[Sherman Logan]

I find myself wondering: Is this just another spasm of periodic hysteria, like Prohibition, the Sixties, and a Commie Under Every Bed? Or is it calculated political programming?

Or could it perhaps be sincere but inept attempts to guard against a genuine threat? Nah.

[LaMudBug]

"The whole business looks remarkably like malign vaudeville, like mummery intended to accomplish two things. The first is to persuade the foolish that the nation is At War. Actually only the president is at war. The second, and I would like to be wrong about this, is to train the public to obedience. The formula is simple: Keep’em scared and you can do anything. It works. Americans are rapidly becoming accustomed to Soviet-style surveillance, to the state’s power to search and spy without restraint, to being barked at and ordered about by low-level federal employees. People deserve what they tolerate"

For some reason, this last paragraph made me think of the book "1984".....

[gcruse]

"Terroristically, killing two hundred people in the airport is as good as dropping an airliner.'

Fred is overly smug in his assertions. The value of a target is of concern to terrorists. Blowing up people in an airport is nowhere near the symbolic victory of flying a fully-fueled, passenger-filled aircraft into, say, the CIA Langley complex.

"People deserve what they tolerate."

People deserve the government they get...
...and the religion they put up with.