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February 19, 2003
Vol. 6 No. 7
In this
issue:
1. Two Strikes, Bottom of the Ninth
2. Switch Hitting
3. The Pedagogical War
4. Quick Hits
5. New at Reason Online - King of the Elves
6. Reason's print
edition
7. News and
Events
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1. Two Strikes, Bottom of the Ninth
Let's pretend that the Federal Bureau of Investigation came into being on September 12, 2001. How long would it be reasonable to wait before it got its anti-terror act together? How many utterly absurd blunders would we tolerate before top-level FBI managers were fired and replaced with non-FBI talent?
Does two full years and three absurd blunders seem reasonable? If so, we're almost there. The latest Orange Alert is the second major phantom the FBI has chased in recent months, following the mysterious and ultimately non-existent five Arabs who were supposedly set to do evil over the holiday season. Both cases suggest that the bureau hasn't a clue how to complete its counter-terrorism mission.
When a terrorist in FBI custody makes claims about future attacks, and those claims result in police with fully-automatic weapons deployed to street corners and cabinet officials advising Americans to construct safe rooms with duct tape and plastic sheeting, that terrorist has successfully committed an act of terror. And the FBI was his unwitting accomplice.
A captured terrorist has no conceivable interest in supplying the FBI with accurate information on future attacks. He does, however, have an interest in diverting resources from actual attack plots, scrambling security assets so his cohorts still in the field can observe how they operate, and inducing general panic via grand claims about a "dirty bomb" set to explode in New York or Washington.
Therefore, all claims about future acts of terror should be subjected automatically to polygraph examination. Until such claims pass that test, they should not be placed in the great intelligence-collection machine and used to justify a heightened state of alert.
The fact that the FBI is not routinely polygraphing terror suspects about their claims indicates that they are likely trying to establish some element of trust or rapport with terrorists. If so, the FBI has fundamentally misunderstood the task at hand. Unlike your basic serial killer or mobster, two species of killer the FBI has a great deal of experience handling, a motivated terrorist has very little incentive to cooperate even obliquely with his interrogators. While he will want to have his cause understood, it is stretch to assume that, like a psycho killer, he craves understanding or admiration from his captors. Nor, like a mob guy, does he want the join the witness protection program.
The terrorist views himself as a prisoner of war, and like many POWs, he will continue to look for ways to confound his enemies.
The FBI needs to understand this very simple concept and break away from its bureaucratic inertia. A third false alert based on sketchy, untested claims should see FBI Director Robert Mueller and his deputies sacked and replaced with individuals committed to something other than ass-covering and empire-building.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/873574.asp?0cv=KB10&cp1=1
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/wnt/US/terror030213_falsealarm.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A22309-2003Feb17?language=printer
There have been more indications that Internet phone calls will eventually herald the end of the old circuit-switch, subsidized phone system. Either that, or the old crazy system of subsides and fees will migrate to the Net's more efficient packet-switched system.
AT&T has asked the Federal Communications Commission to make it clear that the government will take a hands-off approach to "voice over Internet protocol" (VoIP) calls. Such calling has only a few thousand American users, but it's already raising eyebrows by routing around the regional Bell companies' powerful hammerlock on local phone service. Internationally, only about 10% of phone traffic is VoIP, but that's almost double the amount from the year before. As use of broadband increases, so will VoIP.
The Bells argue that any call that begins or ends by using part of the circuit-switched network should be subject to the access charges the Bells levy on phone traffic. The Bells swear they have no interests in strangling VoIP, but let's see what they say when cable TV companies start taking away their best customers with all-in-one plans that cost half as much as Bell a la carte services.
Much will depend on a simple semantic decision. If the FCC declares VoIP a "telecommunications service," it's in the same boat as the old circuit-switched network. Name it an "information service," however, and things could get very interesting.
http://www.informationweek.com/shared/printableArticle?doc_id=IWK20030217S0001
The stated reasons for going to war with Iraq are failing to satisfy an increasing number of people. As a result, the search for the real, and presumably coherent, reason for war is gathering steam. Now Nicholas Lehman has joined the hunt. By asking the right questions in the right way, he's elicited some interesting answers.
In sum -- and summation does his New Yorker piece little justice -- the aim of war in Iraq is pedagogical. The U.S. intends to demonstrate to the Arab world two important lessons. One, that hostile regimes will be bitch-slapped into the dust bin of history. Two, that democratic institutions improve the quality of life for all societies.
Even assuming that these goals are worth pursuing, it cannot be overlooked that by adopting them, the Bush administration would put strategic victory, as the White House itself defines it, largely outside of its own control. If the target audience in the region does not learn that U.S. power might be turned against any irritant, the war will have failed a major objective. If democratic institutions do not sprout up in Iraq, another strategic objective will go by the boards.
It is also worth noting that the advocates of teaching these lessons posit a kind of domino effect once Saddam is removed and Iraqi society is liberalized. Iraq's neighbors, they predict, will be next. Assuming that is true, one must also assume that the non-liberal forces in the region will do all they can to prevent those liberal, democratic institutions from forming. At the very least, any U.S. presence attempting to cultivate such institutions will be very inviting targets for terrorists.
So then the Iraq war has regional, hard-to-secure strategic objectives which could spark terrorist attacks against both the U.S. and the follow-on regime for the foreseeable future. No wonder that the administration only talks in code about those objectives and is no doubt prepared to declared victory the second Saddam leaves Baghdad.
The Washington Post's Robert Kaiser supplies a plausible explanation of how the Bush administration has gotten away with presenting fundamentally flawed and contradictory reasons for war. It's not that the cabinet is full of maniacs and the mainstream press full of dolts. It is simply a function of the power of the presidency being brought to bear.
Kaiser argues that there is nothing in the American political system that can function as an opposing force to a presidency bent on driving home a single message in service of a particular goal.
http://newyorker.com/printable/?fact/030217fa_fact
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A10767-2003Feb14?language=printer
Quote of the Week
"We know if we play a certain genre, people won't want to hang around. Nothing too funky." -- Vida Covington of the Charlotte Area Transit System on a plan to pump sedate Muzak into a downtown bus hub in hopes of driving teenage loiterers away. Classical music and "smooth" jazz will be featured.
http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/weird_news/5178834.htm
Alien Lifeforms
In what one hopes will eventually widen into a class action suit on behalf of the human race against all institutions involved in the production and dissemination of "reality" TV shows, a Los Angeles woman is suing Universal Studios claiming that the Sci-Fi Channel inflicted psychological trauma on her. Its program Scare Tactics staged a violent alien abduction.
http://www.latimes.com/news/custom/showcase/la-fi-scifi17feb17.story
Handle with Care
Conservatives are aghast that Communities That Care is surveying school kids about their oral sex habits and that Michele Ridge, wife of Tom Ridge, is a spokesperson for the effort. But even those in favor of more and better oral sex in public schools should condemn a shakedown of scarce public dollars by a pseudo-scientific scam. The surveys supposedly help develop "plans" to combat drug use and purportedly rampant teen sex.
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030218-132803.htm
A Pox on Neither House
A lucid back-and-forth between experts in the field on the efficacy of inoculating medical workers for smallpox. The differences turn on risk tolerance and the extent to which one believes claims that smallpox is in imminent danger of being weaponized.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A22549-2003Feb17?language=printer
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