Bush Fire
If I'm not already in trouble with the NSA, I will be soon.
Terrorists are figuring it out.
The same group of "terra-ists" plotting to blow up the Holland Tunnel/PATH trains, etc. apparently spoke of setting multiple wildfires in California in an effort to inflict the death of a thousand cuts on our great nation, rather than trying to cut off our head with the W.M.D.s they've never had.
(As an aside, what the hell ever happened with the Anthrax thing? I was in Washington that fall and it certainly seemed important at the time. It was certainly a great distraction from all the other things going on in the District at the time.)
Now getting back to our Al Qaida version of "California cooking", I've always thought it obvious that with very little effort, equipment or preparation, some nutcase could always have started a chain of devastating fires throughout California, overtaxing the state's pitifully neglected firefighting infrastructure. All you'd need are road flares and a car. The beauty is that road flares - get this - are in almost every car in California already. Hell, they're $.99 at Orchard Supply. You could destroy the state with your dresser change in road flares.
While wildfires might not be able to bring the state to it's knees, they could certainly go along way towards bankrupting it and terrifying the WATB "red state" inland conservatives of the Golden State. Massive wildfires could also destroy much of California's tourism industry by rendering places like Yosemite, Kings Canyon, Lake Tahoe, Shasta Lake, etc. into so many black stick jungles.
Even worse, places like Fresno, Bakersfield, Merced, Madera, the Sacramento River valley, and hundred of Sierra foothill towns would be devastated. The flat, grass-surrounded planned communities would all go up in smoke, destroying tens of thousands of badly-built KB Homes McMansions and turning a veritable army of angry cheeto-eaters out on the streets. Victor Davis Hanson might lose his hobby farm and his hobby ranch house. Thousands of wingnuts would see their ski boats, jetskis, and second SUVs turned into little more than puddles of plastic in the driveway.
(That's why us coastal liberal intelligentsia live on the coast, where there's ample water - and it's why we've already cut down all those harmful, flammable trees, and paved over the troublesome fields of native grasses.)
But the scary thing is, these terrorists were arrested for talking about planning these crimes. And that's just what I'm doing now - talking about someone planning crimes, and the feasibility of such crimes.
Does it make me a terrorist that I spoke with a very conservative friend on 9/12/2001 on the topic of this asymmetrical tactic? That can't qualify me as a terrorist, because my friend, the arch-conservative, started the conversation and I know he's not a terrorist. But we developed the idea through conversation and talked about it at length. thankfully, not over the telephone - or maybe we'd both be in Gitmo.
If it really is that easy to hurt this nation, and if we should really get used to living in such abject fear, waiting for the horror that a firestarter could inflict, then I give up.
But I don't think the threat of firestarter terrorists is all that real. I think that if someone had wanted to do this, they've have done it already. What's so tough about gassing up in Bakersfield and flicking a road flare out of the window in a late California fall every ten miles? Surely, in a state of 30 million people (and growing) the Al Qaida infiltrators that exist among us (at least according to wingnuts) should have hatched and developed that plot long ago. Why haven't they?
Maybe they haven't because when it comes down to it, these folks are just as stupid as the front-liners in the 101st Fighting Keyboarders, Wingnut corps. They are, by and large, governed by the same urge for self-preservation we all are.
Or maybe - just maybe - there is no invisible army of Al Quaida waiting to take us out, as so many conservadroids seem to think. Maybe there's no compelling reason to shed our liberties and speech rights, to give up the chance of a deficit-free future, to regret the massive loss of life in Iraq sold on a bunch of lies.
Maybe - just maybe - the cowboy conservatives who have driven our country into a mud-slick ditch of fear and deceit are the ones who are the real terrorists. The ones who ply voters with fear when there's no terrorist even willing to hustle a bunch of road flares in order to destroy California.
I wonder what my conservative friends in the tinder-dry parts of wooded, rural California think of that?
Terrorists are figuring it out.
NEW YORK - The Lebanese man accused of plotting to destroy and flood Hudson River train tunnels also discussed the possibility of setting wildfires in California to inflict harm on the U.S., a federal official said Monday.
The official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing, said wildfires were "only part of their planning discussions. No steps were taken to carry it out."
The official also said that Assem Hammoud "raised" the possibility of using backpacks on New York subways to carry explosive devices and attack the transit system.
The possible fire plot and backpacks - first reported by Newsday and the Los Angeles Times - were among several new allegations to emerge in recent days about the 31-year-old Hammoud, who was arrested in Lebanon in April.
The same group of "terra-ists" plotting to blow up the Holland Tunnel/PATH trains, etc. apparently spoke of setting multiple wildfires in California in an effort to inflict the death of a thousand cuts on our great nation, rather than trying to cut off our head with the W.M.D.s they've never had.
(As an aside, what the hell ever happened with the Anthrax thing? I was in Washington that fall and it certainly seemed important at the time. It was certainly a great distraction from all the other things going on in the District at the time.)
Now getting back to our Al Qaida version of "California cooking", I've always thought it obvious that with very little effort, equipment or preparation, some nutcase could always have started a chain of devastating fires throughout California, overtaxing the state's pitifully neglected firefighting infrastructure. All you'd need are road flares and a car. The beauty is that road flares - get this - are in almost every car in California already. Hell, they're $.99 at Orchard Supply. You could destroy the state with your dresser change in road flares.
While wildfires might not be able to bring the state to it's knees, they could certainly go along way towards bankrupting it and terrifying the WATB "red state" inland conservatives of the Golden State. Massive wildfires could also destroy much of California's tourism industry by rendering places like Yosemite, Kings Canyon, Lake Tahoe, Shasta Lake, etc. into so many black stick jungles.
Even worse, places like Fresno, Bakersfield, Merced, Madera, the Sacramento River valley, and hundred of Sierra foothill towns would be devastated. The flat, grass-surrounded planned communities would all go up in smoke, destroying tens of thousands of badly-built KB Homes McMansions and turning a veritable army of angry cheeto-eaters out on the streets. Victor Davis Hanson might lose his hobby farm and his hobby ranch house. Thousands of wingnuts would see their ski boats, jetskis, and second SUVs turned into little more than puddles of plastic in the driveway.
(That's why us coastal liberal intelligentsia live on the coast, where there's ample water - and it's why we've already cut down all those harmful, flammable trees, and paved over the troublesome fields of native grasses.)
But the scary thing is, these terrorists were arrested for talking about planning these crimes. And that's just what I'm doing now - talking about someone planning crimes, and the feasibility of such crimes.
Does it make me a terrorist that I spoke with a very conservative friend on 9/12/2001 on the topic of this asymmetrical tactic? That can't qualify me as a terrorist, because my friend, the arch-conservative, started the conversation and I know he's not a terrorist. But we developed the idea through conversation and talked about it at length. thankfully, not over the telephone - or maybe we'd both be in Gitmo.
If it really is that easy to hurt this nation, and if we should really get used to living in such abject fear, waiting for the horror that a firestarter could inflict, then I give up.
But I don't think the threat of firestarter terrorists is all that real. I think that if someone had wanted to do this, they've have done it already. What's so tough about gassing up in Bakersfield and flicking a road flare out of the window in a late California fall every ten miles? Surely, in a state of 30 million people (and growing) the Al Qaida infiltrators that exist among us (at least according to wingnuts) should have hatched and developed that plot long ago. Why haven't they?
Maybe they haven't because when it comes down to it, these folks are just as stupid as the front-liners in the 101st Fighting Keyboarders, Wingnut corps. They are, by and large, governed by the same urge for self-preservation we all are.
Or maybe - just maybe - there is no invisible army of Al Quaida waiting to take us out, as so many conservadroids seem to think. Maybe there's no compelling reason to shed our liberties and speech rights, to give up the chance of a deficit-free future, to regret the massive loss of life in Iraq sold on a bunch of lies.
Maybe - just maybe - the cowboy conservatives who have driven our country into a mud-slick ditch of fear and deceit are the ones who are the real terrorists. The ones who ply voters with fear when there's no terrorist even willing to hustle a bunch of road flares in order to destroy California.
I wonder what my conservative friends in the tinder-dry parts of wooded, rural California think of that?
Labels: Archived
posted by Doug at 1:18 PM
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