Gyroscope

The same subject continued

A day after I posted the previous comment on the boarder patrol, this news item caught my eye in the May 16th Salt Lake City Standard Examiner

The face and fingerprint-matching technology that has been touted over the past decade as a sophisticated new way to stop terrorists and illegal immigrants from entering the country through Mexico has one major drawback: U.S. boarder inspectors almost never use it.

Some of it hasn’t been installed, using it would “create too big a backup at the border,” and besides what fun is this compared to tracking down people who used LSD 25 years ago? I mean, drugs are a threat, right?

Posted by John Nordin at 08:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Andrew Feldmar is a Vancouver psychotherapist. In 1981 he used LSD. In 2001 he wrote about it. So, in 2005 he was denied entry to the US because he had admitted using drugs. Because, you see, we don’t allow people who use drugs to enter the US. (Reported by the NY Times, May 14, 2007, p. A12. You can also read about it here

Once again, the mind boggles. Mr. Feldmar has never been convicted for using drugs, the U.S. Border Patrol, evidently with a lot of time on its hands, ran a Goggle search (apparently) and discovered this fact.

And this exclusion was not an accident – it is policy that any use of drugs, no matter how long ago, no matter if no criminal action was taken – gets you banned from the US.

In what way is this man a threat to the US? Just how is it that people never convicted in a court can be regarded as felons?

Some questions come to mind. Has any Hollywood star been banned from entering Canada, or any Canadian actor banned from the US? Not of course, to suggest that they might have used drugs. Well, we did keep Cat Stevens out, but that was because he converted to Islam and therefore must have become a terrorist.

And what about writing in support of Mr. Feldmar – would that be “aiding and abetting”, or perhaps “conspiracy to commit” the same things that got him banned?

What about murders who have served their time? I couldn’t quickly lay hands on any documents that provide the rules for what can get you banned from the US. But it seems unlikely that we prohibit everyone with a felony conviction from entering.

Once again we spend resources on things that are not problems and therefore have no money to stop the real problems.

We generally have pretty low standards for our boarder patrol, one of the least intelligent departments of our government, but this seems a new low.

Posted by John Nordin at 06:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tomas Friedman, well known for his trademark predictions that the “next six months will be crucial” in Iraq (predictions he made for years) and for his apparently composing books on global trends based on conversations with a single taxi driver in some foreign country has another fine example of reasoning in his column of May 11th.

He’s writing about Hezbollah and says:

On July 12, 2006, Hezbollah fighters directed by Nasrallah abducted two Israeli soldiers and killed eight others in an unprovoked attack across the Lebanon0Israel boardre, on the pretext of seeking a prisoner exchange.

Let me know if any of the words I’m using are too big.

Posted by John Nordin at 05:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As some are finally beginning to see, George Bush does indeed have a plan to end his involvement in the Iraq war: he’s going to let his successor deal with it.

You can see that in the constantly vague pronouncements about an ever shifting objective for ending the war: “victory” (over what? who will surrender?) “staying the course” (what is the course?) and so on. Objectives that have no measurable component other than the useful quality of always being in the future.

But the clearest evidence for the stalling tactic is that now the “surge” is being spun out to last longer and longer. It was supposed to be over by summer, remember? Well, it turns out it hasn’t even really begun yet. Oh no, it will be months until we can begin to fairly assess how it works. Months that take us closer to the time bell running out the current administration.

The administration and its water-carriers have been effective in coming up with reasons for why criticism of the war is out of bounds. The cry of “treason” and of “defeat-o-crats” have been used, but now, with the surge, they have a whole new set of excuses. To criticize them now is “premature” – no, the four years of disaster are but prelude, this time its really going to work and you have to be quiet until it does. And of course, the surge has ‘changed everything’ so all the reasons and arguments you had about Iraq last year have to be discarded else you be accused of being out of date.

But lets call this strategy what it is: spineless, gutless, self-obsessed morally degenerate opportunism that thinks it better that a few hundred young American men and women and a few thousand Iraqi’s die than to have to face up to ending the war. In order to cling to temporary political survival, the Republicans think it just fine to go on blowing up a nation. There are few words equal to describing this immorality.

Bush and his minions have it figured out: a Democrat takes over in 2008, ends the war. In the short run, more chaos. Fellow travelers in the press suddenly take an interest in Iraq civilian casualties, a topic they have not much noted in the last four years. Many sad stories of abandoned Iraqi army units that were, amazingly, just on the verge of becoming effective. Republicans jump up and down yelling “cut and run.” Pundit hacks write gravely of the Democratic inability to possess the needed tough-mindedness to handle the adult decisions of national security.

And of course, all that aided and abetted by the ongoing inability of Democrats to formulate a coherent argument and an effective media campaign.

In other words, as bankrupt as the Bush strategy is for Iraq, it just might work for the Republicans.

Posted by John Nordin at 06:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)