Gen. Hayden, Show us the Ponies

[Guest guest]

Fri, 19 May 2006 17:19:06 -0400 (EDT)

A

Gen. Hayden, Show us the Ponies

 

 

 

 

With All This Horseshit, Gen. Hayden, Show us the Ponies

Larry Beinhart for BuzzFlash

 

http://www.buzzflash.com/contributors/06/05/con06204.html

 

 

May 19, 2006

 

With All This Horseshit

 

A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION

by Larry Beinhart, author of The Librarian, Wag the Dog, and Fog Facts

 

" If someone is calling al Qaeda, we want to know about it. "

 

Yes, sir, you bet. Alright, General Hayden, you've been in charge of

finding out if anyone is calling al Qaeda. You've spent hundreds of

millions, maybe billions. You've built a data base to see if anyone is

calling anyone who calls in a pattern that an al Qaeda member would

call if he were making calls. More gargantuan sums of money, time and

effort.

 

Line `em up and show us the results. Let's have the perp walk of all

the al Qaedas, all the al Qaeda caller uppers you've located,

investigated, caught, apprehended and brought to trial! With all this

horseshit there must be a whole herd of ponies.

 

Get on the stand and regale with tales of success. Of plots thwarted.

Of desperate measures intercepted. Of terrorists captured or killed.

 

Tell us how you've located Osama bin Laden.

 

It's been over four and a half years. Unlimited budget. Unlimited

military might. No visible moral constraints. Tell us how you've

tracked him down, hung him high and busted up his ring!

 

Don't tell merely that there have been no terrorists incidents since

9/11. It's a lot tougher action to pull off since then, with every eye

of every American, with all the airlines and airports and security

companies, the local and state police, immigration and customs, all on

alert. We don't have to hear about all kinds of secret stuff you did

to stop the next 9/11.

 

Let's not bother with that namby-pampy wimpy liberal stuff about civil

rights, the constitution and no one being above the law not even you

and the president you rode in on. You're argument is you gotta do what

it takes and the ends justify the means and it is security that makes

us safe to enjoy whichever liberties we have left that we would like

to enjoy in moderation.

 

So, let's take it on your terms. We see the horseshit. Show us the ponies.

 

Or admit that you have failed. Admit that all this effort and show and

money, has bought us nought. Let us count the terrorists caught or

interdicted. Let us see that it was only through your less than legal

programs that we got them.

 

It can't be that your success is just too secret to share. I expect

that it's your failures that hide behind the coy veil of national

security.

 

A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION

 

Larry Beinhart is the author of Wag the Dog, The Librarian, available

at nationbooks.org, and Fog Facts: Searching for Truth in the Land of

Spin, available from BuzzFlash.com.