Don’t ever forget, how does that old song go?.....”We are Family”.....
We’ve all been here together for many years.....how can we NOT care about one another?
Snip: Counter-terrorism authorities are said to be hunting for a 16-year-old boy from northern Yemen suspected of having been recruited by Al Qaeda to be a homicide bomber at one of five foreign targets in the southern port city of Aden, according to Western sources close to Yemeni security officials.
US intelligence accused of cluelessness
Snips: Written in a tone nearing exasperation, the report quotes a US officer as saying: "I don't want to say we're clueless, but we are. We're no more than fingernail-deep in our understanding of the environment."
The report said intelligence officials and analysts were "ignorant of local economics and landowners, hazy about who the powerbrokers are and how they might be influenced, incurious about the correlations between various development projects and disengaged from people in the best position to find answers".
He reserved greatest bile for officers who rely on sophisticated software to hide a lack of understanding of Afghanistan's elusive realities. "Sufficient knowledge will not come from slides with little more text than a comic strip," Maj Gen Flynn wrote. "Commanders who think PowerPoint storyboards and colour-coded spreadsheets are adequate for describing the Afghan conflict and its complexities have some soul searching to do."
Facing grim choices in the war on terror
Snips: .......millions of Americans are only one tragedy away from losing all restraint. Regular, everyday Americans simply won't stand quietly by for any more smoldering wrecks followed by gleeful video messages from bearded, cackling, wide-eyed madmen.
Before that happens, we need to step back and think about whether we want to prevent it. We can, but not by continuing to pretend that we're the study hall monitor of the world. What's better? Aggressive profiling at airports like the Israelis have successfully used for years, or sending in the cruise missiles to indiscriminately wipe out entire villages? What makes more moral sense? Indefinite detention and forceful, no-holds-barred interrogation of captured terrorists, or setting fire to the skies over the cities where the terrorists were born?
These are grim choices, but the crazy little al-Qaida terrorist in Detroit proved that the only choices we have left are all grim.