What disturbs me are the threats the government knows about but does little or nothing about because of politics or whatnot.
For example, several years ago I happened in to a training session that was being given by DHS to law enforcement. The session was part of a convention of statewide law enforcement in a large state that borders Mexico. It was being taught by DHS and attended by military officials in uniform.
The purpose of the session was to educate law enforcment about MANPADS. What they were and what they looked like. Where they were built around the world, how the black market for them worked, what parts of MANPADS looked like when the weapon was broken down, etc.
DHS indicated that is was likely that Al Qaeda along with Mexican and South American gangs had been smuggling MANPADS in to the US. Since the "kill zone" for these things is 25-40 miles around any airport if one day a bunch of these things were pulled out of the trunks of cars around airports and shot at commercial airliners things would not be too keen for us.
If something like that ever happens we can say we could have prevented it but that would have involved shutting down the Mexican border and that's something the government won't do. So in the meantime they roll the dice just like they did before 9/11.
I agree.
On the subject of MANPADS, there was an interesting revelation recently in the case involving an Albany, NY imam and an undercover sting operation involving a stinger missile that was part of a fictitious plot to kill a visiting Pakistani official. The imam according to a USG CI alleged received a message from Bin Laden shortly after 9/11 asking about flight schools and asking how close he could get to an [redacted] aircraft. Now I don’t know what was redacted. Israeli? (for the purpose of shooting down with a MANPAD)? Ultralight? UAV? I don’t know.
As to your broader comment, I agree. Whatever one’s political persuasion, and whatever disagreements about individual issues relating to due process and civil liberties, the FBI and CIA deserve our support on this issue of the anthrax investigation. We are, after all, facing this threat together. First, the nature of such an investigation is that we lack sufficient information to second-guess (or even know) what the FBI and Postal Inspectors on the Amerithrax Task Force are doing. Media reports are a poor approximation of reality because of the lack of good sources. Indeed, there has been compartmentalization and divergent views even within the Task Force. Second, as a number of posters have said, hindsight is 20/20. Third, now that the leaks relating to US scientist Dr. Steve Hatfill seem to have long since been plugged, it is not likely we could do better in striking the appropriate balance between due process and national security. The FBI’s profile includes a US-based supporter of the militant islamists. Attorney General Ashcroft once explained that an “either-or” approach is not useful. The media has tended to overlook the fact that when the FBI uses the word “domestic” the word includes a US-based, highly-educated supporter of the militant islamists.