RE: [DL] Hopes and Fears, and the new world we live in.

["Heivilin, Jim" <banzai@missouri.edu>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: J Tolle [mailto:jwtolle@altavista.com]
> Subject: [DL] Hopes and Fears, and the new world we live in.
> 
Feel free not to read this however it wasn't written with any bile or
hatred.  Also feel free to disagree and state your opinion provided you do
it in a rational tone.  Or feel free to ignore me and delete it. <g>

> These are stories of how I and my family are affected.  They 
> 
I'm glad you and all yours are okay.  I only found out yesterday that a
friend of mine had been working in the Pentagon.  She was hit by falling
debris and is hospitalized but is doing well.  

> My wife lived in Manhattan for 2 years.  Her friends are all 
> OK.  She can no longer watch the footage of the plane flying 
> into the second tower.  I makes he physically ill.
> 
<apologies in advance to anyone who studied journalism in school>
One of the thoughts I had yesterday was "how much of what we're hearing from
the media is actually based on facts and how much is just TV journalist
filling airtime with words?"  For example, if you take just the clip of the
plane flying into the tower you can say "A plane was crashed into the south
tower of the WTC".  That's true, we've seen it happen.  If, on the other
hand what is actually said is "A plane was crashed into the south tower of
the WTC and hundreds are dead."  Is it still true?  Granted it happened at
9am and most people who work there have just arrived at work.  Granted all
the people in the plane probably perished.  Granted a good number of the
people in the impact area were killed or injured.  But none of these
assumptions are known to be fact.  And since we have no clear source (at
least I can't find one) for just facts, we have know way of knowing which
statements they make are fact and which are assumption.  

Of course if you listen carefully to their wording you *might* be able to
filter successfully.  "A plane was crashed into the south tower of the WTC
and hundreds feared dead."  

> And I am only on the periphery of the carnage, looking in, 
> and wondering how and why this happened.  And I fear for the US.
> 
To be truthful and blunt as well, it was only a matter of time.  We as a
people have been entirely too insulated from tragedy of this sort.  I was in
the Army and stationed in Europe in the 80s.  Things were being blown up all
the time.  The level of security and the personal mindset necessary to cope
is doable but certainly not pleasant.  And on the one hand if we change the
way we live the terrorist win.  However if we don't we tempt them to do it
again.  

The sports news on the radio this morning reported that the Olympic
Committee has determined their security plan for the Salt Lake City Games
was inadequate.  However it wasn't two days ago.  Or rather it was but they
didn't really know or care enough.  

And to anyone whose flown in the past few years, have you ever looked at the
security arrangements?  I suspect it was *never* what it needed to be to
prevent a hijacking of any sort.  We had become complacent when hijacking
went out of vogue with terrorist after the 80s.  

> I fear that we will not react strongly enough, and there will 
> be others who try the same.  If we do not react strongly, 
> swiftly, and decisively the message that other may percieve 
> is that the US doen not have the resolve to take care of thier own.
> 
While President Bush has vowed to "hunt down and punish" those responsible,
I'd like to know (as a former soldier who still has friends on active duty)
how he plans to do that.  We do get a hint when he inferred that we would
attack any country know to harbor the responsible terrorists.  I personally,
have no desire to cause innocent deaths in those countries.  That's nearly
as great a tragedy as what happened here.  And in the end will only spawn
more violence.  

Detailed intelligence gathering followed by the moral courage to deploy the
necessary assets (probably NOT bombers) to exact retribution is what's
needed.  Sadly I fear it won't happen.  Most likely because intelligence
gathering with anything other than ELINT has become a lost art in our
Intelligence Community.  

> I fear that we will react too strongly, rounding up ALL 
> muslims, or ALL arabs in a knee-jerk reaction.  
>
When the Iranian Embassy was seized in the early 80s there was an incident
where I was going to school where a young man here studying from Iran was
grabbed by a number of his classmates and tied to a chair and beaten.  This
is not how we should handle this situation.  

> Jeff
> PS Give blood if you can.
> 
And if you can't (like me) give cash.  

Jim