THIS MODERN WORLD

What Glenn said:

The White House is sure to follow suit any minute now, insinuating — or explicitly claiming — that this incident proves that Bush was right about the whole array of our country’s foreign policy disputes, from Iraq to the current Israel-Lebanon war. This naked exploitation of terrorist threats for political gain occurs every time a new terrorist plot is revealed, no matter how serious or frivolous, no matter how advanced or preliminary, the plot might be. Each time a new plot is disclosed, administration officials and their followers immediately begin squeezing the emotions and fears generated by such events for every last drop of political gain they can manufacture.

But this effort is as incoherent as it is manipulative. Nobody doubts that there are Muslim extremists who would like to commit acts of violence against the U.S. and the West. No political disputes are premised on a conflict over whether terrorism exists or whether it ought to be taken seriously. As a result, events such as this that reveal what everyone already knows — that there is such a thing as Islamic extremists who want to commit terrorist acts against the U.S. — do nothing to inform or resolve political debates over the Bush administration’s militaristic foreign policy or its radical lawlessness at home. Opposition to the war in Iraq, for instance, is not based upon the premise that there is no terrorist threat. It is based on the premise that that invasion undermines, rather than strengthens, our campaign to fight terrorism.

Invading and bombing Muslim countries do not prevent terrorism or diminish the likelihood that British-born Muslims will blow up American airplanes. If anything, warmongering in the Middle East exacerbates that risk by radicalizing more and more Muslims and increasing anti-U.S. resentment. And the more military and intelligence resources we are forced to pour into waging wars against countries that have not attacked us, the less able we are to track and combat al-Qaida and the other terrorist groups that actually seek to harm us. There are few things that have more enabled terrorism than turning Iraq into a chaotic caldron of anarchy and violence — exactly the environment in which al-Qaida thrives.

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Here:

NEW HAVEN — A 13-year-old boy shot in the head last weekend after he left a carnival near his house has died.

Justus Suggs’ family removed him from life support Tuesday afternoon. He died a short time later.

The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner confirmed an autopsy was scheduled for today.

Justus never regained consciousness after he was shot July 29 near the intersection of Sylvan Avenue and Orchard Street, just a few blocks from the carnival at Career High School.

Justus’ family did not make any public statements Tuesday. His mother, Tracey Suggs, who was at her Davenport Avenue home Tuesday night, indicated that she wasn’t ready to talk about the loss of Justus. Police have said that he did not appear to be the intended target.

He had spent the afternoon working on the dirt bike behind his apartment house and in the evening went to the carnival with another group of friends with instructions from his mother not to be out too late, his family has said.

The shooting occurred just after 10 p.m., when the occupants of a car rolled up and at least one of the occupants opened fire on a crowd of youths, hitting Justus once, police have said.

Police last week said they were following promising leads, but the investigation apparently did not progress as quickly as hoped.

* * *

Justus’ shooting came six weeks after a 13-year-old girl, Jajuana Cole, was shot to death near her house when a gunman fired into a crowd. Five people have been arrested in that case.

There’s been a lot of senseless violence in New Haven this year. Too many kids with guns. There’s more to the state of Connecticut than a fun and exciting Senate race. We’ve got some pretty intractable problems here. I wish there were easy answers, but there aren’t.

Larry Johnson:

I’m sitting in Europe, scheduled to take British Air back to the states on Friday, and I’m watching British Authorities meltdown in the face of an alleged terrorist plot. Rule of thumb–initial, panicked reports are usually unreliable. The Brits reportedly have taken at least 18 people into custody–all residents of Great Britain.

The last significant, successful plot to bomb a plane was in January 1995, when a group linked to Osama Bin Laden (this group included Ramsi Yousef, mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and Khalid Sheik Muhammed, nephew of OBL) had devised a way to carry on a liquid explosive disguised to look like water. The detonator was a combination of gun cotton (looked like cotton balls), a small light bulb, a nine volt battery, and a Casio data watch. Ramsi Yousef conducted a successful dry run of this device and planted one on board a Philippine Airline flight in December 1994. That bomb killed one man (a Japanese citizen) and almost brought down the plane. The plan was to blow up twelve US jets transiting the Pacific basin. It was disrupted when an informant, Ishtiak Parker, walked into the US Embassy in Pakistan and ratted out Ramsi Yousef.

So, what next?

Instead of a common sense approach to security, the Brits have hit the panic button. Here’s what needs to be done:

1. No liquids on board a plane weighing more than one pound. Eight ounce bottles are okay but you must drink the liquid to demonstrate it is not an explosive.
2. One carryone bag per passenger. All carry on bags hand searched.
3. No cotton balls.
4. No third party cargo on passenger aircraft.

The latter is the real gap in aviation security. Right now most checked baggage is subjected to inspection by a machine that can detect explosives. Hand carry and cargo are not. You can deal with the threat of hand carry by physical inspection but cargo is a different problem.

In the back of my mind I worry that this threat might be trumped up in order to divert attention from the disastrous US and British policy (or lack of policy) in Lebanon. More likely, we have an informant in the UK that identified a potential plot that was in the dreaming stage but had not progressed to actual implementation. Rather than act like security professionals, the Brits are acting like panicked nannies. Very sad.

Jeez. Joe “tied for third place” Lieberman doesn’t get it. The voters of Connecticut looked at you and your opponent and decided they like him better. End of story. The election is over and you lost. Cluelessness like this isn’t just infuriating, it’s pathetic :

“Now let me tell you how I see where we are now,” the senator continued, in a speech that was less of a concession than a confirmation that he would not back down. “I’m a sports fan, so I’m going to use a sports comparison, and as I see it in this campaign, we’ve just finished the first half and the Lamont team is ahead. But in the second half, our team — Team Connecticut — is going to surge forward to victory in November.”

Here’s a sports analogy you can wrap your head around :

You lost dude. Have a little dignity and give up.

A reader just sent this in. Please feel free to distribute far and wide.

… Yes it’s repurposed Republican propaganda. Given that they’re now Joe’s new best friends forever, that seems plenty appropriate to me.

… I was going to make this available as a shirt, but there turn out to be possible copyright issues that I don’t feel like dealing with. If Lieberman doesn’t drop out of the race soon, which I half suspect he might, I’ll try to make something else available soon.