Failed terrorist attack in Detroit

[southsider2k5]

Interestingly, I wasn't even thinking this when I posted that article...I was genuinely expressing doubt that it would be possible to stop this type of attack at all while still maintaining any semblance of an open society. The 9/11 attack was hugely detailed, involved years of planning, gave tons of hints to law enforcement and intelligence agencies over the course of years, involved millions of dollars, etc. This case involved a very low level warning of the type that they've probably received about you a couple times, security screening not done by the U.S., only a couple thousand dollars, no training, and less than a month between the first hints of a warning and the actual attempt.

 

I've long thought that if AQ ever got their act together, they could do the most damage by pulling off a series of the latter type of attacks, because they aren't the type on which you can gather intelligence effectively; you just give a guy a bomb or send him to a gun show & voila, 20 dead Americans a couple days later. You could shut down malls by hitting a couple of them, shut down commerce by hitting a couple banks, whatever. The 9/11 scale of attack ought to be preventable because it was so big. This is the level of attack I wonder if you can prevent if you let people out of their doors. Post investigation, it might turn out that there was some easily overlooked thing, but I doubt it.

 

Of course, that's immediately viewed as defending Obama for some reason. I'm sure it's naturally me who's doing that somehow subconsciously, and not you guys trying to take every discussion out there and immediately use it as a way to say "See, Obama's as bad as Bush!"

 

As opposed to every conversation turning into "Look at Obama doing every thing perfectly! He is the ultimate dove, but he is a kick ass hawk too!"?

 

It just happens to be coincidental that as soon as blame starts going up the ladder, articles start getting posted saying that none of it is Obama's fault. I could see how you would take that as trying to defend Bush in conversations. Please.

 

It is easy to sit back in retrospect and say it should have been easy to catch the 9-11 attacks, just as it is easy to sit back after the fact and say it should have been easy to do anything. They didn't have enough specific intelligence to prevent it at the end of the day. And just like the point you keep trying to make for this, the intelligence agency's see these kind of reports all of the time, many on a scale bigger than 9/11 I am sure. They can't be all things, to all people, all of the time. There is no doubt in my mind that there will be another massive attack again, and all of the same people will be defending/opposing the usual sides instead of actually appreciating that complexities don't necessarily conform to economies of scale when it comes to how many people die in an attack.

[lostfan]

Spencer Ackerman discusses to what level this should be considered a failure of the intelligence system.

The answer to that hypothetical question he asked is NO. The media does this reflexive thing where they automatically assume the IC knows things after the attack and then politicians (i.e. President Obama) follow suit as a CYA. There are countless tips on possible dangerous individuals like the one from dude's father, I see them literally every day and usually it's pretty much impossible to tell how valid they are without corroborating information and there almost never is. Then let's go assume that someone did take this info down and treat it as valid (I guess it actually was documented and archived somewhere), you have SIGINT from some terrorist in Yemen talking about a Nigerian being ready for an attack. That by itself, at the time, means absolutely nothing at all. Even in hindsight you just go "oh, I guess he could've been talking about the same thing"

[lostfan]

There was like... 10x the amount of information about 9-11 prior to that attack than there was about this, and there was information that made it all the way into the President's Daily Brief... I'm not sure why you guys are talking about it. It's not the same thing at all. Everything is what it is and it's not something else. This really shouldn't be turned into another Bush or Obama thing, but since they always are, for last week's attack there wasn't even anything to be briefed, let alone ignored or mishandled. And even if there was, the attack was so insanely pinpointed and designed so as to circumvent the already-stiff security procedures (because who in the TSA is going to look at somebody's cock?), what could they have done about this category of threat anwyay in that amount of time?

 

Further, I would like to point out that the reaction by some in this country following any terrorism-related event (attack, arrest, threat, statement, Predator strike, propaganda video, sneeze, fart) is exactly what they intend for us to do and helps them immensely. That would be break down internally, fight among ourselves, take ridiculous overreactionary steps that actually undermine our security, spend a s***-ton of money way past the point of diminishing returns, live up to their narrative about us and make "Islam" synonymous with "terrorism" which is something that we're trying to eliminate from the world, and play this whole deal up to be an epic clash of civilizations and call them the glorious soldiers in that war that they want to be seen as. They're not... they are terrorist pieces of s***. I can't imagine that even bin Laden himself would have figured a few years ago that a terrorist acting on his behalf would try to blow up a plane and end up setting himself on fire and being subdued by unarmed passengers, and in the process get hundreds of hours of free PR and undeserved credit in our media, mostly about how dangerous they are and how scared we should be. For the record this incident was almost completely ignored in the Arab media, all they talk about is Gaza.

[StrangeSox]

reality 1,998,209,657

conservative talking points 0

[Balta1701]

So, rather than continuing the sniping, let me ask this in reply...Lost...is this a level of attack that the U.S. simply could never gather the intelligence to stop beforehand, without, as I suggested, doing something like closing down every airport to international travel or something like that. (And if the answer is no, would there actually be such a level of attack?)

[kapkomet]

reality 1,998,209,657

conservative talking points 0

 

 

Read my post further up absolving Obama himself and basically making the same point Balta was in different words. However, all the links, posts, media stories, etc. have to give this guy his golden pile of s*** to hide behind. It's ridiculous.

[Balta1701]

Read my post further up absolving Obama himself and basically making the same point Balta was in different words. However, all the links, posts, media stories, etc. have to give this guy his golden pile of s*** to hide behind. It's ridiculous.

 

Defend Obama, Bush sucks. That's all we need to know here.

 

[kapkomet]

That's your posts, not mine.

 

[Balta1701]

That's your posts, not mine.

Sequence:

 

Balta tries to raise an issue here, without mentioning Obama, Bush, or any specific agency.

Immediate response is to defend Bush/attack Obama.

Balta responds: "Um, that's a terribly inapt comparison, for reasons X, Y, Z."

Response to balta: "Why do you do nothing but Defend Obama".

 

Sigh.

[lostfan]

So, rather than continuing the sniping, let me ask this in reply...Lost...is this a level of attack that the U.S. simply could never gather the intelligence to stop beforehand, without, as I suggested, doing something like closing down every airport to international travel or something like that. (And if the answer is no, would there actually be such a level of attack?)

I think I know what you're getting at here although I can't really put it into words. The question is something like "is it possible to have flawless, 100% security" and the answer is no, you can spend an insane number of resources far past the point of diminishing returns, and that'll just mean the bad guys will eventually think of something you haven't thought of yet.

[lostfan]

Read my post further up absolving Obama himself and basically making the same point Balta was in different words. However, all the links, posts, media stories, etc. have to give this guy his golden pile of s*** to hide behind. It's ridiculous.

If Obama deserves to be criticized for something right now, it's for arbitrarily throwing the intelligence community under the bus to keep anything from sticking on him just in case. I was reading his statement where he sounded all pissed off and I was like "what the f*** is this guy talking about." Then again the IC is going to throw each other under the bus anyway, that's just what they do. The FBI in particular, those guys are really good at blowing something really bad (Ft. Hood for example) and coming out smelling like roses.

[StrangeSox]

I think I know what you're getting at here although I can't really put it into words. The question is something like "is it possible to have flawless, 100% security" and the answer is no, you can spend an insane number of resources far past the point of diminishing returns, and that'll just mean the bad guys will eventually think of something you haven't thought of yet.

 

 

Black Swan Theory

 

I put his book on my Christmas list but no one got it for me

 

I think it goes well with what we're saying here and also ties into the current financial mess.

[southsider2k5]

I think I know what you're getting at here although I can't really put it into words. The question is something like "is it possible to have flawless, 100% security" and the answer is no, you can spend an insane number of resources far past the point of diminishing returns, and that'll just mean the bad guys will eventually think of something you haven't thought of yet.

 

For example... 9/11.

[StrangeSox]

Again, the size of the operations, the amount of information available (how much intelligence could possibly be gathered) and the amount of information known (how much intelligence was gathered) are not remotely comparable.

[mr_genius]

Again, the size of the operations, the amount of information available (how much intelligence could possibly be gathered) and the amount of information known (how much intelligence was gathered) are not remotely comparable.

 

Well, still, stopping 9-11 is asking a lot from what I can tell. I mean, some guy was basically telling everyone that would listen he was going to go Jihad and kill everyone he could at the army base and no one cared. They just transfer him to Fort Hood, as 'that will magically make him not want to kill'. Well plan failed, he followed through with his intentions. And everyone was shocked. Why the f*** would they be surpirsed?

[southsider2k5]

Again, the size of the operations, the amount of information available (how much intelligence could possibly be gathered) and the amount of information known (how much intelligence was gathered) are not remotely comparable.

 

In hindsight it is really to say that. Keep in mind this was a totally unique idea that had never been done before. Even though people said it was "possible", everything we knew about hi-jacking to that point was that the most valuable thing was the alive passengers as a bargaining chip. No one had ever used a plane as a weapon before in a terrorist act. Honestly the American people would have gone ballistic if the federal government had placed all of the rules that are now taken for granted on airline passengers, with nothing ever actually haven happened. There was no way short of one of the high-jackers walking into the FBI office and telling them that they were going to pull this off, that the necessary steps were going to be taken to prevent it. It was so unique both in its newness, and in its scope, that there was a near zero chance of it being stopped. People keep arguing that the scale is what should have made it easy to stop, but it was actually the scale that made it impossible to stop.

[Texsox]

Can we put up a wall to stop this? Maybe along the eastern seaboard?

 

s*** is going to happen. We can't stop most/any crimes before they occur. Billions of people to track. Just ain't going to happen. It's the world we live in.

[BigSqwert]

Can we put up a wall to stop this? Maybe along the eastern seaboard?

Better yet lets just strip search any dark skinned people at the airport.

[Texsox]

Better yet lets just strip search any dark skinned people at the airport.

 

And people who look like this (he killed 168 in a terrorist bombing)

[iWiN4PreP]

http://www.alqaedadoesntexist.com/

[StrangeSox]

For whatever its worth, my parents flew from Midway to Detriot and back for New Years and didn't notice a single thing different.

[mr_genius]

I was watching CNN and they had story about these new scanners you walk through and they can basically see everything you have in your pockets or would have taped to yourself (such as explosives). The reason are not used is that you can also see an outline of peoples 'nude' silhouette. Personally, I don't care if the some scanner shows me in all my glory in silhouette form if it will increase safety and move along security lines faster. There is no storage drive attached to the machine and once the next person is scanned your scan is gone. Nothing is saved. And the screen is viewed in a separate room, so if you are really sensitive it's not like other passengers can peek across some desk or something to see what's on the screen.

 

[Texsox]

I saw a demo and it is revealing, but I imagine 99% of the passengers will go through without any interest from the people scanning. I can see the privacy thing when the $8 per hour employees run into the scanner room to see some hottie's silhouette.

[mr_genius]

I saw a demo and it is revealing, but I imagine 99% of the passengers will go through without any interest from the people scanning. I can see the privacy thing when the $8 per hour employees run into the scanner room to see some hottie's silhouette.

 

Yea, but seriously, you could restrict access to the screening room. You could even have it in a separate part of the airport and when there is a security breach they send an electronic message directly down to security at the screening point. If we can't keep some doofus from running into the screening room then we might as well just give up.

 

I am basically in the same camp as the CNN crew, reasons for not using it are pretty bad. Reasons for using it are really good.

Edited January 3, 2010 by mr_genius

[BigSqwert]

Yea, but seriously, you could restrict access to the screening room. You could even have it in a separate part of the airport and when there is a security breach they send an electronic message directly down to security at the screening point. If we can't keep some doofus from running into the screening room then we might as well just give up.

 

I am basically in the same camp as the CNN crew, reasons for not using it are pretty bad. Reasons for using it are really good.

So are they going to set one of these up at every sporting event, shopping mall, train station, town square, movie theater, church, and tourist site? Terrorists can attack any of those places just as easily if not easier. Heck, we should have one of these machines everywhere. At your work, the post office, McDonald's, etc.