Posted on 07/10/2004 8:35:47 AM PDT by .cnI redruM
I don't envy Tom Ridge or covet his job for even a brief nanosecond. He's been assigned with managing a risk where there is no upside involved. All of the risk he manages is negative in nature. He constantly mulitiplies the likelihood of a bad outcome by its severity to derive a level of hazard.
Unfortunately for We The People, he has color-coded these hazard levels in a manner that sometimes defies eay comprehension and then tells us all to go forth be vigilant. In doing this, Secretary Ridge sets himself up for political failure.
If he raises the terror warning on insufficient or sketchy info, he empties the piggy-bank in every municipal police and fire department. If he decides to ride one out and roll the dice, and if five or six anthrax letters reach destinations in and around DC, it's hello Kerry/Deadwards . If Secretary Ridge decides to stay in Siesta Mode and Al Quaida pops about ten suitcase nukes in major US population centers, Charles Krauthammer gives out very realistic speculation as to what the negative effect would be.
There is no gradualness and there are no countermeasures to a dozen nuclear warheads detonating simultaneously in American cities. Think of what just two envelopes of anthrax did to paralyze the capital of the world's greatest superpower. A serious, coordinated attack on the United States using WMDs could so shatter the United States as a functioning, advanced industrialized society that it would take generations to rebuild.
What is so dismaying is that such an obvious truth needs repeating. The passage of time, the propaganda of the anti-American left and the setbacks in Iraq have changed nothing of that truth. This is the first time in history the knowledge of how to make society-destroying weapons has been democratized. Today, small radical groups allied with small radical states can do the kind of damage to the world that in the past only a great, strategically located industrialized power such as Germany or Japan could do.
It is a new world and exceedingly dangerous. Everything is at stake. We are now deeply engaged in a breast-beating exercise for not having connected the dots before 9/11. And yet here we are three years after 9/11, the dots already connected themselves, and we are under a powerful urge to ignore them completely.
Therefore, when a candidate for President shows the level of prioritizing that Senator Kerry displayed yesterday, this worries .cnI redruM.
KING: News of the day, Tom Ridge warned today about al Qaeda plans of a large-scale attack on the United States. Didn't increase the -- you see any politics in this? What's your reaction?
KERRY: Well, I haven't been briefed yet, Larry. They have offered to brief me. I just haven't had time.
Kerry certainly had time to join the Hollywood B-Side in a large kitty fundraiser that same day. He's prioritized the War on Terror and protecting the country or managing the risks that the US now has to live with is not very high up there on his list. This is earily reminiscent of the last President the Democrats elected who considered getting campaign donations from the PLA worth trading our nuclear weapons blueprints for.
The KotM bottom line, Risk Management is a political loser. Every time Ridge calls out the National Guard and nothing goes awry, he's the little boy crying "wolf" for political gain. Every time Secretary Ridge decides not to spend the cash necessary to jack up the threat level, he's crossing both fingers and toes that Al Quaida doesn't do to a US city what Tom Clancy's terrorists did to Denver in "Sum Of All Fears".
The dems want less money for pre-emption and more money for first responders. You decide!
I agree. Ridge is in a lose-lose situation.
Repeat for effect.
The dems want less money for pre-emption and more money for first responders. You decide!
The dems want less money for pre-emption and more money for first responders. You decide!
That ought to be your tagline.
This just solidifies the liberal position on crime, wouldn't want to accidentally arrest someone innocent, they would rather buy two ambulances and a 911 operator.
To spend more on first responders admits that you will have allowed a strike to occur. The money belongs on pre-emption and keeping the enemy off of our soil, preferably buried in his homeland.
Of course, this is nothing more than the dems pandering to the fire and police unions. And they are succeeding. Previously her heiney was hated by the NY police and fire folks. Now they're best buddies. She gets them money from the government (us taxpayers)
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