The ACLU says the terrorist watch list added its millionth member today. Given that there aren't even close to a million dangerous international terrorists in the world, I think it's safe to say that this is yet another example of our counterterrorism policies gone badly awry -- this kind of large-scale harassment of innocent people isn't making anyone safer.
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Watching Out
14 Jul 2008 03:17 pm
Comments (29)
Mr. Yglesias we don't like dissent. I'm gonna have to add you to the list.
Its too bad you didn't complain sooner, the millionth member won a lifetime supply of full cavity searches.
Maybe we should start registering fetus in utero, make sure they get a spot on the terrist watch list?
Maybe we should start registering fetus in utero, make sure they get a spot on the terrist watch list?
They have to figure out whether America-hating is matrilineal, or patrilineal.
Google on Sippenhaft.
I'm just glad we're being protected against Cat Stevens.
That's not change we can believe in.
I have to think that actual terrorists are a little bit safer.
The millionth terrorist on the watchlist?
Was there a prize? A fanfare? Confetti? Balloons? A gift certificate to the local cafeteria? A new car?
Soft on crime trust fund scumbag! You're on the list!
I question the efficiency of this list. To save everyone's time, perhaps it's better if we just start a list of people we know are NOT terrorists.
I like that Saddam Hussein is on the list, though I'll grant that Zombie Saddam Hussein would be a grave threat to America, I rate the possibility of such to be rather low.
Shorter Yglesias and ACLU: if a guy in Pakistan names Osama bin Laden applies for a Visa to visit New York, we should let him in the country. It is, after all, too much trouble to check his name to see if he is a terrorist. Because, you know, some unfortunate soul in Omaha also named bin Laden might have to go through extra screening once in a while.
Innocent people? I'm sure many of these people are guilty of something, at a minimum, guilty of being on a political enemies list. We're just about to the point where being a Democrat = being a terrorist. I mean, wasn't Ted Kennedy on that list?
Fortunately this seems like one of those problems that'll be cleaned up under an Obama presidency. Contra Al, the ACLU doesn't want to do away with the list -- just add in some transparency, due process, accountability, oversight, etc. Al opposes such changes at present, but he and his fellow Republican partisan hacks can be reliably counted on to demand such things, with much bluster and outrage, when a Democrat is running the executive branch. And Dems will favor it too, like they already do, and so the reforms will happen.
Contra Al, the ACLU doesn't want to do away with the list -- just add in some transparency, due process, accountability, oversight, etc.
Due process, accountability and oversight of the list already exist.
The ACLU says the terrorist watch list added its millionth member today. Given that there aren't even close to a million dangerous international terrorists in the world, I think it's safe to say that this is yet another example of our counterterrorism policies gone badly awry -- this kind of large-scale harassment of innocent people isn't making anyone safer. - 59 words
Shorter Yglesias and ACLU: if a guy in Pakistan names Osama bin Laden applies for a Visa to visit New York, we should let him in the country. It is, after all, too much trouble to check his name to see if he is a terrorist. Because, you know, some unfortunate soul in Omaha also named bin Laden might have to go through extra screening once in a while. - 65 words (not counting the first four)
Not actually shorter. Just sayin'. Also, does Visa check the terrorist watch list before giving out credit cards? He could use his Visa to buy a ticket to New York, but he would still need a visa to be allowed in the U.S.
Given that there aren't even close to a million dangerous international terrorists in the world, I think it's safe to say that this is yet another example of our counterterrorism policies gone badly awry.
There are tens of millions of radical Islamists that are terrorist sympathizers, enablers, defenders of terrorist rights.The danger is not just the operatives we call terrorists who are but the tip of the spear of radical Islam, but all that support them.
On that criteria, the list has insufficient numbers of names.
If Obama wins I'll bet your ass goes onto a list, Ford, and it probably belongs on there anyway.
Due process, accountability and oversight of the list already exist.
In precisely the optimal amounts and forms, I'm sure. Improvement upon them is surely unpossible. After all, this is a complex bureacratic mechanism -- a list of names! -- put together hastily in the aftermath of a crisis, so surely it's perfect just as it is.
Always hilarious to see a Republican hack reflexively *defending* existing government bureaucracy. Again, if a Democrat were administering this very program in its existing state, the deficiencies of the watch list and its outrages against the liberties of innocent Americans would surely be a cause celebre for Al.
Oh, and ford:
On that criteria, the list has insufficient numbers of names.
Have the balls to declare your policy preferences, man. None of this pussy-footing. Since we can't know who all the sympathizers are, we should just close all the borders and shut down all domestic flights, too! (After all, the watch list affects domestic travellers as well.) Right?
Nobody is innocent MY. Nobody.
You know what's really scary? That means that there are now officially more than 62 terrorists for every Starbucks, worldwide.
That's why you see so many cases of terrorists walking into a Starbucks in your town and blowing themselves up. It's just tragic.
Ku Klux Klan members like Ford belong on the list, obviously. Anybody remember Oklahoma City? Ford is one of THOSE guys.
My name is probably on the list, but if anybody thinks I'd fly under my own ID while doing nasty business - or fly at all for that matter, when America has such a nice interstate highway system as well as trains and buses (well, buses suck)- they're as stupid as Ford and Al.
Any terrorist wanting to get in this country merely has to get to Mexico or Canada or an island in the Bahamas under phony ID, then waltz into the country across porous borders. It's physically impossible to get terrorists - and I mean significant numbers of terrorists - out.
Or simply pay the guys smuggling Mexicans in enough money. Given the incidence of Mexican immigrant smuggling, you could bring in one hundred Iranian agents loaded with weapons in about two days worth of effort. You could probably bring in a thousand in a couple weeks - and continue doing that year after year for the next ten years - which Iran will probably do once they're attacked.
The entire "terrorist watch list" is utter bullshit. Only morons take it seriously.
In precisely the optimal amounts and forms, I'm sure.
Surely not. If Yglesias had pointed out some ways in which they were suboptimal, however, I must have missed it.
Ibid, OTOH, makes some excellent points.
Al tongues Cheney's bung: "Due process, accountability and oversight of the list already exist."
Al, you must swallow more Bushpig shit every day than anyone else on the planet. Is it true that you wash it down with old bottles of Reagan's piss?
The number of militants actually dangerous to us is probably in the thousands.
My brother's 70+ year old Irish mother in law is on the terrorism watch-list because she had the temerity to politely object when some security guy made a royal mess out of the neatly folded clothing in here suitcase.
Shorter Yglesias and ACLU: if a guy in Pakistan names Osama bin Laden applies for a Visa to visit New York, we should let him in the country.
Well of course we should, and we should then arrest him as he deplanes at JFK. You'd rather he stays in Pakistan?
Besides, if we leave it up to George Bush and the Republicans to catch him, we're gonna be waiting a looong time.....
Believe me, I'm against the list as the rest of anyone here, but that doesn't give license to be illogical. Matt implies here that a watch list should have as many names as actual terrorists in the world, which of course is wrong. A "good" list would have, based on real evidence, a list of SUSPECTED terrorists, which of course would be much bigger. Say, if there are 8000 dangerous terrorists in the world, it should ideally have 20,000, for example.
Comments closed July 28, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
How many are senior citizens from anti-war groups?
Posted by LFC | July 14, 2008 3:50 PM