CBS News Sunday Morning Contributor Nancy Giles
on the thwarted airline terror attack

 

From August 13, 2006

 

Well thank goodness for Scotland Yard and the people of Great Britain because I feel more protected by them than the agencies here at home.  The terrifying thing to me is how even terror has become so politicized and manipulated that even though as I read about the liquid explosives and the plan to use them to blow up international flights and the arrests made and the other suspects still at large, I'm scared reading this thinking they're going to find a way to infiltrate breast milk.

 

Even after all that, I have to say my next thought was "Is the US playing the treat level card?"  What's really going on that the administration wants to distract us from?  What's being shoved to the back pages so we can all focus on this and be terrified all over again?

 

Is it that five years after September 11th Osama Bin Laden still hasn't been caught?  Or should we be terrified and not think of our own Department of Homeland Security?  A bloated incompetent agency that spent precious time and tax dollars deducing that targets around the country like Old McDonald's Petting Zoo and something called Beanfest and over 8,000 locations in the state of Indiana alone were under protected while slashing the budgets of cities with legitimate targets like New York City and Washington, DC.  This idiotic agency should be dismantled immediately. 

 

Or would it be better to be terrified and not deal with the fact that Iraq is a mess?  We are stuck in a violent and volatile Civil War and our brave troops are being used as referees.  We've got to bring them home.  If Bush, Chaney and Rumsfeld consider that to be a cut and run strategy let them buy their own body armor and go over there themselves.  This war was a mistake then, a disaster now and it's time to exit.

 

We're living in dangerous times, it's true but it seems like everything can be used to terrify people and further someone's agenda.  When you are terrified, you can't think straight.  It's important to pay attention to the bigger picture and that's why a foiled terrorist plot gives me so little comfort.

 

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