Of course you are putting out an opinion. It is implicit in the illogic of the rather meaningless question you pose. I can see it only as an attempt to "muddy" the waters of discourse.

For how many years prior to the invention of the TSA were there no bad things happening? 9/11 - as horrific as it was - was an abberation.

There have also been "no bad things happening" all over the country where there is no TSA presence. The worst we have had is a bunch of young men buying cell phones for re-sale and an agent provocateur of the feds creating a weak, non-credible plan to do something bad in Chicago while living in Florida.

It is sheer stupidity to think that the only possible targets of interest for an enemy hell bent on creating fear and disruption are airplanes. In places the world over where there is REALLY a terrorist threat, suicide bombs are used in many and diverse situations. None here. end of argument as far as I am concerned.

We have seen the TSA's failure in test after test after test designed to see if the will actually detect harmful material. So where is the deterrent to a mythical enemy willing to die in commission of the bad thing? Surely by sending many teams drawn from the supposed hordes of bad guys some would be caught or succeed. Not happening.

Perhaps the hysteria and cowardice that has led to the creation of a rights infringing bureaucracy that systematically strips all pax of their privacy and dignity was just a terrible over reaction?

There is a very weak link between cause and effect in your thesis. Spiff's rock is not likely to have helped much either, but the argument for it is almost as strong.

^ Nicely written post. Thank you.

That's untrue. I really don't have an opinion on why nothing has happened. The theory that other targets are of more interest since so much focus is on airlines sounds plausible to me. The question is meaningful in that it is a subject of interest to me. I would suspect that its meaningful to you also, despite your comments, given your lengthy reply ...

Except that prior to Sept 11 2001 the US intelligence community was not actively looking for A-Q or other jihadist cells. Since then, a concerted effort (we are led to believe) in which we were desperately looking for domestic terrorists has turned up exactly zero (charged and convicted). IOW that particular 'argument' has changed 180 degrees.

Thumbs up for people beating someone to death on an airplane! Big grins!!

Zero? I think the Lakawanna Six would disagree with you. And the cell in Lodi. And the plots that were foiled as a result of KSM's waterboarding.

If there are no terrorists here, then why all the hubbub about the NSA listening in on international calls between Al Qaeda members and domestic US receivers?

You might want to read a few of Mueller's other articles, like the one where he says WMDs really aren't that bad.

Terrorists ?

http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feat...o_6/index.html
http://www.latimes.com/search/la-tm-...0,918538.story

How come you didn't mention the Miami Seven ?

So what's your criteria? We have to let them do something in order to call them terrorists?

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that someone that has been to an Al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan pre-9/11 is a terrorist.

No, it couldn't have been published then and there. And and it wouldn't have had the same arguments from the same author either.

That's barking up the wrong tree. The "Lakawanna Six" were never plotting a terrorist attack, and certainly not one in the US. They don't even qualify for consideration as part of hardcore Al-Qaeda types -- especially since being on good terms with Yemeni shias, as they were, would have ruled them out from any meaningful Al-Qaeda terrorist acts and would do no more than result in being sent as cannon fodder against the proto-"Northern Alliance".

And "the cell in Lodi" wasn't much of an Al-Qaeda cell either.

Regarding plots foiled as a result of KSM's waterboarding and more, to which are you referring? Would KSM even recognize such as a real Al-Qaeda plot in the operational stage? I have my doubts with some of them.

So few "foreign terrorists" in the US and so much monitoring of foreign -- and domestic -- calls is exactly why there is all the "hubbub" about the NSA's activities within the US (and through offshore facilities as well).

Is this off-topic reference meant to smear the writer of an article so that you don't have to address the on-topic article's merits (diminishing as they are given our government's strategic follies)?

You are going on a limb, at least with a good number of people -- particularly those on the governments' payrolls. And that's not even all.

Also, not everything in Afghanistan was an Al-Qaeda training camp.

Yes it would have. I've now put as much analysis into this branch as you have.

His argument is that we've been looking like crazy and haven't found any, therefore they must not be there. Unfortunately, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. If the cells are just "sitting tight", then it would be extremely difficult to find them, no matter how intrusive the search.

Why aren't they attacking us here? None of us can know. But we do know that they continue to attack around the world, and that they've already attacked us here. So the prudent think to do is to put as many safeguards into place as we reasonably can.

An interesting part of the article was the comparison to the 20 ft tall Japanese after Pearl Harbor. Perhaps they exaggerated the power of Japan, but that certainly didn't mean we didn't need to do anything about it.

Had the FBI rolled up the 9/11 cells before the attacks the liberal press would have been outraged about how they hadn't done anything more than attended terrorist training camps, learned to fly, and taken a few flights. Mohammed Atta would have been called "not much of a terrorist" and the Florida cell would have been called not "much of an Al-Qaeda cell either."

If there is an attack in the US, I doubt very much that the people on the other side of this argument will apologize to the victims for spreading the idea that we didn't need to do everything we reasonably could to prevent it. I predict they will have plenty of blame for the government for not doing enough.

Please provide the cite for the NSA's activities regarding purely domestic calls. Calls between foreign and domestic and foreign only calls, yes, they've been doing that and the government openly admits it (now that the NYT has outed them). I think you're trying to muddy and perhaps overreach here.

Either way, there was enough activity there that it created an outcry. Given that, you can't conclude that there is no domestic threat. The foreign AQs were talking to somebody...

Off topic? The article was offered to provide interesting ideas, so the qualifications and history of the author are relevant.

And absence of evidence is certainly not evidence of presence.

No one I know thinks we should do nothing. However the scope and intensity of so-called security activities long ago passed the benchmark of what is reasonable, IMO.

Though it may be a tired old line, the terrorists have succeeded in sowing terror and in enticing us into spending huge amounts of money and substantially changing our lives.

In other places in the world - perhaps because they have not be so lucky as we in the US have been to have escaped some terroristic activity for so long - it is assumed that "bad" things will happen no matter how assidous the attempts to prevent them. The assumption seems to be that bad guys are not stupid even if crazy and evil. Our security is very reactive and is designed to prevent primarily the kinds of attacks that have already occured. The number and variety of ways that any society is vulnerable to conscienceless people makes it impossible to be completely safe. When we give up rights to privacy, rights to personal dignity in order to prevent such silly things as shoe bombs and explosive devices make of gels and liquids in the way we are currently doing, we have caved into our fear and, as your post so well illustrates, our need to CYA.

More attacks will come, I think. I don't think we can stop them. Our security operations need to be somehow commensurate with reasonable practices that are true preventatives rather than CYA based reactions. We need also to avoid much better than we now are doing activity akin to running around in circles squawking like chickens who are afraid that the sky is falling.

The trouble is your government and your people don't know a terrorist from your own ar$ehole. You think anyone that criticises your laughable leaders and their pathetic war on terror is a terrorist. All I have to do to turn someone's life upside down is send an anonymous letter stating I saw Mr. such and such at a resistance training camp on such and such a day and that person is in deep trouble.

I am often called a terrorist because I disagree with american foreign policy. If I were locked up and tortured based on my vehement opposition to what your country is doing to Iraq, Palestine and Afghanistan, you would not be any safer because I am not planning to blow up anything more than a couple of rubber johnnies every few days.

Well said. Cheers. ^