Mission Impossible
July 21st, 2010 | Editorial Cartoons | 35 Comments
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Question for you Tea Party devotees: If you hate government so much, where were you when the Bush administration was building the massive, secret, overreaching, unwieldy national security apparatus after 9/11? Today, more than 1,200 government agencies and 1,900 private companies at more than 10,000 sites, employing a mind-boggling 854,000 people with top-secret clearances, who produce 50,000 pages of intelligence annually, are tripping all over themselves and each other to gather intelligence and supposedly keep Americans safe. And if you think all these good folks are spending all their time ferreting out threats from al Qaeda and not spying on ordinary Americans, I have a poppy farm in Afghanistan to sell you. Besides being inherently unworkable, this vast decentralized system has no chance of communicating within its own bureaucracy effectively, let alone responding quickly and accurately to genuine threats. Oh, for thosde simpler times when the just the CIA and the FBI couldn’t connect the dots.
Topics: cartoon, CIA, connect the dots, FBI, intelligence, national security, NSA, opinion
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Part of the reason for the strength of the Tea Party movement is because of the big government Republicans like Bush.
Obama and the Democratic senate have had two years to change it – why haven’t they fixed it yet ?
James, you have to remember, the Bush Administration put America on the brink on so many fronts that it’s almost impossible to count them all. Perhaps Obama has been rather busy with a few other issues such as healthcare and financial reform. With 3100 government agencies and private entities now providing our national security, it would take some brilliant minds at least two years to determine who all these people are and what, if any, function they perform. Hopefully, you’re not one of those mindless conservatives who say Obama is not correcting Bush’s mistakes fast enough. We’re talking about a multitude of huge mistakes here.
Fixing our Government in two years is a lot like Hercules cleaning the Augean Stables in one day. The first problem is that some animals will not quit crapping all over everything.
Thank you Nathan. An Augean stable…..of elephants, not horses.
I now have choked on hot coffee while reading your comment, laughing and swallowing don’t mix well. Ah, the dangers of blogging!
But thank you for that visual image; what an apt metaphor. Thank you. (cough, cough I’ll be all right…)
What a great analogy! Thanks!
854,000 employees producing 50,000 pages of intelligence annually – hmmm, that’s one page per 17 employees. As a writer, I have to say that’s pretty poor productivity.
A bureaucracy by nature will expand itself and promote its usefulness even though it may be useless.
The only problem folks with your theory is that we have not had a repeat attack .. SOOOO something is working . IF you think we are rid of our problems, you live in fairy land. Yes it needs to be reviewed. But the problem is still there. You have to be open minded we do have the same problems we had before the current president. He has not done anything but spend trillons of dollars and all the bankers danced and danced. Get a life, and an open mind while you are at it.
We haven’t had a repeat attack? Really? So you are completely unaware of the underware bomber? I personally liked the phrases “fruit of the boom” and “eunuchbomber”. And then there were the arrests of the attempted subway bomber. Lets not forget the naturalized citizen Time Square bomber. Those are just the recent ones. There were quite a lot more than that during the Bush administration.
You do realize, don’t you, Old BLT, that none of those attacks were prevented. They just happened not to work as intended. You do get that, right? It is not that we were not attacked; it is that we were attacked by incompetent terrorists who came very very close to getting it right and hurting and killing lots of people.
And those are just ‘isalmo-terrorists’. All those many connect-the-dots until it gives you a headache government security experts in gabazillion different agencies were unable to prevent the guy who flew his airplane into the side of a building to take out the local office of the IRS. Because those super-secretive keep-us-safe agencies are supposed to be preventing domestic terrorist attacks as well as foreign ones.
If I may observe Old BLT, you seem to have a very selective understanding of both history and current events. You might want to give that another look before ridiculing others, or telling them to get a life. The actual facts, not the selective ones, give far less cause for being so smug, sir.
Well BT,
It costs a lot of money to pay 1,200 government agencies and 1,900 private companies at more than 10,000 sites, employing a mind-boggling 854,000 people to keep us protected. That doen’t even count our costs in Iraq and Afghanistan which is now over a trillion dollars just by themselves. If that is where you want the Pres to spend money, that’s ok but if I want him to spend it on health care, that’s not. I’d be willing to bet more people die from a lack of proper health care than from all those evil-doers out to get us. The Harvard Medical School estimates 45,000/year because they lack health insurance.
What does the ‘educated’ left have that gives them credibility? This echo head attacks the tea party without knowing a single thing about the movement. If he were clued into reality he might realize that most of the tea party people were disgusted with the president before now. Questions for the lefty devotees: do you learn anything or just tote the line? We were here screaming about the abuse of power years ago. Where were you? Now its ok cause you can point back to history? Go learn something you didn’t hear from the media, check out the past and stop with the hypocritical non sense. Then become honest. Its disgusting, gross.
WoW, I would point out that many of the very same faces, the very same politicians are being supported by the tea party that wee supported during the Bush years.
You were screaming years ago about the abuse? Where were we?
Sheesh, Wow — I think the left did a pretty good job of screaming about the important abuses of power during the Bush years. The right was pretty darn silent.
And the tea partiers are promoting some of the worst Bush era offenders, like Michele Bachmann from that era. She couldn’t get enough of Bush, and has never repudiated him, nor has Palin. Those are two tea party political pin ups. Glossy and paper thin shallow. The tea party hasn’t put forward a single new idea or a good one, just worn out retreads. It is the tea pariters that include and embrace the militia crazies. that have protest events like the one in NM in January with people standing around with guns – including at least one who went on record in a video at the event stating the participants were there to intimidate the government.
Tell me again how little we know -how little Ed knows. I think you may be a bit less informed about the tea party than you think you are.
But then again, I”m still trying to get the mental image of Obama in the oval office, in a short, stereotypical one-shoulder toga from the old gladiator genre movies, thanks to Nathan and that Augean stables reference.
What you do not know is how many were stopped before they got in the news. This is not a Bush problem and should not be an issue because if you raise that issue you have to go back to Clinton and I know you do not want to go there. So yes we have been lucky in stopping some of the idiots, we have also stopped many that do not make the papers. And the presence of security keeps some at bay.
Your answer is to give them all a hug and let them in with a piece of cake , no border checks , no checks on known people of interest that come and go to countries that support the thugs that want to do our country harm. The number Three person on the list of people that want to do harm to the US is a born in the US citizen of forgien parents. He is the one hiding and recruiting these idiots that want to blow up planes.
I had an experence years ago with a young man that gulf oil had brought over to the states as an engineer and intern/ he hated the US , you know why: after several days of discussion and heated agurments he admited because he was lonley and could not get a date. He was horny. Probably the same reason for the major in the army that went over to the other side and went nuts. Base reasons for a lot of problems, stupid , horny, religion it doesn’t matter/ we still have to keep up our guard or HEAVEN FORBIDE Close our borders to people from countries that are pron to cause problems. OR just put our head in the sand and say all is well with a jar of KY jelly beside us.
Ah, dear Old BLT, how you like to bait and switch. You tap dance divinely as you try to deflect the facts.
What you said was, “The only problem folks with your theory is that we have not had a repeat attack .. SOOOO something is working.” Just scroll up; it’s right there – you don’t have far to go.
“WE HAVE NOT HAD A REPEAT ATTACK” “SOMETHING IS WORKING”.
Um, no. We’ve just been darn lucky. Much as some attacks have been prevented by arrests and other interventions before they could occurr, far from all of them have. Psychologically, we would be wise to be preparing ourselves to be tough in the event of an attack eventually succeeding again, despite our best efforts. I don’t believe every attempt CAN be stopped; good intel will stop more than bad intel. But intel can only do so much, and too great a reliance on any system like this is a mistake. We should not be that comfortable with it.
But the Ol’ BLT, you go on to say “What you do not know is how many were stopped before they got in the news. This is not a Bush problem and should not be an issue because if you raise that issue you have to go back to Clinton and I know you do not want to go there.”
Old BLT, I am reasonably sure you have just as little knowledge of what hasn’t made the papers as I do, or Ed, or any of his commenters. So, you’re just speculating, GUESSING, about what works and what doesn’t.
The difference is I don’t pretend to know this informaiton in forming my opinion. I can acknowledge that there are things I don’t know. On the other hand, I HAVE read quite a few of the declassified reports from Napolitano and her predecessors agencies – available on SCRIBD.com, if you decide to inform yourself. So I suspect I may have a better idea than you have, at least as expressed here.
I have NO PROBLEM going back to Clinton. Ironically, today is the very day in history, back in 2004, that the 9/11 commission released it’s report on that attack. Have YOU read it ol’ BLT? It’s not classified either.
Then you wrote, “Your answer is to give them all a hug and let them in with a piece of cake , no border checks , no checks on known people of interest that come and go to countries that support the thugs that want to do our country harm.”
Not at all, Old BLT; you do not know me at all obviously if you think that. I almost think you were trying for a second episode of me laughing while trying to swallow. I distrust the competence and efficiency of any organization that is this disorganized and apparently inefficient. So, let me share with you that I try to be better informed than the average person before I comment. I have been told all my life that I have a ‘Byzantine’ turn of mind, meaning cunning, devious, and delighting in nuance and complexity. My favorite compliment of all time (although I am not sure it was intended as a compliment, exactly) was the observation that I was the kindest, sweetest, nicest and most ruthless person that my friend had ever met. My friend found that juxtaposition of qualities a bit…..disconcerting. So the hug and cake thing misses.
The KY jelly suggestion has possible applications (pun intended) that you may have missed. In many of those areas that produce the greatest number of extremists, both maturbation and fornication in all of its forms is punishable by death. Masturbation for example is punishable by decaptiation in parts of Indonesia. Perhaps the free distribution of KY jelly might cause the problem of extremist terrorism to some degree to eradicate itself rather than us?
dog gone–Old BT is in the rightwing crowd that is convinced that they have the right and God-given (apparently) purpose of disregarding pesky facts if they don’t serve their (to them only) self-evident myths and conspiracy theories. Security obtained as a result of masturbation is a new one, I have to admit. Yanevahknow with these folks.
Of course, he still hasn’t told us if he accepts social security payments or Medicare, even when asked. I guess he wants to rail about freeloaders and folks with no lives while he just freeloads with the best of ‘em.
Just tell us Ol’ BT–do you take social security or Medicare not? Got any KY handy, too?
Is it freeloading if he spent years paying into both systems?
Actually–given the unfunded Medicare mandate given to us by the Bush administration (you know–the one whose de facto president Cheney said:”Deficits don’t matter”)–yes.
Lots of folks (like this particular angry, self-satisfied person) love to wander around now blaming “Obama” or “liberals” for the deficits and other problems created and expressed delivered to us by 30-odd years of bad government (mostly Republican), while recently actively opposing the administration’s provision of affordable health care for all citizens.
If he is taking Medicare today, he is a freeloader, and–to use a common “conservative” complaint– he is doing it on “my” money. And, as the “pay-er”, I think freeloaders should at least put that fact into their mix of angry commentary.
Doggone , You type a lot, we agree more than you want to admit. the problem is in degree of agreement or disagreement. There a few points we are poles apart and I understand that and I can agree to disagree. You sir at least have a sense of humor while being a person that is a bit to trusting to say the least.
That is madame, not sir.
Nothing I have written here suggests I am trusting, much less too trusting. I don’t wish to give terrorist a hug and cake. You have yet to peg me accurately Oldbt, I doubt that I will match up with your other assumptions either, but if you are curious, I blog at penigma.blogspot.com.
I disapprove of oversimplicity that is misleading; I dislike bad complexity – like that so brilliantly, as ever, depicted by Mr. Stein – which is self-defeating, internally oppositional, and too cumbersome to be effective.
Glad you enjoy the humor.
So, Ed, this depiction of the national security organizational chart looks vaguely familiar somehow.
Is this an entirely original piece, or a pastiche of a classic abstract artist’s work?
It looks sort of piet mondrian or joan miro-ish.
So not Social Security, just Medicare, and then only as it stands now as an unfunded mandate.
As for the last 30 years, Republicans have the edge in the executive branch, the Democrats the legislative branch. Both parties bear responsibility. Sadly the politicians, along with much of the media, in their desire for power have succeeded in creating a partisan atmosphere in this country. People cry foul when it is the “other” party and look the other way when it is “their” party (e.g. deficits.) This leads to nothing more than intellectual dishonesty, shallowness, and ad hominem attacks. I love the internet, but it just facilitates this as people are able to feel secure and smug while flinging electronic insults and drivel from a distance.
I believe wacobloke’s point dealt with whether something was in the Constitution and if not then one shouldn’t be accepting the benefits.
I have been puzzled by those on SSA/Medicare, howling about socialism over health care reform. When I ask the question wacobloke did, the response I usually receive is something “I paid into both systems for years”. That really avoids the point. So what? How is that relevant to the discussion of SSA/Medicare/Health Care for all Americans? No, I would not call someone like that a freeloader, more like a schnorrer, because they believe the are entitled and others are not.
Enough Wacko which you have proved you are. Your obsession with my age on any topic points to the fact that you must not yet have reached the age of maturity. When and if you do I will be glad to discuss a topic with you. A priest told me a long time ago that those that had just converted needed to be locked in a closet for a year before being released onto the public, so as to not offend everybody they meet. Wacko you should follow that advice. see you in a year or two.
BT–
You really are an arrogant old fart. But I am an old fart, too. I don’t plan to meet you and discuss anything. What is a bit surprising that you would assume that either I would want to, or that you would be the one making the choice to do so is staggering in its arrogance (and inaccuracy).
Who elected you Queen of the May?
It is amazing (but consistent) that self-satisfied rightwing bullies don’t seem to be able to do anything other than call names, cry “you’re another” or pick up their toys and run home to Momma when their self-serving, self-ratified silliness and bile is questioned (or laughed at).
Boo-freakin’-hoo.
You fit the arrogant rightwing bully profile perfectly, whether you care to recognize it or not.
Your constant offerings of silliness and perpetual self-serving bile is way past it’s “use by” date. Please learn how to offer constructive comments for discussion (your age and self-proclaimed “maturity” seems to have not blessed you with those useful qualities), or expect to continue to be laughed at.
And… are you on Social security or Medicare?
Okay, Old BT and Wacobloke–as fascinating as this discussion may be, can you guys please get back to the issues at hand, and stop pummeling each other? You’re neither going to agree with each other nor persuade each other. That said, BT, wacobloke does have a point–you HAVE consistently refused to answer the question–one which I think is germane to the whole discussion about government and its proper role.
I agree Ed. I am not the one changeing the subject it you look at the record it is Wacko who is and is obseset with my age. I think he wants to date me. And for his worry over social security, he should worry more over what the federal government is payin out in tax free dollars to immagrants:
Did you know that the federal government provides a “refugee” in this country with a monthly “stipend” of $1,890, plus $580 a month in “Social Assistance?” That’s $2,470 a month, tax-free. That is far more than I get in social security. Add to that for each kid they have they get $1500 more a month tax free. NOW there is something to grip about.
Bt,
Do you EVER fact check the drivel you get sent? It takes about 10 minutes:
http://www.factcheck.org/2009/04/social-security-for-immigrants-and-refugees/
Do us all a favor and don’t pass these outrageous myths on to those outside your close knit group of folks who believe everything that is sent to you no matter whether it makes any sense or not.
I actually found this identical claim on a web site in Australia! It’s an international joke.
Thank you, Jerry. I was about to post the same thing myself. Folks, it’s easy to check out those alarming tales that flow around the internet. Do yourselves a favor. Go to Factcheck.org and Snopes.com before you pass along any internet rumors.
Here is a fact for you I have seen for myself and have a witness where, welfare mom and daughter had together six children lived in public houseing and were clearing almost $5000/ month from the state. These were residents not illegals. No fathers present although there were several some of the youngest could not speak words and they were over the age of five. We were there because my wife was a tutor and was called on to see about helping one that was 8 years old. She suggested that the start by eating better, and showed them how to budget and buy better food instead of potatoe chips and candy and fried chicken so that they could afford to eat better, dress better and afford the tutoring. They listened and toke some of her advise but did not get the tutoring for thier child who was in real need , nor help for the younger ones that were almost vegs. So YES it is happening. close your eyes and shut your mouth and all will be well. The problem is still there and growing this is just one of many that I could relate That I saw myself not hearsay. Go back to Dreamland if you want.
Why do you think anyone else is in dreamland—or, do you think that everyone else but you are in dreamland? You have no idea who we (other posters who recognize and note that you are a regular spreader of crock, bile and resentment) are, whhat we fo for livings, or what things and activities we may support?
I suspect that you won’t “get” this, but I have never seen a poster on any thread I follow who is more prone to lash out at the unknown, undefined (but hated) “other”. Makes one proud to be the head of a class, I suppose.
In that , you seem to be the classic tool (or target) of the 30-odd year (and on-going) US Republican party “Southern Strategy”, which started out preying on US Southerners fear and loathing of black folks, but has morphed at various times to cover whatever “hate group du jour” would get folks stirred up via preying on ignorant hate and resentment–”feminists”, women in general, gays, “liberals” etc., and, of course, the most recent:”illegals”.
If there are, in fact, any others out there who you believe are not in dreamland, please give us their names so we can inquire of them the secret.
And…are you freeloadin’ on Medicare?
LOL Bt, you’re like a honey bee zooming from one flower to the next. Somehow, stating that you witnessed something by yourself just doesn’t make it so.
We start out with a national security issue, bad guys out to get us while we are holding on to a jar of K-Y jelly and now we are on to bashing welfare moms clearing $60,000 year. You are a kick, even if you are a very misinformed fellow. I just find it so very hard to believe that there really is a person that believes every urban myth there ever was,
I find it hard to believe that this group is so narrow minded and has thier heads so far up each others , you do not believe any bad thing that anybody says about anything/ , All is wonderful in your world. You must still be on the drugs you were on in high school. So have a nice day , you are not worth the time to type this message. I feel sorry for you and this country.
Adios Amigo,
You’re right, don’t waste any of your time feeling sorry for me. However, you are wrong in stating that I don’t believe there are bad things going on. I have talked about the messed up health care system we have. I’ve talked about our kids dying in Iraq and Afghanistan. I’ve talked about our messed up immigration policy. I’ve talked about gun violence in this country. I’ve talked about quite a few bad things. You really just aren’t “listening”.
Jerry–
Has it ever struck you that–among other curious things–folks who are now “retirement age” (and therefore able to free load on medicare, etc.) and who decry the “current condition” or profess to fear for our “country” because of the attitude of, or alleged behaviors of, “others” are perhaps engaging in the most insidious aspect and trait of their–and, I readily admit, our” generation–the total lack of acceptance of any personal responsibility (and refusal to accept responsibility for) the “how and why” of whatever they are angry and panicked about came to be in the first place.
If there is something “wrong” with the current situation in or governance of our great country, it is, in fact, “them” who put it into, or left it to fester in, place.
I guess that happens when one is so taken in by the “hate and fear” of the “other” (and “they’re comin’ to get you”) propaganda machine that one can begin to believe that our very government is one of the dreaded”others”.
This is, in my opinion, the most malignant–and un-American–aspect of the “tea-party” and its constituent tea-bagger supporters. Funny (odd) how seldom that mindset and belief system is called out for what it is.
I really don’t believe it is a retirement age or “our” generation thing as much as a life experience thing. I read recently that one of the major issues we face today is the fact that people are no longer getting diverse opinions on just about everything. A lot of people are congregating only with like-minded folks and listening to only like-minded pundits. This is happening at both ends of the spectrum.
I have been very lucky to have traveled the entire country as well as overseas. I have lived in San Francisco and in the Bible Belt, in the deep South and in the West. Living overseas allows one to get a view of America from non-Americans. As a result, I’ve found that there are few things that are simple and that there are competing views on almost every subject. I have learned to seek out divergent views and then make up my own mind. It takes work and thinking, two things that a lot of people just don’t want to do these days.
I have to give OldBt credit for coming here but as I told him, he really doesn’t listen so I’m not sure that he is really getting much out of the conversation.