>At 04:11 PM 9/14/01 -0400, Yoshie wrote:
>>>At 08:18 PM 9/13/01 -0400, Yoshie wrote:
>>>>If the U.S. government had possessed an "effective
> >>>intelligence/information system," however, it could have prevented at
> >>>least the attack on the Pentagon. Evidently it didn't.
> >>
>>>They should have learned one from the Israelis. There is still time.
>>>
>>>wojtek
>>
>>Apparently Yitzhak Rabin -- as well as those who died in a pizzeria
>>bombing, etc. -- failed to benefit from the vaunted Israeli expertise.
>
>Yoshie, let's face it. The Palestinian yahoos that blow themselves in the
>public places in Israel are nothing more than pathetic explosive streakers
>that cause relatively little damage. Add to it expertise and coordination
>- and you will get the WTC on a sunny Tuesday morning. Do you really doubt
>that killing the brains behind the WTC operation could have saved 5,000
>lives?
I'm simply saying that they weren't able to identify the brains behind the WTC bombings -- that's why they couldn't prevent them, & the bombings happened, no? I do not believe that they will be able to do so in the future either.
Besides, the national security state, such as it is, doesn't exist to _prevent_ terrorism. If prevention is what they are after, they will do everything in their power to undo the material conditions that breed deranged malcontents, be they Timothy McVeigh or Osama bin Laden. Instead, they deal with & even reward deranged malcontents on a daily basis, _as long as they aim their guns at the right targets (e.g., the Soviets in Afghanistan)_, so to speak.
Anyhow, _to the National Security State_, the Pentagon bombing is a far larger problem than the WTC bombings, since it exposed the hitherto unseen vulnerability at the heart of the NSS, thus undermining everyone's belief in the mighty power of the U.S. government (at the very moment when the U.S. economy was entering into a perhaps protracted recession). That is what will shape the nature of U.S. response, which will likely be a war (bombings, ground troops, etc.), not a criminal justice operation (investigating, identifying, indicting, extraditing, prosecuting, trying, sentencing, etc.). Why? They need to restore confidence in American military might. Criminal justice can't do that.
Yoshie