Safer Than On September 11

September 24 2004
Counterbias.com
Marc Krug

With all the feigned sincerity he can possibly muster, George Bush steadfastly looks into the crowd’s eager eyes or the camera’s polished lens. He then speaks the same fiction that he has spoken so many times before. 

“America is safer now than it was on September 11.”

Now, if you’re feeling charitable, you credit this latest fiction to Bush’s testing an old axiom of Larry Speakes, Reagan’s deputy press secretary. According to Speakes, “Say something five times and it becomes true.”

But if you’re not feeling charitable, you decide that Bush is making this claim only to exploit your basic sense of fear. And it is only by fear that Bush can sell himself to the American public.

Bush dares not go into detail about the war in Iraq, which is essentially being lost. Since the transfer of sovereignty, American soldiers have died there at a faster rate; larger segments of territory have fallen into insurgents’ hands; and predictions of civil war have become a living, breathing reality.

Nor can he safely speak of the real war on terror. Our primary opponent in that war, Osama bin Laden, whom Bush once wanted “dead or alive,” has so far escaped capture. In fact, he seems to have dropped from sight, both literally and figuratively.

Regardless, his forces have not dwindled: more than 18,000 al-Qaeda-trained militants now operate in 60 countries, according to the International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS).

In truth, al-Qaeda and its brethren are more capable of launching terrorist attacks today against America than they were on that September morning.

All of this leads us back to the original claim that America is safer now than it was on September 11. While qualifying as useful propaganda, that claim is spurious: America is not safer. In many ways, it is more vulnerable than ever.

This vulnerability stems primarily from our disastrous war in Iraq. Invading Iraq has convinced many Muslims that we are indeed enemies of Islam and worthy of their enmity. The war has also drained us of several essential resources: money, troops, the support of our allies, and the credibility and respect we once enjoyed in this world.

This vulnerability also stems from a wealth of unenlightened policies, a substantial failure to deliver on promises, and a predilection to place corporate interests ahead of individual welfare.

One of Bush’s more unenlightened and singularly ineffectual policies is the “Color-Coded Homeland Security Advisory System,” that multi-colored index to terrorist danger we have all come to know and ignore. Perhaps, we ignore it because elevations in security level are never accompanied by any substantive supporting evidence.

Nor are they ever accompanied by any specific recommendations as to what we should be doing — other than the overwhelmingly vacuous: “Live your lives as you would normally; travel and continue to enjoy America.” (Tom Ridge, head of the Department of Homeland Security, spoken before the Memorial Day holiday of 2004). Of course, there was that solemnly ambiguous admonition last year to stock up on duct tape.

Also, these elevations are quite expensive. For example, raising the alert status from yellow to orange costs the federal government $1 billion per week. It also costs cities $70 million per week, according to the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

And then there is the justifiable suspicion that such elevations are often politically motivated. Inevitably, you reach the conclusion that the government could make better use of the money it spends on domestic security.

Nevertheless, not all domestic security activities have been so singularly lacking in merit. In areas such as air travel, definite improvements have been made. Even so, these improvements are far from sufficient.

At 440 commercial airports, passenger and baggage screening has been federalized. Nevertheless, many airports were supposed to have been given far more sophisticated security devices than they got. And many more airports were supposed to have been included in the program that were not.

Bush claimed there wasn’t enough money to keep all his promises on airport security. But the money certainly wasn’t going into the screeners’ paychecks: they are paid half of what the average government employee makes.

Forbidden from joining a union by Bush himself, these screeners “have experienced an unacceptable level of turmoil and turnover,” according to The Congressional Quarterly. Furthermore, they receive only the slightest of background checks or none at all. Nor do they usually receive the required 3 and ½ hours of training per week — more often, it’s 3 and ½ hours per month.

Private airline employees have also been affected by government actions. As they read the passenger list for each flight, they have been instructed not to check names against the Federal government’s incomplete, yet integrated, terrorist list. This prohibition comes from the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), which is part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

Instead, many of these employees use the similarly incomplete and often highly inaccurate “no-fly” list, which until recently contained the name of that well-known terrorist, Ted Kennedy.

What Senator Kennedy probably did not know was that once the mistake had been rectified and he got his flight, he was likely traveling on a plane carrying thousands of pounds of cargo, only five percent of which had been screened. This policy continues to be upheld, despite the TSA’s belief that there’s a 65 percent likelihood terrorists are planning to place explosives in commercial cargo.

As is the case with airborne cargo, only five percent of seaborne cargo is screened once it reaches our shores. And this policy continues to be upheld despite DHS’ belief that foreign terrorists might be shipping weapons to America.

The Coast Guard estimates it will cost $7.3 billion to secure America’s ports. So far, the Bush administration has come up with $441 million in grants. To save you from doing the math, that’s less than six percent of what is needed.

Next we come to the unprotected two million rail cars and 500 train stations that our nation uses daily. DHS has carefully studied the vulnerability of the U.S.’ 170,000 miles of railways. Unfortunately, it has yet to come up with a comprehensive strategy on how best to handle the security problems those railways present. Nor has it come up with any way to screen passengers.

What’s more worrisome is that cargo is not screened either, a frightening proposition when you consider that 83 million tons of hazardous materials travel by rail each year. This figure comes also from the TSA.

Even with so much at stake, DHS follows the pro-business bias of George Bush: it relies on voluntary corporate cooperation to handle railway emergencies. Consequently, it becomes the railway’s — and not the government’s — responsibility to re-route and safeguard dangerous cargo whenever necessary.

This voluntary approach to railroad safety is particularly ill-advised. The DHS knows full well that large segments of the railway system are vulnerable to sabotage.

They also know that local officials and railway executives could not respond to emergencies adequately and with sufficient speed, particularly if the cargo were explosive chemicals.

But the transporting of chemicals is not the only danger these substances present. In the areas surrounding America’s 66,000 chemical plants, the resident population must live constantly with the fear of what might happen if any of these plants ever became a terrorist target.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, America has 123 facilities where a chemical release could harm more than one million people. And according to the General Accounting Office, another 750 facilities handle chemicals whose release could endanger over 100,000 people.

Once again, Bush wants corporate action, not government regulation, to protect people against these chemical hazards. Even now, no federal law obligates chemical plants to assess vulnerabilities or to take precautionary measures that might prevent release of these chemicals, whether from catastrophic failure or terrorist attack.

Not surprisingly, the DHS does not believe that voluntary regulations and assessments are all that is needed in this case either. Nor do they consider it sufficient protection to secure a chemical facility “with only a padlock and a chain.”

But despite all its apparent perils, the chemical industry does not represent the greatest danger to America. The nuclear power industry does.

In this industry, spent nuclear fuel constitutes the greatest hazard, since it is often stored in relatively modest containers. The reactors, on the other hand, are housed in steel vessels that are surrounded by heavy structures and containment buildings.

In addition, spent fuel contains some of the largest concentrations of radioactivity to be found on Earth. So should any of this fuel leak — either by accident or from terrorist attack — there could be a fire that might contaminate an area several times the size of Chernobyl.

To make matters worse, the forty thousand tons of this spent nuclear fuel currently stored across America are quite vulnerable to theft, according to the General Accounting Office.

Unlike the chemical industry, the nuclear power industry is at least regulated — in this case by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). But this governmental control is being expertly circumvented by the Bush administration.

In a clear indication of Bush’s pro-business bias, the government recently gave the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) the right to choose any firm it wanted to evaluate security at nuclear power plants. By the merest of coincidences, NEI just happens to be the main lobbying group for America’s nuclear power industry.

Last August, the NEI chose the Wackenhut Corporation to evaluate security. With the NEI’s blessing, Wackenhut would train and manage the teams that stage simulated “terrorist attacks” at nuclear plants — a strategy that has already been used to evaluate security.

Unfortunately, Wackenhut was not the wisest of all possible choices. First, Wackenhut had already been caught cheating in one of these “terrorist attacks” at a Tennessee plant earlier this year. Secondly, it would be largely evaluating itself; as the largest security company of its type, it already guards 31 of America’s 64 nuclear plants.

Many people quite legitimately see this NEI-Wackenhut situation as one riddled with multiple conflicts of interest. Others consider it just plain unethical.

In the last three years, the Bush administration has become more unethical, unenlightened, and obsessed with serving the needs of corporate America. And the terrorist movement has grown more powerful, widespread, and substantial in number.

Consequently, America is not as safe as it was on 9/11. Nor can it ever be that safe again, unless one of these two — terrorism or the Bush administration — is defeated or removed from power.  

Many, including the current Army Chief of Staff, Gen. Peter Schoomaker, believe that terrorism will not be defeated in our lifetime. So the quickest, easiest, most feasible way we might regain the greater safety America had on 9/11 is to vote Bush out of the White House.

And doing that would not constitute a hardship for any of us.