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Monday, Jul 26, 2004
More on Chapter 8: "The System Was Blinking Red"
| Tenet told us that in his world “the system was blinking red.” By late July, Tenet said, it could not “get any worse.”30 Not everyone was convinced. Some asked whether all these threats might just be deception. On June 30, the SEIB contained an article titled “Bin Ladin Threats Are Real.”Yet Hadley told Tenet in July that Deputy Secretary of Defense PaulWolfowitz questioned the reporting. Perhaps Bin Ladin was trying to study U.S. reactions. Tenet replied that he had already addressed the Defense Department’s questions on this point; the reporting was convincing. |
Studying our reactions, Dr. Paul?
| On August 3, the intelligence community issued an advisory concluding that the threat of impending al Qaeda attacks would likely continue indefinitely. Citing threats in the Arabian Peninsula, Jordan, Israel, and Europe, the advisory suggested that al Qaeda was lying in wait and searching for gaps in security before moving forward with the planned attacks. |
Yes, Dr. Paul, they sure as hell went to school on you and your cohorts in incompetence.
Free Speech Zones
While wandering the UT Austin campus one day circa 1980, I came across a plaque, dated from the late sixties, proclaiming that a particular area, just west of the tower, was a "Free Speech Zone."
I saw it as an historical artifact of a time when students could find more to protest than the clearly illogical configuration of the escalators in the Math and Sciences building. It harkened back to a time when students, en masse, raised their voices about serious national and international issues. Looking at it, I felt something similar to what I felt looking at the old North Church in Boston.
That sepia-toned nostalgia was quickly replaced by outrage. This little patch of pavement is the "Free Speech Zone"? What the fuck is that all about? I thought the whole country was a free speech zone. Hell, this is supposed to be a university. If the entire campus isn't a free speech zone, something is seriously wrong. Perhaps I should have railed about it in one of my occasional letters/op-eds in the Daily Texan. But I didn't.
Now this speech zoning concept seems to have caught up to the rest of the country. Anti-shrub speech is confined to areas that won't offend the shrub. People have been arrested for nothing more than anti-shrub statements on their clothing. The so-called Free Speech Zone at the Democratic convention in Boston is a maximum security detention center.
If this nonsense isn't challenged, it will quickly become established law. Patrick Henry didn't say, "Give me a patch of pavement surrounded by razor wire in which I can hold aloft a banner of some sort, or give me death."