Homeland (In)Security

And this is during a heightened alert condition (more here).

For the record, I'm damn glad they didn't shoot the pilot out of the sky. Unless I'm mistaken, it sounds like he was confused, and did what most people would do in such a situation--he found a landmark and tried to go from there. Under "normal" circumstances, it's likely he'd be given a warning and a suggestion that he take more flying lessons, particularly focusing on airborne navigation.

Under "Condition Orange," though, the sentence came mighty close to what the Resident calls "the ultimate penalty." And if that had happened? I'm guessing there would have been a cursory apology, and a stern warning to all that confusion is no excuse in a time of "war," although this is the first "war" I recall where few people seem to give a rat's ass about the day-to-day fighting, unless you count the "War on Drugs," where the casualities are less often killed, but more often ruined with the stigma of a prison sentence, confiscation of property, inability to file for student financial aid, etc. etc. etc.--Unless your name happens to be Al Gore, Jr., or Noelle Bush, as Al Giordano so ably notes.

But I digress. My point--that the war on terror already is generating conditions where an otherwise law abiding citizen is damn near shot out of the sky for making a mistake--does not detract from anything I noted below. Instead, we see an over-reaction to a simple mistake, AND a situation involving a drunk guy STEALING A BUS, which is a strong indication that general security measures are not adequate. A comprehensive force of well trained security personnel would surely have been able to prevent a bus theft, while additional measures to protect the skies in the wake of 9/11 could easily have prevented the pilot's mistake. And, by additional measures, I mean a bit more than restricting the airspace, or sending a helicopter gunship up against a Cessna.

Instead, though, we keep seeing weirder and weirder things every day--which, like the above, aren't part of the Bush re-election strategy, but certainly help spin things in a way that works for them. For more on that digression, check this article out. Short version: look for the terror code to wax and wane over the next eleven months, while various Operation ThunderStrikes "cripple" the opposition in Iraq and Afghanistan (note: they've been "crippled" so many times that you'd think they either have dozens of limbs, or are capable of regeneration), and expect the head of Osama on a platter sometime in October. OK, maybe not on a platter--but I'd give even money on it being stuck to a pike and paraded around the Tribal Belt.

Of course, by that time, the Al Qaeda "leadership" will have already morphed into its post-bin Laden structure. So we'll be right back to square one...