Bill Higginson tried to sound a thoughtful note on this blog regarding the debatably dubious Dubai deal. William Triplett, a former counsel to the Senate Foreign Relations Comittee penned an epitah for the UAE undertaking that tried to put some similarly fine points on the matter but smacked of staying on both sides of the issue.

The idea that any serious thought would be expended by any parties to this political firestorm is generous to a fault. President Bush, who has consistently resorted to terrorism as the one arrow in his quiver, found out the hard way the cost of going to this political well so often. The parable here is a cynical corollary of Aesop's famous fable, the moral of which is reported to be: "Even when liars tell the truth, they are never believed".

President Bush now knows: "When liars admit their lies, people don't believe them either".

Continue reading "The President who cried wolf -- a trade war by any other name, say 'terrorism'" »

Posted by Brian Bishop at 10:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (17) | TrackBacks (0)

From the New York Times:

Jeffrey Beatty, a security expert, paints a picture of a deadly plot: terrorists monitor a punctual school bus driver for weeks, then hijack his bus and load it with enough explosives to take down a building. But an alert driver could foil that plan, Mr. Beatty told a class of 250 drivers in Norfolk. After all, bus drivers cover millions of miles of roads. They know the towns, the children, the parents.

I'm not sure what frightens me more, the idea of a terrorist hijacking a bus full of children or a nation full of zealous bus drivers. Well, actually, the former is more frightening by far, but that doesn't mean the latter isn't good for a scare. A little training to help bus drivers identify "suspicious" behavior is always a good thing. After all the school bus is undoubtedly the weak-link in the child-custody chain. However, just as with wiretapping or any other enforcement tools, there is a point of no return. Any thoughts?

Posted by Michael Van Winkle at 12:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)