In the old children's story, Chicken Little runs about like a chicken with it's head cut off (pun intended) warning all that will listen that the sky is falling. I can't help but think that Chicken Little has come back, but this time, he has come in the form of Michael Chertoff, "director" of the department of Homeland "security".
What else can explain the recent wave of daily warnings of the coming of Al Qaeda to America. For the last month or so, it seems that Al Qaeda is lurking in every dark corner, and behind every door in the United States. Just about every news cast has carried a warning that we aren't safe. The reds are no longer under our beds. Now, it's terrorists who are poised to completely destroy the "American way of life".
And through it all, I am completely unimpressed...and unconvinced!
It's not like anything that's happening now is new. From the time right after 9/11 to now, we have been inundated, nay, drowned in unending warnings of danger coming at us from the Middle East, Iraq most specifically. It is no mystery that it remains the objective of the DUBYA administration to keep us all scared out of our wits. Now that the time has come that most Americans are no longer shitting kittens over the continual warnings of terrorists following us home like hungry puppies, it appears that Chicken Little...er Michael Chertoff is at it again, trying valiantly to keep the fear button pushed.
Can you blame him? After all, it takes lot of effort to keep people scared senseless. This is especially true after six years of continuously keeping the fear button pushed. After five summers of these kinds of warnings amounting to nothing, the people are simply overstimulated. We can no longer take the pressure of keeping the fear button pushed. In order to cope, we have simply shut off our fear response. In this state, we may hear the warnings, but we no longer believe what we are hearing.
At least I don't!
I don't believe that America is in imminent danger from some ineffectual idiots flying over from Iraq to blow up the apartment in which I live. I don't believe that the so-called "chatter" from Islamic web sites is anything more than another flea's fart on the wind. I don't believe there is any immediate danger that the latest crop of "B" list terrorists are anything more than a bunch of dolts who are trying to gain some measure of glory and notoriety for themselves.
Their "terror attacks" have been, if anything, comedic. The first of this batch of new wave terrorists were the idiots that were planning on taking Fort Dix. Six "terrorists" were planning on taking Fort Dix, with all the soldiers there, by pretending to be pizza delivery guys. In case you didn't get that, let me re-iterate. Six "terrorists" were planning on attacking Fort Dix, an American military stronghold by masquerading as pizza delivery men. They were planning to get a cache of weapons past the guard shacks, into the main area, and using those weapons to kill as many soldiers as they could.
I won't even go into the incredible stupidity involved in thinking that they would be able to get their cache of weapons past the guard shack. I won't even go into the fact that even if they were able to get to an area where they could actually put their weapons to use, the fact that there were only a maximum of six of them would have meant they would have been barely capable of bringing death to anyone but their own stupid selves. I won't even go into the fact that other than a bunch of windy words and some macho posturing on their parts, there was NOTHING to their threats.
What I will go into is the fact that they were stupid enough to take a videotape to get it off-loaded onto DVD's. If I were a terrorist planning on killing soldiers armed to the teeth in an American fort, the last...and I mean absolute last thing I would do is take a videotape to a commercial duplication company that showed men playing with guns shouting, "Allah Akbar!" Yet this is exactly how these moronic twits got busted.
Could they have been a real threat to anyone other than themselves? Oh, I don't doubt that one of them might have been able to squeeze off one or two lucky shots before they were reduced to a substance resembling course ground hamburger. They might have even been able to kill a few people before they were turned into lead-infused Swiss Cheese. But if this is the best they could hope to accomplish, they were less of a threat to me than living in a place where the Smog-berry trees bloom every summer, like the DFW area.
Then there's the latest "attempt" at terrorism that was the attack of the Glasgow Airport. In this attempt, it seems that some doctors decided they wanted to work outside the auspices of the Hippocratic Oath, and do some killing. Unfortunately, these doctors of death were woefully ineffectual in their bungled attempts to do any real damage.
What does it say about a group of "terrorists" who aren't smart enough to make sure their car bombs actually work? One of them contained in a Mercedes Benz didn't go off. The other one, contained in a Jeep Cherokee, did go off, but only enough to cover the driver and passenger in burning gasoline. I thought the idea of suicide bombing was to take others out with yourself, not stand there and burn like a marshmallow dropped into the campfire. They did nothing but show how even people who have gone to college for years can be too stupid for words.
And now we are completely immersed in a sea of terrorist warnings. For the last few weeks, Chertoff Little has kept up the full frontal assault on our sensibilities. It began with his gut rumblings, and continues on a daily basis. Just today, there were more terrorist warnings. As per usual, I tuned it all out, until it got to the place where all these warnings have ended. Say it with me, "there was no credible threat."
No credible threat? If there is no credible threat, then why on earth keep bleating about it? If there is no credible threat, why bother placing the story anywhere in the news, especially the first story? If there is no credible threat, why mention it at all? If there is no credible threat, then there is no threat, PERIOD!
I'm not saying there is absolutely no threat of terrorists coming to the US. I won't make such an ignorant statement. Of course, there is a threat that a terrorist or group of terrorists could find their way into the United States. There may be some already here. In the case of people like Timothy McVeigh, they may have never set foot anyplace but on our home soil.
