.

Today, the Bush administration can not exactly declare war on the US government, or the millions of Americans who resist the inclination to unimpeded "unitary government" (dictatorial rule) by those in the Bush administration. They can, however, DO NOTHING as terrorists prepare attacks on vulnerable American targets, as the Bush White House DID NOTHING to inform US airlines in 2001 that not only was there a CREDIBLE THREAT from al Qaida hijackers, but that most US intel agencies were "BLINKING RED" about such a possible attack. ("Blinking red" warnings including the CIA, the FBI, the Gore Commission on Airline Safety, the Hart-Rudman commission on National Secuirty; the Italian Police stationing surface-to-air missiles around the Genoa G-8 economic summit to deter an al Qaida threat to hijack an airliner to use it to attack the assembled presidents of the G-8 nations, as well as Al Qaida's well known record of increasingly direct attacks on American targets, including 2 US embassies in Africa and the warship USS Cole in Yemen.)

IN the entire world, THE biggest benificiaries of the 9-11 attacks have been the Bush White House, the Republican Congress (which used the terror threat to smear Democratic Senators Max Cleland and Tom Daschle, both of whom were Vietnam war veterans, and the former, Senator Cleland, a combat-wounded Vietnam war veteran), and the major corporate defense contractors who are also stalwart Republican campaign donors.

The Republicans (thanks to cowering Democrats REFUSAL to CONFRONT their corruption and incompetence) enjoy MONOPOLY RULE over the ENTIRE US government, and major portions of the press and media.

Another terrorist attack on the United States would likely prolong that rule.

A MAJOR, successful terrorist attack on the United States would almost guarantee the regime would declare a State of Emergency, and martial law - even the possibility of the suspension of elections. This would be a tough precedent - Presidents Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt campaigned for re-election in the midst of major crisis wars - but it would be a precedent the Bush administration probably would not flinch from. As an aside, President Roosevelt refused to seek shelter, he campaigned relentlessly in an open-top presidential limousine in the Northwest during the cold October season, and observers all commented on how weakened the president looked. He died shortly after taking the oath of office in 1945, leaving Vice President Harry S. Truman to comment that he felt the sky had fallen on his shoulders. Truman had not sought the Vice Presidency, and according to his biographers, tried to reject the nomination. Roosevelt insisted that Truman take the spot, because Truman had gained national fame for holding defense contractors accountable for overcharges and excessive profits in wartime defense contracts - the famous Truman Senate committee, "The Special Committee to Investigate the National Defense Program was created on March 1, 1941, to study and investigate procurement and manufacture or construction of articles and facilities needed for national defense."

President Bush - with his close ties to Enron corruption and Tom DeLay's lobbyist-extortion arm Jack Abramoff; and Vice President Dick Cheney, with his no-bid, no-oversight contracts to Halliburton while still receiving multi-million dollar defered compensation from that company, are the ANTITHESIS of the hyper-honest and frugal Harry Truman.

Harry Truman was DERIDED by the Washington press for writing to a critic of his daughter's musical performance, pledging to punch the offending critic in the nose, even below the belt. But the long historical look back on Truman's presidency reveals that no president could single-handedly have averted the Korean War (the crisis that was Truman's popularity downfall), and in the half century since, Truman is looking steadfast and bold in retrospect.

Would that today, ONE Democratic presidential nominee exhibt ONE TENTH the cajones of President, and Senate corruption fighter, Harry S. Truman.

Especially since our current government and White House are all but rolling out the red carpet for the next 9-11 hijackers.







Come One, Come All, Join the Terror Target List
By ERIC LIPTON
July 12, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/12/washington/12assets.html?pagewanted=print


WASHINGTON, July 11 — It reads like a tally of terrorist targets that a child might have written: Old MacDonald’s Petting Zoo, the Amish Country Popcorn factory, the Mule Day Parade, the Sweetwater Flea Market and an unspecified “Beach at End of a Street.”

But the inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security, in a report released Tuesday, found that the list was not child’s play: all these “unusual or out-of-place” sites “whose criticality is not readily apparent” are inexplicably included in the federal antiterrorism database.

The National Asset Database, as it is known, is so flawed, the inspector general found, that as of January, Indiana, with 8,591 potential terrorist targets, had 50 percent more listed sites than New York (5,687) and more than twice as many as California (3,212), ranking the state the most target-rich place in the nation.

The database is used by the Homeland Security Department to help divvy up the hundreds of millions of dollars in antiterrorism grants each year, including the program announced in May that cut money to New York City and Washington by 40 percent, while significantly increasing spending for cities including Louisville, Ky., and Omaha.

“We don’t find it embarrassing,” said the department’s deputy press secretary, Jarrod Agen. “The list is a valuable tool.”

But the audit says that lower-level department officials agreed that some older information in the inventory “was of low quality and that they had little faith in it.”

“The presence of large numbers of out-of-place assets taints the credibility of the data,” the report says.

In addition to the petting zoo, in Woodville, Ala., and the Mule Day Parade in Columbia, Tenn., the auditors questioned many entries, including “Nix’s Check Cashing,” “Mall at Sears,” “Ice Cream Parlor,” “Tackle Shop,” “Donut Shop,” “Anti-Cruelty Society” and “Bean Fest.”

Even people connected to some of those businesses or events are baffled at their inclusion as possible terrorist targets.

“Seems like someone has gone overboard,” said Larry Buss, who helps organize the Apple and Pork Festival in Clinton, Ill. “Their time could be spent better doing other things, like providing security for the country.”

Angela McNabb, manager of the Sweetwater Flea Market, which is 50 miles from Knoxville, Tenn., said: “I don’t know where they get their information. We are talking about a flea market here.”

New York City officials, who have questioned the rationale for the reduction in this year’s antiterrorism grants, were similarly blunt.

“Now we know why the Homeland Security grant formula came out as wacky as it was,” Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, said Tuesday. “This report is the smoking gun that thoroughly indicts the system.”

The source of the problems, the audit said, appears to be insufficient definitions or standards for inclusion provided to the states, which submit lists of locations for the database.

New York, for example, lists only 2 percent of the nation’s banking and finance sector assets, which ranks it between North Dakota and Missouri. Washington State lists nearly twice as many national monuments and icons as the District of Columbia.

Montana, one of the least populous states in the nation, turned up with far more assets than big-population states including Massachusetts, North Carolina and New Jersey.

The inspector general questions whether many of the sites listed in whole categories — like the 1,305 casinos, 163 water parks, 159 cruise ships, 244 jails, 3,773 malls, 718 mortuaries and 571 nursing homes — should even be included in the tally.

But the report also notes that the list “may have too few assets in essential areas.” It apparently does not include many major business and finance operations or critical national telecommunications hubs.

The department does not release the list of 77,069 sites, but the report said that as of January it included 17,327 commercial properties like office buildings, malls and shopping centers, 12,019 government facilities, 8,402 public health buildings, 7,889 power plants and 2,963 sites with chemical or hazardous materials.

George W. Foresman, the department’s under secretary for preparedness, said the audit misunderstood the purpose of the database, as it was an inventory or catalog of national assets, not a prioritized list of the most critical sites.The database is just one of many sources consulted in deciding antiterrorism grants.

The inspector general recommends that the department review the list and determine which of the “extremely insignificant” assets that have been included should remain and provide better guidance to states on what to submit in the future.

Mr. Agen, the Homeland Security Department spokesman, said that he agreed that his agency should provide better directions for the states and that it would do so in the future.

One business owner who learned from a reporter that a company named Amish Country Popcorn was on the list was at first puzzled. The businessman, Brian Lehman, said he owned the only operation in the country with that name.

“I am out in the middle of nowhere,” said Mr. Lehman, whose business in Berne, Ind., has five employees and grows and distributes popcorn. “We are nothing but a bunch of Amish buggies and tractors out here. No one would care.”

But on second thought, he came up with an explanation: “Maybe because popcorn explodes?”