BCT Editorial – 7/26/06

This page was last updated on July 26, 2006.

We’re all targets; Editorial; Beaver County Times; July 26, 2006.

Below is a detailed critique of the subject editorial.

“It’s easy to ridicule the Department of Homeland Security’s list of potential terrorist targets in the United States as classic bureaucratic overkill. After all, who would attack a petting zoo in Huntsville, Ala., or the Apple and Pork Festival in Clinton, Ill.?

“Those were just two of the sites included in DHS’s massive National Asset Database of potential targets.

“In some ways, the list is absurd. The New York Times reported the database has Indiana with 8,591 potential terrorist targets, while New York has 5,687 and California 3,212.

“Even people at sites on the list questioned their inclusion. ‘I don’t know where they get their information,’ the manager of the Sweetwater Flea Market, which is 50 miles from Knoxville, Tenn., told the paper. ‘We are talking about a flea market here.’”

[RWC] Gee, a government list that affects the handing out of tax dollars has some bum entries. Who would have guessed?

“But while the list may seem excessively absurd, the threat of terrorism is not. What Americans must understand is that the purpose of terrorism is to destroy our sense of safety and security, to create uncertainty and to promote fear.

“When it comes to terrorism, we’re all potential targets - anywhere, any place, any time.”

[RWC] How many editorials have we read claiming that President Bush was merely using terrorism as a “scare tactic” for political gain?

Here is a partial list since September 2004: “Scare tactics”, “Selling fear”, “Blowback”, “A dry well”, “Waking up”, “Scare tactic”

Come on, guys, make up your mind.