GOP Lies - Equipment to Detect Explosives is Already Available

Members of the Congressional GOP have endeavored to blame the Christmas day security lapse on the Detroit bound flight on the Transportation Safety Administration and the Obama administration. As is all too typical, these members of Congress ignore their own culpability, not to mention the incompetence and malfeasance of six years of the Bush/Cheney administration (versus less than a year for Obama). But, truthfulness and integrity are not exactly hallmarks of today's GOP. Ben Smith has a piece at Politico that looks at the GOP's false posturing. Moreover, a Washington Post story confirms that equipment already exists that would pick up the plastic explosives the Nigerian terrorist attempted to utilize. Unfortunately, the Bush/Cheney administration's failed to utilize it and since the change over in administrations, the Congressional Republicans has been blocking funding and personnel approvals. First some highlights from Politico:

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As Republicans seek to put the blame for the widespread perception of ineptness at the Transportation Security Administration on the Obama administration, Democrats are arguing that Republican legislators bear part of the blame and that they're politically vulnerable on the subject.
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Perhaps the largest impediment to change at the agency: South Carolina Republican Sen. Jim DeMint has a hold on the appointment of a TSA chief, over his concern that the new administration could allow security screeners to unionize.
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Republicans have cast votes against the key TSA funding measure that the 2010 appropriations bill for the Department of Homeland Security contained, which included funding for the TSA, including for explosives detection systems and other aviation security measures. In the June 24 vote in the House, leading Republicans including John Boehner, Pete Hoekstra, Mike Pence and Paul Ryan voted against the bill, amid a procedural dispute over the appropriations process, a Democrat points out. A full 108 Republicans voted against the conference version, including Boehner, Hoekstra, Pence, Michelle Bachmann, Marsha Blackburn, Darrell Issa and Joe Wilson.

The conference bill included more than $4 billion for "screening operations," including $1.1 billion in funding for explosives detection systems, with $778 million for buying and installing the systems.

Today's GOP cares nothing for true security and puts partisanship games ahead of public safety. Added to partisanship the idiocy is Senator DeMint's obsession that any new TSA head NOT be in favor of the unionization of security workers at airports. Personally, I do not see how better paid - and probably more competent - airport personnel is a threat to citizens. As for the existence of equipment that could have revealed the explosives used by the would be Christmas bomber, here are highlights from the Washington Post:

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The explosive allegedly used in the failed bombing plot aboard a transatlantic jetliner over Detroit on Christmas Day could have been detected by existing screening equipment, and the failure to do so reflects significant weaknesses in aviation security and intelligence, former U.S. government officials and international security experts said.
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The compound that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab allegedly brought aboard Northwest Flight 253 from Amsterdam was PETN, or pentaerythritol tetranitrate, the same plastic explosive used almost exactly eight years ago by would-be shoe bomber Richard Reid, the FBI said. The attack sped the launch of the Transportation Security Administration, which took over and expanded airport security screening.
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But technology and methods that might have detected the explosive have been deployed in airports on a limited basis in the face of concerns about privacy, cost and the potential to slow airport security lines.
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Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism analyst at Georgetown University, called the suspect's ability to smuggle the device on board profoundly disturbing, given that the TSA has spent more than $30 billion on aviation security since 2004, the world's airlines collectively spend an additional $5.9 billion a year, and PETN is well-known as a favored material for terrorist suicide bombers.

A Face of Hate and Evil

UPDATED: Apparently Raani Starnes was getting some unwanted attention - she has deleted the post I just quoted. Fortunately, her words are captured here on this blog and in the image that can be found here:

http://www.zshare.net/image/50185674e05412dc/

Hopefully other blogs have captured it as well. If you'd like to share your thoughts with Ms. Starnes, her contact information is as follows:

Raani Starnes: RAANISTARNES@YAHOO.COM 1904 Camino Rio Farmington, NM 87401

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I never cease to be amazed at the level of hate and advocacy of vitrol put out by self-styled, self-righteous, self-satisfied "Christians." A case in point is a blog that I came across via Bob Felton's blog, Civil Commotion, the author of which is apparently a Christian Reconstructionist. To this woman, gays are obviously not even human and the fact that we are the sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, and parents of people who love us not to mention responsible citizens. It means absolutely nothing to her. It apparently is all about her selfish need to feel superior and desire to force her unwanted religious beliefs on others. She states that she has four children - I surely hope one or more of them turn out to be gay, although I hate to think about what they might go through with such a mother. To me, she represents the smiling face of evil. Here are some statements from her blog:

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When I was in the process of moving and did not have internet access, I often visited a local library to check my e-mail and look at real estate listings. . . . One day as I was surfing the net, I couldn't help but overhear a conversation that was going on across the table from me. An openly gay teenage boy who was surrounded by female "friends" was talking about how he had recently had a relationship with a girl. I couldn't help but feel sorry for the girl's parents. Not only was their daughter sexually active, but she had engaged in some very high risk behavior by sleeping with a gay male.

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The homosexual agenda wants people to think that homosexual men are safe for women to hang around and even be alone with. Nothing could be further from the truth. The stories about Sodomites in the Bible teach us that they do violate women as well as men. . . . The term bisexual is an unnecessary distinction, because a faggot wants to defile anyone or anything he can get his hands on.

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A friend recently sent me this article about a "gay-friendly" high school. If we were living in a biblical society, homosexuality would be punishable by death so such a school would be unnecessary. Although I'm against the special accommodations, perhaps this new trend of segregation will protect straight kids from these predators. With any luck, some radical will blow up the gay school. No, I'm not condoning vigilantism--I'm merely saying that it would be poetic justice.

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The school she mentions is the proposed Pride Campus in Chicago which is expected to serve 600 students. This woman would welcome a bombing that could kill up to 600 students. It's beyond sick. Welcome to the face of Sarah Palin's Republican Party base. Oh, I forgot. She says her favorite book is the Bible. Sick. Very, very sick.

Terror experts are confounded by the unusual profiles of those arrested in the British plots. Is there an Iraqi connection?

I believe most of us are waiting to get concrete answers to this question. Here is some of Newsweek's most recent coverage:

U.S. and British authorities are looking into the possibility that one or more of the medical workers arrested in the failed attacks may have had contact with Al Qaeda in Iraq, formed after the 2003 invasion of Iraq and loosely affiliated with Al Qaeda’s high command. An official familiar with the investigation said that no firm connection had yet been established between any of the suspects and the Iraq group, and there certainly is no evidence yet that it might have orchestrated the U.K. plot. But, said the official, there may be reason to suspect that those detained have been in touch with known associates of the ultra-violent insurgent group set up by Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi.

However, because the Iraq connection is so tentative at this stage, officials on both sides of the Atlantic remain skeptical that the U.K. plot was orchestrated by Al Qaeda’s top leaders. For a start, the bombings themselves were so thoroughly bungled that it’s seen as unlikely that Osama bin Laden or his main associates had any direct role. U.S. and British officials said it was still a possibility that the attacks were largely planned on British soil, even though it appears that few, if any of the plotters, fit the profile of the native-born, alienated British Muslims who have been implicated in other recent U.K. terror plots.

British and U.S. officials contacted by NEWSWEEK said investigators were still trying to figure out how the suspects in the plot—eight have now been arrested in the U.K. and Australia, and seven are believed to be doctors or medical students—got together to plan and carry out the failed bombings. A British official said it was possible all had somehow cooked up the plot before coming to Britain. But it is also possible they did not meet up until after all were in the country, where they appear to have had easy entrée to Britain’s medical education and nationalized health-care systems.

I again can only wonder how those in training to heal the sick and bring comfort to those suffering from disease can be set on a track to dispense death and destruction. If the motivation is in fact religious fanaticism, it will be most disturbing.