Made America Any Safer

John in DC blogged It's one thing to give up our civil liberties in exchange for the safety of our children. It's quite another to give them up and get little in return. Let's examine just how much safer George Bush has made America since September 11.

1. Osama is still free, and Bush never even talks about him anymore.

   Not much to say. Osama has not even released a tape in the last year.

2. Our military is bogged down in a war that had nothing to do with Osama or Al Qaeda UNTIL WE INVADED AND MADE IRAQ AL QAEDA'S NEW HOME.

   We are not bogged down, and we still have military in Afganistan.

3. We've turned Iraq into the biggest terrorist training camp in the world: "Iraq has replaced Afghanistan as the training ground for the next generation of 'professionalized' terrorists, according to a report released yesterday by the National Intelligence Council, the CIA director's think tank....

   Our military is confronting the Islamoterrists in Baghdad and Basrah rather than Boston, Baton Rouge, Birmingham, Bismarck, Boise, Buffalo, Broken Arrow, or Beaumont; in Mosul rather than Miami, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Mobile, Memphis, Muskogee, or Mesquite; in Karkuk and Karbala rather than Kansas City, Knoxville, Ketchum, or Kilgore; in Tall Afar and Tikrit rather than Tulsa, Tallahassee, Tampa Bay, Terre Haute, Toledo, Topeka, Tucson, Tahlequah, Texas City, or Texarkana. I don't know about you, but I would much rather have them confront the terrorists there, than on US soil.
   

4. Far too many of the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, recommendations to make us safer, have still not been implemented.

   And far too many of them have been implemented.

5. The Homeland Security budget is being spent on frivolous pork: "The District of Columbia used part of its grant to buy leather jackets and to send sanitation workers to self-improvement seminars. Newark bought air-conditioned garbage trucks. Columbus, Ohio, bought body armor for fire department dogs. These are not the priorities of a nation under threat."

   That is terrible, but those purchasing decisions were not made by George Bush, or anyone else in the Bush administration. It is Congress that spread the money around, and allowed local government to decide what to spend it on.

6. The 9/11 Commission gives Bush a grade of "D" under the category: "Maximum effort to prevent terrorists from acquiring WMD" - i.e., he gets a D for his efforts to stop terrorists from getting nuclear bombs.

   I am sure the commission is sad that its 15 minutes of fame have expired, but I do recall reading stories in the WaPo about testing for radiation near Mosques, homes, and businesses. Sounds to me like the administration was working on protecting us from nuclear bombs.

7. Most of the world now hates us.

   They hate us because we are rich and powerful and they are not.

8. And let me leave you with the words of the head of Republican head of the 9/11 commission, just a few weeks ago: "Four years after 9/11 it is scandalous that police and firefighters in large cities still cannot communicate reliably in a major crisis," said Thomas Kean, the Republican who was chairman of the commission.

   It is Congress that will not appropriate the frequencies needed, because they want the money paid by the broadcast industry that would have to give up those frequencies

   "It is scandalous that airline passengers are still not screened against all names on a terrorist watch list.

   As easy as it is to get fake ID information I would rather see them spending the effort to get unforgable ID cards.

   "It is scandalous that we still allocate scarce homeland security dollars on the basis of pork barrel spending, not risk...."

   As indicated above, it is Congress that appropriated the money, not the Bush Administration.

   "While the terrorists are learning and adapting, our government is still moving at a crawl."

   We are doing many things, like NSA intercepts, but newspapers are exposing those efforts rather than helping to keep the terrorists from knowing about them

Tell me again how Bush has made us safer?

How many planes have been flown into buildings since 9/11. How many terrorists attacks have occurred on US soil since 9/11. There have been attacks in Britain, Bali, Australia, Jordan, and many other countries, but not the US.