Four years on...

[MorganGrayson]

Of course we have them.

Apparently the "Cold War" is another thing from which we learned nothing. I think everyone in our government should be foreced to sit down and read Tom Clancy's "Jack Ryan" series. (No cheating and watching the movies. They left out *way* too much and got a lot of what they put in wrong.) The Capitol building and entire US governement was taken out...with a plane. There was a bioweapon that would have worked, too. And of course, the ever popular Cold War standard...sleeper agents.

One of the glories and one of our current problems is that you can't tell "an American" by sight. We have ever race, ethnic heritage, religion and combination thereof. Blending in here doesn't actually take the skills of a Cold War spy. In a lot of places you don't even have to speak English to survive. (Trust me, I'm from California. We have neighborhoods where I can't read the street signs...or the translations of the street signs.) All these "good guys" are walking around with absolutely no idea whether or not the new neighbor from the "old country" is a good guy like them...or a bad guy. Like all good guys, they're very easy to fool. Case in point was the school in England that's all under therapy muttering "he was such a nice guy" about one of the London bombers.

We are so far away from even grasping the terrorist headset that when my Israeli brother-in-law got pulled out of line at the airport to have the massive shakedown, they told his small nosed, blue eyed wife she could take the kids on the plane ahead. Now...if my brother-in-law planned on doing something to that plane...his family was going to be on it. So what the hell made these people think it was safe to let his family go on ahead? Bombs and weapons could have been strapped to all three kids and his wife. But *he* had the "Middle Eastern" face, so they practicially strip searched him. (Nice time wasting thing there...confusing a Jew for an Arab.)

[ThrobX]

I'll tell you what I've learned over the past 4 years. People in general, but specifically Americans...

A] Don't learn lessons from past mistakes
B] Are fools (see "looking to their government to make them safer")
C] Are idiots (see "willing to sacrifice freedoms for safety")

That's it. We aren't any safer or less safe than 4 years ago. We're the same as we were, and it's a wonder it took until 2001 for us to get hit.