howard politicizes our security, page-5

chuck,
The "post911 monster" you whine about was created in response to multiple extraordinary acts of savage terrorism aimed at killing as many innocent civillians, just going about their daily business, as possible in the most horrifying way the terrorists could think of while also achieving the maximum damage to the basic infrastructure and economic framework of the western world.

These unprecedented and barbaric acts of destructive terrorism, purposely targetting civilians, followed a declaration of war several years before by the terrorists and a series of escalating terror attacks in different parts of the world.

A dedicated effort by these terrorist groups to expand recruitment of like minded and obtain financing to expand their training operations and obtain more effective weaponry had been going on for a number of years prior to that declaration or war and continued after that declaration.

Previous succesful terrorist attacks met with a muted and essentially a non-response encouraging the terrorists to aim for larger and larger attacks with more innocent civillians killed or maimed, and with higher value infrastructure targets destroyed.

Some parts of the western world eventually realised that they had to respond to this escalating series of attacks and so set out to do so using multiple operational elements of the state, the police, the intelligence services and the military. These multiple operational elements of the state cooperate by appropriate chains of communications and command with similar forces of other co-operating countries.

The military and intellegence services were important to involve fully since after all:
- the terrorists operated transnationally and could slip in and out of different legal systems and between multiple legal jurisdictions quite easily,
- the terrorist basic structure was military in style, their training methods, weaponry and the skill-sets of the terrorists were military or based on extensive battle-field experience,
- no civilian police force was equipped with the range and array of skils/ability/equipment to meet the various threat-matrices that the terrorists presented from biological warfare attacks, to nerve/poison gas attacks, to dirty bomb attacks, to bomb attacks, to jetliner hijacks etc etc.

I see this military-style posture involving all operation and intelligence gathering organs of the state operating against the common enemy of the terrorists as essential for the safety and survival of our families and our communities.

The terrorists have declared war against our western communities, and have planned and successfully carried our terrorist attacks and state openly that they intend to carry out further and more destructive terrorist attacks if they have the opportunity or can find any weakness they can exploit.

Recent attacks in the UK show us that the suicidal terrorist ideology haven infected diverse groups of people that would previously have been elminated by virtue of their education, training and even an oath to save lives, that of medical doctors.

Now, I care enough about my family and my fellow citizens to take the point of view that if some person who, by their own actions, become "persons of interest" in investigations of potential terror links by our police or intellegence agency, then I expect that these polices/intellegence agencies will pursue all leads and investigations completely and ethusiastically and seek to determine the truth of the situation and the danger that "person of interest" presents to the wider community.

I would hope that this "person of interest" also would do his best to cooperate completely with the police/intellegence agency in all matters to ensure that they can do their job completely, and so this "person of interest" is cleared completely of the "person of interest" status.

If this "person of interest" doesnt cooperate fully with the police/intelligence agencies, or raises enough suspicion that the police/intelligence agency assess that further investigation is necessary and warranted, then I see that is the fault of the "person of interest", and not the fault of our police/intelligence agency personel doing their best job to protect us all and doing so in a difficult and dangerous environment.

If you want to blame someone for what you call the "post 911 monster", blame the terrorists.

Dont blame the brave men and women of our police/intelligence/military/associated services who are working day and night, putting their own lives in danger, to protect you, your family and your fellow citizens from terrorist attack and the horrifying cosequences.