11.23.10

Defending the Indefensible

Posted in War On Terror at 5:43 pm by George Smith

It should not come as a surprise that the mainstream media, after enjoying publicizing all the bad stories about the TSA and airport security misadventures now feels compelled to run stories and polls explaining how the TSA is just doing its job, its workers are in a bad position, and many Americans think being treated like crap is cool. As long as they’ve been told it’s for the good of the country and everyone else, too.

The latter view is unsurprising although one guest on Olbermann just a few minutes ago expressed some astonishment at the news.

Here’s an example from AP:

Many travelers said that the scans and the pat-down were not much of an inconvenience, and that the stepped-up measures made them feel safer and were, in any case, unavoidable.

“Whatever keeps the country safe, I just don’t have a problem with,” Leah Martin, 50, of Houston, said as she waited Monday to go through security at the Atlanta airport.

At New York’s LaGuardia Airport early Tuesday, Jeannine St. Amand got a pat-down in front of her husband and two children. The 45-year-old from Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada, figured she got one because the underwire of her bra tripped the metal detector.

“It’s hard to remember all the restrictions. Next time, I’ll wear a different bra,” she said.

Probably all true. DD doesn’t think it would be hard at all to find people who, after years of being seared by stories about the big bad al Qaeda men, the shoe bomber and the underwear bombers, believe whatever you tell them when it comes to national security necessity.

What of the annoying fact that the last two famous failed incidents — the underwear bomber’s smoking parts and the UPS/Fed-Ex transported printer bombs, did not involve going through TSA or the multiple buzzing and prodding layers of US security at all?

It’s just of no relevance in such on-the-spot interviews and polls. But I bet a polling or news agency could make it so just by making the questions less leading and more complex in their recitation of recent history as reference point.

One moment from cable television yesterday is of note.

MSNB’s Chris Matthews took time out to bully a woman from EPIC, Ginger McCall, on the matter of airport security, a topic in which he’s simply a daddy-knows-best kind of guy. Daddy — in this case — being the national security infrastructure.

Crooks & Liars captured it here:

What set Matthews off was the lady’s mentioning of former Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff’s lobbying efforts for Rapiscan.

Matthews accused his guest of slandering Chertoff, of accusing the latter of corruption, a development he darkly intimated would have consequences.

It was a despicable moment and, naturally, ended the interview.

It was also excessive in its bullshit and odious in Matthews’ toad-like defense of Chertoff. Who can’t be defended in this matter.

The Washington Post covered Chertoff’s connection to Rapiscan early last year. And even after adding a “clarification” to the story, mostly aimed at its original title, it cannot be argued that Chertoff has not become part of the conflict-of-interest revolving door that exists in Washington, one in which people in positions of oversight immediately go to work for the businesses they were formerly supposed to be overseeing.

I’ve written about this for awhile in various places. The bioterror defense industry, for example, is also riddled by this manner of crony-ism.

Anyway, the US model of counter-terror, as most people experience it, is stubbornly reactive. And that has to do with a number of reasons, one of which is tightly bound up with money and opportunity.

Intelligence on terrorism is hard.

However, reactive measures — which includes open solicitation for devices and procedures from the national security industry, is not.

There’s a widespread belief, impossible to dislodge, that devices — or the next one down the road — will be silver bullets. Or at least, always better — when they really just turn out to be … more.

And this is coupled with a supporting cast, people in businesses who sit around imagining what terrorists could do if they had all US resources, and using their concocted tests and scenarios as pitches and sales tools.

So corporate natsec businesses really like the way things work now.

And the people who work in government in homeland security, counter-terrorism, policy and oversight in these areas, are regularly recruited and poached away by lucrative offers in the industry. Or the implication and recognition that such positions await them once they leave government service.

This is the same revolving door which you see everywhere else in American government overtaken by corporate capture.

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