Thursday, November 15, 2007

Never Forget and Keep Your Eyes Peeled

I watched a dull situation comedy show tonight whose partial theme was derision of homeland security and the program encouraging citizens to report suspicious behavior. Typical Hollywood leftist denial of the plain and demonstrable fact that there are people out there who wish to do us harm.
So I wanted to point out this article as a reminder we are at war with terrorists.

Criticisms of post-9/11 efforts to protect the United States from attack range from claims that America is more vulnerable than ever to the contention that the transnational terrorist danger is vastly over-hyped.[1] A review of publicly available information on at least 19 terrorist conspiracies thwarted by U.S. law enforce­ment suggests that the truth lies somewhere in between these two arguments.

U.S. agencies are actively combating individuals and groups that are intent on killing Americans and plot­ting mayhem to foster violent extremist political and religious agendas. A review of the data suggests several important conclusions:

  • Combating terrorism is essential for keeping Amer­ica safe, free, and prosperous.

  • Counterterrorism operations have uncovered threats that in some cases, although less sophisticated than the 9/11 attacks and at most loosely affiliated with "al-Qaeda" central, could have resulted in signifi­cant loss of life and property if they had been con­ducted successfully.

  • The best means to prevent terrorist attacks is effective intelligence collection, information sharing, and coordinated, determined counterterrorism opera­tions that can stop attacks before they are mounted.

  • Effective operations often require federal, state, local, and international cooperation.

Few of the planned attacks were potentially as dev­astating in scope as the September 11, 2001, attacks on Washington and New York. In addition, the suc­cessful interdiction of these efforts offers no guaran­tee that future attacks will also be prevented.


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