Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Just Makin' Shit Up

Wow, these guys just aren't thinking this through at all. Let me try to get this straight; we can't house Guantanamo prisoners in the United States because somehow a handful of their sympathizers—keep in mind that the 240 or so prisoners at Guantanamo are from various far-flung countries and therefore won't have a single group trying to spring them from jail; also there's no reason to house them all in the same place—are going to coordinate attack a maximum security prison, and have it work? Has this happened in the last half century, even with domestic prisoners? If they manage to bust open the prison without killing the prisoners, what happens next? The National Guard will fail to clamp down on the situation? A bunch of guys with no government issued ID and minimal English skills are going to melt into the civilian population of southern Illinois or rural Colorado?

If you tried to pitch this plot to Jerry Bruckheimer, he'd laugh you out of the room, saying the audience wouldn't believe it. But this is politics, so for some reason we have to treat this bed-wetting fantasy as a reasonable position.

Update: Time to find FBI Directer Robert Mueller a lifeboat.

1 comment:

Christopher M. Park said...

Hey, it's all relative. I'm with you -- this is craziness -- but in the article at least the guy did say that it was MORE likely for terrorists to take that sort of action compared to rapists/murderers. Given that most rapists/murderers seem to work alone or in fairly small gangs, I'm inclined to agree that terrorists are MORE likely to try to bust out their fellows.

After all, a 0.000001% chance is larger than a 0.000000001% chance. That's the whole strategy with the best fear-mongering, isn't it? Say something that sounds scary, that is technically true (but incredibly misleading and/or irrelevant), and then let the rest of the media turn that into headline-friendly falsehoods.

There was a funny (and sad) comic about this same sort of thing just the other day on PHD Comics: http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1174