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Missteps & Itchy Trigger Fingers

Sunday, Apr. 09, 2006 2:04 AM

Our clueless wonder for the week is Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, who dismissed security concerns about Brian Doyle, saying the case was an individual's misstep.

Doyle is the deputy press secretary who faces charges of being a sexual predator, having been caught by a detective posing as a 14-year-old girl.

And while it's unlikely that al-Qaeda has members trolling for pederasts within the federal government, our nation's security is not particularly well served by playing down the seriousness of the charges against Doyle.

Whether or not Doyle's behavior is ready-made fodder for a blackmailer, the real security concern is that Doyle may have used a government computer for some of his interactions with his intended victim.

With the GAO having found DHS' information security to be wanting, even someone without access to classified information could potentially compromise the network by surfing to unmonitored and/or pornographic sites.

If the Administration truly believes that someone voicing an opposing view about the clown car act we've got going in Iraq emboldens terrorists and weakens our national resolve, you'd think they'd be a little more alarmed over Doyle's 'misstep.'


U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalizad fired off an ominous warning about civil war in Iraq if like, the Iraqis don't get their shit together and appoint someone we like, er, form a national unity government.

He points the finger at armed militias, such as the forces led by Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, and says Iraq's internal dissent could spill over into the region at large.

I imagine this will play very well should Iraq's parliament put their paws in the air and roll over like a good doggie arrive at a compromise acceptable to Shiite, Sunni, and Kurdish factions ...

... only to have America drop the hammer on Iran. (And no, I'm not talking about kicking Tom DeLay out of a plane minus a parachute.)

It also seems like the Pentagon has found a way to justify spiffy new munitions like the RNEP (Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator), or the amazing burrowing bunker-buster bomb.

Despite the fact that neither of the targets who were said to possess considerable subterranean defenses � Tora Bora for Osama bin Laden, and palatial bunkers for Saddam Hussein � actually bothered to use or house significant forces within said strongpoints, the Pentagon is making sure to describe Iran's uranium enrichment facilities as reinforced underground sites that will likely require nuclear munitions to breach. So, of course we have to have burrowing nukes!

Right. Send a nuclear bomb into a site packed with depleted and/or enriched uranium.

I'm not a geologist, but ever since the neocons evangelical nutjobs looking to precipitate the Apocalypse Pentagon began drooling over a new generation of nuclear arms coupled with burrowing this-and-that, I've given some thought to the Law of Unintended Consequences.

And I wonder if we've taken a serious look at the risk of accidentally igniting an oil reservoir, or the potential for residual radiation leaching into the water table.

'Cause there ain't no backsies on nuclear bombs.


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