September 26, 1983

September 26, 1983, the day we almost died.

Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov duty was to observe the Russian satellite early warning network, and notify his superiors of any impending nuclear missile attack. Shortly after midnight, the system recorded a U.S. missile launch.

And then another, and yet another. Five launches, at a time when Russian and U.S. relations had deteriorated to a dramatic low. The Russians had, a few days previously, shot down a Korean civilian airliner, and tensions were extremely high.

Does Petrov assume that the satellite system is correct? Or is the system malfunctioning? The Soviet radar won't pick up the missiles until they come over the horizon -- far too late to launch any retaliation, but the satellite were known to be somewhat unreliable.

The minutes passed, and Soviet radar did not pick up incoming missiles. The satellite systems had malfunctioned.

A cool hand at the trigger saved you, and me.

Mohammed Atta

Why does Mohammed Atta's name appear as a graduate of the International Officer's School at Maxwell AFB?

Other terrorists' names also appear on similar lists, but we only have a general denial. 'Officials stressed that the name matches may not necessarily mean the students were the hijackers because of discrepancies in ages in other personal data.'

Some of the name matches? May not necessarily? The astute reader will observe that there's no specific denial of Mohammed Atta. If those students were not the hijackers, then there's another "Mohammed Atta" who is still alive and was not involved in the World Trade Center attack.

Clinton's Iraq Policy

"The United States looks forward to a democratically supported regime that would permit us to enter into a dialogue leading to the reintegration of Iraq into normal international life."

That statement was made by President Clinton in 1998 as he signed the Iraq Liberation Act. This act placed the U.S. firmly in support of Iraqi resistance. 98 million dollars of support.

The Iraq Liberation Act was drafted by Randy Scheunemann, a man with ties to Lockheed Martin, who is currently a member of the Project for a New American Century.

The Senate passed the act unanimously. The House passed it 360-38.

Clinton was tactful enough to recognize the authority of the U.N., but he did not rule out the use of military force. Technically speaking, President Bush is enthusiastically carrying out the wishes of his direct predecessor, Bill Clinton.

There is, of course, much more to the story, but it is interesting how little things really change in American politics.

Foreign Suspects

One very interesting part of the U.S. Constitution, a loophole if you will, involves simple geography. The power of the Constitution stops at the border. It has no authority outside of the United States.

All those civil rights protected by the Constitution and its amendments are not protected in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay. Therefore, the U.S. government has the legal authority to do whatever it wants to people. Secret trials, barring suspects from their own secret trials, torture, imprisonment without trial, these are all legal under U.S. law, because U.S. law doesn't apply outside the U.S.. Technically speaking, you could transport a U.S. citizen to another country and torture her to your heart's delight.

The Constitution assumes a basic morality as codified in the Common Law, a morality you and I learn from religion. Without religion, and without the Common Law, the Constitution is effectively useless.

The Constitution is completely useless if it is not enforced, and it is the responsibility of the "People of the United States" to enforce it.

Profiling for Terrorists

In this War On Terror, we profile against young Arab or Muslim-appearing men. This makes sense, doesn't it?

"Suggesting that a young single woman flying out of Sweden with a round-the-world ticket is equally as likely to hijack/destroy the plane as a group of young single "middle eastern" men with one-way tickets flyng out of Saudi Arabia, is letting your idealistic bleeding-heart-leftist-stupidity get in the way of common sense."

On the surface, this argument, this is sound logic. NMerriam has this to say on the topic, "No, you're letting your own shortsightedness miss the lessons of history. Terrorists don't have to win any sort of statistical battle, so it doesn't matter who is most likely or least likely to be a terrorist, it only matters who IS a terrorist. And terrorists have shown historically that they will find and use specifically those people who can circumvent the profiling methods you think are so useful.

"They don't have to find a million white Swedish pregnant women to join their cult, they only have to find one. It doesn't matter if there were a million young arab men willing to do the mission and only one white girl -- she's the one who will be successful. Just look at the IRA, they made a game out of circumventing attempts at profiling and were quite successful at it. Similar examples can be found in Iraq, Vietnam, WWII, etc, etc.

"Be sure to keep your nightlight on, the world is a scary place."