Apparently the One Percent Doctrine doesn't apply to scanning cargo containers...one of the likeliest ways to smuggle a weapon into the country.

Why is it reasonable for ordinary Americans to have to take their shoes off and travel without toothpaste or bottled water on the preposterous theory that such rules make air travel safer, but we can't inspect even 5 or 10% of incoming ship cargo?

Glad Kevin isn't in charge of the economy.

This would unfairly impact companies with manufacturing plants overseas. The free market only thrives where the government doesn't go willy nilly tilting the playing field this way and that. How is a company supposed to know where to invest when road blocks like this can be thrown up with a few hundred votes and a signature? Besides, it's probably in violation of WTO agreements that we have ratified.

Ah, the unsubstantiated allegation of corruption.

Please, tell us

a) the identities of the shipping companies which have contributed to the Republican party

b) the amounts which they contributed, and dates

c) the magnitude and dates of shipping company donations to Democrats

d) evidence that the contributions to Republicans have materially affected policymaking.

Until you have done that, shut up with your pathetic, predictable, rabble-rousing formulaic bullshit, OK?

Why is it reasonable to mandate a timetable for 100% pass rates on standardized tests for schoolchildren, but not reasonable to mandate a timetable for 100% inspection of cargo containers headed for U.S. ports? Are Republicans really that far in thrall to the shipping industry?

Um, yes, or at least they're much more in thrall to any industry than they are to public schools. To the GOP, labeling public education a failure is good; inconveniencing businesses is bad. You know that.

Al:

Good point.

Damn, we shoulda just bought that oil from Saddam ...

Bob

When are people going to realize that this administration--that is, the people who run this country--don't give fuck about any principles beyond enriching themselves and their corporate backers. Every single piece of legislation and policy from this govenment directly, or indirectly, relates to this goal.
This administration, for example, is NOT pro-military; it's pro-military contractor. The sooner Americans realize this, the sooner we'll begin to take back our democracy.

am:

It's unsubstantiated allegations you're looking for -- try *this* one on for size:

Republicans have a vested political interest in not securing the homeland so much that the American public starts feeling substantially safer.

Bob

"The free market only thrives where the government doesn't go willy nilly tilting the playing field this way and that."

Willy-nilly? But stress positions and electrodes are okay on a whim. After all, we're a nation of laws, right? Right?

Yes.

Posted by: Al on September 15, 2006 at 12:38 AM

Shorter Al:

Profits are more important than American lives.

Please, tell us the identities of the shipping companies which have contributed to the Republican party, etc.

Got it.

http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.asp?Ind=M

The shipping industry gives seventy some percent of its contributions to Republicans.

Next.

It's obvious that the reason real security measures are not taken is because there is no actual threat except those they themselves do.

And the reason things removing shoes and going sans toiletries is done is to condition people to blind obedience and submission to authority to that they will march to a concentration camp without so much as a whimper like lambs to the slaughter.

Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

I'm all for 100% inspection (this could also help with small arms shipments and such), but why make the companies pick up the tab? Why can't this be subsidized? If this violates WTO rules, couldn't certain rules be made relating to national security with WTO suit mechanisms used to make sure that subsidies used for this actually go towards this?

$8 was just too much to pay for security :

Schumer said the Homeland Security Department had been "derelict" by not requiring 100 percent inspections, that the technology existed to do it and that the cost would be $8 per container, not much when considering that it cost $2,000 to ship a container from Hong Kong to the West Coast.

Republicans are incredibly weak on Homeland Security, and the War on Terror™.

Republicans refuse to inspect all airline cargo. They also refuse to secure rail, chemical, and nuclear plants.

Had enough? Vote Democratic

They're probably waiting for late October to institute a 100% inspection rule by executive order in response to specific threats exposed by listening to terrorist chatter with warantless wiretaps based on information derived from detainees under duress of CIA torture and cuban hurricanes.

Why is it reasonable to mandate a timetable for 100% pass rates on standardized tests for schoolchildren, but not reasonable to mandate a timetable for 100% inspection of cargo containers headed for U.S. ports?

Schoolchildren can't vote.

What Urk said:

Yes.

(I was wondering how far down I would have to go to get to the answer of what was supposed to be a rhetorical question.

Doesn't it seem like the Bush administration has made most rhetorical questions non-rhetorical?)

In theory, better port inspections will make us safer, However, in practice, poor port security hasn't led to any terrorist attack.

In practice, harsh questioning of captured terrorists has prevented terrorist attacks. Real-world experience has shown that harsh questioning methods are more valuable than enhanced port security.

The reason, I believe, is that there are too many ways to attack us. No matter how many potential targets we guard, there are always others. The only reliable way to prevent attacks is effective advance intelligence. Unfortunately, that requires wiretapping, harsh questioning, review of financial transactions, and other methods offensive to traditional civil liberties. That's reality.

What you really need is inspection prior to loading. Kind of a little late if the nuke blows as the container is lifted from the ship.

So how much would we trust the pre-loading inspection in another country?

Anyway, it's not an insuperable problem and certainly another thing about which the US could COOPERATE with the rest of the world.

On the same plane of irresponsibility are the nukes and nuclear material of the old soviet union. There's been no urgency about securing all that either!

Put the two together and I have to say I'm somewhat surprised we haven't had some kind of mass tragedy already.

And they'll still find a way to say it's Clinton's fault.

In practice, harsh questioning of captured terrorists has prevented terrorist attacks.

Cite?

Here's one:

Prisoner interrogations at Guantánamo Bay...have not prevented a single terrorist attack,according to a senior Pentagon intelligence officer who worked at the heart of the US war on terror.

Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Christino, who retired last June after 20 years in military intelligence, says that President George W Bush and US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld have 'wildly exaggerated' their intelligence value.

However, in practice, poor port security hasn't led to any terrorist attack.

Yet. Security experts believe it is critical to safeguard our ports. This comes from analyzing probablities. You are not taking into account the fact that terrorist attacks on U.S. are very rare.

The only reliable way to prevent attacks is effective advance intelligence. Unfortunately, that requires wiretapping

sure, with judicial oversight

harsh questioning

no proof this works, and most seasoned interrogators will tell you that it does not

review of financial transactions

no argument there

and other methods offensive to traditional civil liberties.

not necessarily; that just sounds like excuse-making for the illegal stuff that has already gone on.

...In practice, harsh questioning of captured terrorists has prevented terrorist attacks....

Posted by: ex-liberal on September 15, 2006 at 1:32 AM | PERMALINK

The never, ever liberal brings his stunning interlect to bear.

What we do know: containers have benn used to carry contraband from cocaine to computers, cigarettes to people.

What we do know: some terror attacks have been prevented by good intelligence work and some have not.

What we do know: security services ran around this country on wild goose chases because of information extracted by torture from a held terrorist.

What we don't know: that any acts of terrorism have been prevented because we tortured someone.

I bet you also think that every one held by the US has been an A-class certified terrorist and should never see the light of day, right. And, anyway, even if they weren't, we're better off making mistakes on the side of our safety. Screw their rights.

So don't err on the side of morality, or inspection. Better to pull a few fingernails. Woohoo! You know how to have a good time!

The reason for making companies pick up the tab is that it's part of the cost of doing business. There is a risk involved in bringing goods into the country, and it's right to charge the people buying those goods to cover the expense. The shipping companies, of course, will pass on their costs to their customers.

If you ask the government to subsidize it, they'll just make the deficit larger and make our children pay.

The inspection fees will make imported goods very slightly more expensive as compared to domestic goods. Some might see this as a feature, but it isn't going to be that large an effect.

And to follow what Joe Buck said, as an expense it will reduce the companies' taxable profit by a little bit per container, thus reducing the corporate taxes they (are supposed to) pay.

See? Everybody wins!

However, companies won't be the one paying for the additional costs, but it will be us. They will pass off the additional costs to the consumer. This will make imports more expensive while doing nothing to make domestically-produced products less expensive. This just makes the American consumer facing inflation and stagnant wages poorer. It could also lead to increased unemployment as inputs become more expensive, such as how Bush's steel tariffs led to the loss of American car manufacturing jobs. Subsidies or tax incentives could be used to keep the prices closer to market prices while paying for additional port security. We could probably also pay for it by cutting out some pork, such as anti-terrorism spending on mini golf courses in the rural Midwest and such.

Everyone is absolutely sure that the 61-37 vote margin was all Democrats on one side, and all Republicans on the other?

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One of the key motivations for unreasonable standards of accountability in schools is that teachers' unions are made up largely of Democratic voters and Republicans will stop at nothing to make Democrats and unions look bad. Kids not performing in school? Blame the mess on lazy union employees protecting guaranteed, taxpayer-funded jobs.

On the other hand, shipping companies are led by wealthy executives who donate to the GOP and support free trade and tax cuts. Holding them to lower standards, even when it means lives are at stake, encourages more campaign contributions that enable the GOP to remain in power. Scanning containers? Heck, that's an unfunded mandate imposed by Democrats on the private sector that will make America less competitive.

You see, all of American's problems are the Democrats' fault. We just don't get it.

Well I'll be a contrarian here because I actually wrote some stuff about port security. It's practically impossible to inspect 100 percent of cargo without massively slowing down commerce. The technology and resources simply aren't there for that kind of inspection at this time. A complicated algorithm is used to inspect the at riskiest cargo.

However, having said all that - and I haven't read the bill - what port operators should really be doing is inspecting cargo just offshore from their ports. Because if cargo with explosives or whatever is loaded onto the port but it explodes before it is inspected then that port becomes inoperaable setting off a chain reaction in terms of affecting other ports that damaged port deals with. In other words, won't make much of a difference in inspection if the explosive is detonated as soon as it gets there.

"In theory, better port inspections will make us safer, However, in practice, poor port security hasn't led to any terrorist attack."

Picture this commentor saying, on 9/10/01, that IN PRACTICE poor airport security hadn't lead to anyone hijacking airplanes and crashing them into skyscrapers. Picture this commentor later saying, with Condi Rice, that no one could imagine such a thing.

The time to think about preventing terrorist attacks is before they happen. The way to prevent terrorist attacks its to recognize about our weak points and protect them. But this commentor is having too much fun torturing hapless ignorant fools to think about that, although there is of course no reported instance of torture actually foiling a credible terrorist plot . . .

Well, just wait for it- "Nobody ever imagined that someone would ship a bomb in a container".

Actually, the containers themselves are a form of ecological arteriosclerosis. They pile up by the thousands and nobody can figure out what to do with them. They're not worth shipping back empty. It costs more to make a house from a container than to build it from scratch.

And what wonderful stuff do we get in the containers? I was looking at a box the other day, marked "144 6" Windmills". Yes, the American appetite for schlockey garden windmills is so great that we import them by the container load. If the empty containers are the arteriosclerosis, the contents are the Alzheimers plaque clogging our neural pathways.

Face it, we are the Ronald Reagan of the world community.

And, given our proven ability to shoot ourselves in the foot, they don't need to actually send a bomb.

They could just send a huge note saying "Bang! You're Dead!"

Instant panic and container gridlock.

When Republican's primary mantra (thanks to St. Ronald) is that all government is bad, they are predisposed to thinking no problem can be solved through legislating. They also fail to understand that the military IS government and they equate militarism with patriotism (which the Founders clearly did not), and so with all these bad ideas bouncing around their tiny craniums, they attempt to solve every problem with the military. Which has gotten us to the very ugly and unsustainable point we find ourselves at...

Republican foot-dragging on container inspections has an easy explanation: those containers now conceal hundreds, nay, thousands of illegal immigrants who have agreed to vote with the GOP for the first two presidential cycles after arriving in the country.

Why is it reasonable to mandate a timetable for 100% pass rates on standardized tests for schoolchildren, but not reasonable to mandate a timetable for 100% inspection of cargo containers headed for U.S. ports?

I think both of those requirements are unreasonable, and probably unachievable. I'll bet that the 100% inspection requirement, when it passes (and I think a Democratic Congress lke the one we'll probably get in the fall would pass such a requirement), will be met in the same way the "No Child Left Behind" requirements have been met: by fraud.

I do think that the Republicans are probably against a 100% container inspection requirement because of the amount of money the shipping industry kicks their way. I also thnk the Democrats are in favor of it because of the amount of money the unions involved in the shipping industry kick their way.

But that's par for the course, isn't it? Both of the major parties make their decisions based on pleasing their contributors, not on merit.

In theory, better port inspections will make us safer, However, in practice, poor port security hasn't led to any terrorist attack.

Oh, good Ford, that's a new level of dishonesty even for you, "ex-liberal".

Shorter "ex-liberal": In theory, closing the barn door will prevent the horse from getting out of the barn. However, in practice leaving the door open hasn't led to the horse escaping, so why close it?

Atta and his crew didn't choose to hijack airliners with box cutters at random, dipshit. They analyzed security and found a flaw.

And warned that al Qaeda might attempt a hijacking, Bush did...what, exactly?

In practice, harsh questioning of captured terrorists has prevented terrorist attacks. Real-world experience has shown that harsh questioning methods are more valuable than enhanced port security.

First of all, you gotta love -- well, no, you don't, really -- the euphemism of "harsh questioning" for torture. Of course, the further dishonesty of this unsupported assertion has already been pointed out uptheread.

Here's a clue, "ex-liberal": Bush is a liar, and repeating his false assetions doesn't make them true, no matter what your role model Goebbels said.

The only reliable way to prevent attacks is effective advance intelligence. Unfortunately, that requires wiretapping, harsh questioning, review of financial transactions, and other methods offensive to traditional civil liberties.

Nice straw man. None of those methods are offensive to traditional civil liberties, and all of them are already provided for, within limits and with checks and balances, in current law. What's offensive is the Bush Administration's admitted violation of said laws.

And your dishonest defenses of them, of course. Shame on you.

You know I almost never hear the Repugs use their "freedoms aren't worth much if you're dead" argument when speaking about their investments...perhaps they have found a way to "take it with them"...so what's this reason about it costs too much to secure the ports/inspect the containers because it will slow down the economy...SO WHAT...we'd be "safer" wouldn't we...isn't that what it's all about? SUCKERS!

PS..."harsh questioning" sounds so much more in line with what Jesus would want than "torture"! Gotta cover all the bases in a political world.

Why do Republicans hate America?

Well, the Repugs must be something right - Marinus van der Lubbe still has not been able to attack us - But many of the neo-conjobs are still hoping - Ach, we'll be able to pass so many new laws.

Re; "Shippers would have picked up the cost."

You don't honestly believe that do you?

One points out that inspecting at an offshore point raises the possibility of transshipping the "cargo" around the inspection point; drop a dinghy with your nuke in it, cruise around the visual range of the converted oil rig or whatever, then get picked back up by the now-certified-safe ship. Do it in someone's radar shadow if you're really paranoid about getting caught.

Doing some inspections is a good idea, yes. Mandating 100% is probably impractical, as it'd throw a big monkey wrench in getting stuff cleared. We don't do 100% strip searches at the airport, not just because we don't want to strip off personally, but because we don't want to wait six hours in line in order to get on a plane. Same principle - you get a large part of the security with a random screening (especially if the screening concentrates on shipping containers from questionable points of call - nobody's civil rights are violated by profiling big metal boxes!)

Overall, this sounds like a good attack purely because it'd be relatively easy to pull off. It's also hellishly risky, because if you DO get caught, then your nuke gets caught along with whatever team you had babysitting it... essentially, you've just fired a very very slow nuclear missile at the US, and you won't know when it gets intercepted (that is, until some city fails to be blown into glass, or worse, until the US retaliates by leveling your nation into a parking lot...)

It'd be much less risky to send it to Mexico and smuggle it north in a bundle of drugs. We have thousands of tons of material smuggled over the border every year as it is; wouldn't you send a nuke in THAT way, rather than somewhere that leaves a big paper trail pointing back to you?

If Republicans had any idea about even the basic concepts of economics they wouldn't have spent hundreds of billions of dollars to occupy a country whose GDP was just one tenth as much prior to the fiasco.

If I were a terrorist, and managed to get my hands on a nuclear weapon, I'm going to get it into the country. I'll buy a corporate jet or a small yacht, or just hire 20 guys to carry it across the desert. Once across the border, I've got an SUV waiting. I can pick any city at random and hit it within 48 hours.

Port security is not the issue. Keeping nuclear weapons out of the hands of terrorists is.

Are Republicans really that far in thrall to the shipping industry?

Shipping industry?

Do you have any idea how much this would cost Walmart and Ikea? Would you intentionally make Rob, Jim, Alice, and Ingvar sad? I don't think you've seen their puppy dog eyes.

Hey, Thomas1,

If 5 mph speed limits are good enough for golf carts, why not the rest of America?

You don't hear of too many lawyers getting run over and killed on the cart paths, now do you? Of course, dying professionally (at St. Andrews and elsewhere) is another matter.

Is it time to put away our Jerry Ford golf helmets?

P.S. If you read my post I didn't call for 100% inspections. I'm sure Thomas Bayes can be called upon here for expert assistance. But what punishments (excuse me, incentives) will we dole out when shipping companies fail to meet their inspection quotas? Will we give vouchers to manufacturers so they can use the nearest "magnet" shippers? Will we shut them down???

Better idea -- adopt systematic, offshore container scanning procedures, preferably funded by the shippers. And what about building secure technology into the boats themselves that could broadcast the results of on-board scans over encrypted networks as the boats arrive near port?

Why would you expect republicans to put a timeline on anything?

Why the "Good Ford" all the time?

Chuckles is not only dishonest, he also isn't very well read. ;)

Thomas1:

Paul's letter to the Romans was written by Jesus? Who knew?

The fact that you're referencing the alleged scribblings of a Jewish scholar-cum-Christian missionary from Turkey two thusand years in his grave to make ethical judgments about human rights in twenty-first century America tells me everything I need to know about your worldview.

pj,

Ports are for efficiently loading and offloading very large quantities or items. You don't need a port for a single nuclear weapon. Nor do you need a freighter. A yacht, fishing boat, SUV, or medium sized aircraft will do just fine.

Again, Port security is not the issue. Keeping nuclear weapons out of the hands of terrorists is.

Paul simply had a connosieur's appreciation of torture - he was a class-A persecutor of Christians until own his conversion. Paul never met Jesus, and certainly didn't quote him as approving of torture. By the way, most of Romans is an exhortation to obey the law, even if you don't like it. Maybe, thomas1, you should bring that to the attention of the Bush justice department.

".....but not reasonable to mandate a timetable for 100% inspection of cargo containers headed for U.S. ports? Are Republicans really that far in thrall to the shipping industry?" - Kevin

And also not reasonable to interrogate jihadists in a manner that might make them offended or uncomfortable. Are the Democrats really that far in thrall to the Fundamentalist Islamic movement?

"During a speech, he quoted a 14th century Byzantine emperor who said the prophet Mohammed had brought "things only evil and inhuman". - Pope Benedict

Poor little Muslims were offended and proceeded to riot and destroy things. I would like to offer my opinion:

Fuck Islam.

Thomas1:

I would argue the entire Bible was written by Jesus, but what good would that do since you already dismissed any such "alleged scribblings" out of hand?

I dismissed the Bible's utility as the basis for an ethical system, but not the fact of its existence. However, I'm not aware of any Christian theologian who would endorse the view that Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God the Father, wrote the entire Bible. Many who accept biblical inerrancy certainly advance the doctrine that the Bible is the divinely inspired word of God, that God the Father or the Holy Spirit directly guided the hand of each author who contributed to the text. You could contort this into the statement that "Jesus wrote the entire Bible," but it would be smipler to admit that you misspoke when you attributed the words of Paul or Tarsus to Jesus of Nazareth.

How to win the war on terror by administration supporter Jay:

Fuck Islam

"How to win the war on terror by administration supporter Jay:" - toast

Actually I am not much of a supporter. I would be much harsher than GW. Bush is still trying to fight a politically correct, sensitive war, and that's why were still fighting. He should take a lesson from one of our greatest Presidents (who happen to be a Democrat) FDR, and end this thing now.

I'm all for 100% inspection (this could also help with small arms shipments and such), but why make the companies pick up the tab? Why can't this be subsidized?

Exactly - why shouldn't taxpayers pay the costs of private, for-profit industry? Run with that one, why don't you?

I did not misspeak. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." John 1:1.

Given that your stratagem for theological argument is to quote Bible verses sans explanation, Thomas1, I suppose I'll have to make some assumptions about the doctrines you accept.

You seem to be advocating Trinitarianism, the concept of Jesus as Logos (q.v. the Chalcedonian Creed), biblical inerrancy, biblical inspiration, and adherence to the decisions of at least some of the ecclesiastical councils regarding the accepted books and passages of the Christian Bible.

Seems to me an awfully tenuous tower on which to base the declaration that Jesus of Nazareth accepted torture as a morally permissable action for Chistians. There's a lot of elaborate exegesis and thin assumption in there, not to mention the acceptance of the judgment of old men long dead as inerrant and uncorrupted by politics, power, and personal rivalries. Especially considering the passage you originally cited does not, under a textualist reading, advocate torture as a morally permissable action for Christians:

"Wherefore ye must needs be subject, not only for wrath, but also for conscience sake."

benjoya,

One way or another, tax payers and/or consumers will pick up the tab.

But again, port security is irrelevant. Without doing 100% inspection of every single boat, plane, truck, and person crossing our borders, at any point on the border, there is no way to stop a terrorist with a bomb once he or she has the bomb. A 100% search at the ports, while very costly, would still be just a fart in a whirlwind. We have to keep them from getting the weapons. Once they have them, they will use them, and we won't be able to stop them. We might get lucky once, maybe twice, but the third or fourth will get through. And they only have to get through once.

Understand this, and you understand that Iraq is just one move in a very deadly game of chess.

Last year the nation's ports took in a record $1.21 trillion in goods from countries outside North America. Corporations are unlikely to be overly concerned with the cost of container scanning, since they will simply pass the cost on to the consumer. They are far more likely to be concerned with the impact on the entire just-in-time logistics network.

In addition, note this from the cited article about scanning containers in Hong Kong:

"Since January 2005, every container entering the truck gates of two of the world's busiest container terminals, in Hong Kong, has passed through scanning and radiation detection devices."

From this sentence we know the Chinese (in part of Hong Kong, at least) are scanning outbound cargo, not inbound from ships. (The outbound cargo comes on trucks through the gates.) This being China, they have less of a problem with identifying outbound shippers and inspections from false positives. This could account for their report of no delays involved in the scanning process. We have no idea if their procedures will work as well in other ports, nor does the article tell us how they handle inbound containers.

"Why is it reasonable to mandate a timetable for 100% pass rates on standardized tests for schoolchildren, but not reasonable to mandate a timetable for 100% inspection of cargo containers headed for U.S. ports?"

Because schoolchildren are political pawns while the business of the Publican't Party is greasing the wheels of business.

"Poor little Muslims were offended and proceeded to riot and destroy things. I would like to offer my opinion: Fuck Islam."

You call that an opinion? Why not go express that in the center of Baghdad. Please.

Why is it reasonable to mandate a timetable for 100% pass rates on standardized tests for schoolchildren, but not reasonable to mandate a timetable for 100% inspection of cargo containers headed for U.S. ports?

Well lots of reasons: for one, the former is an imposed standard that is designed to be failed to discredit the public schools, after all, so it doesn't require any effort at all beyond establishing a timetable, or any consideration of feasibility; for another, Republicans aren't interested in security, they are interested in using insecurity as the lever to sell policies unrelated to security that have the superficial impression of providing security.

"And also not reasonable to interrogate jihadists in a manner that might make them offended or uncomfortable. Are the Democrats really that far in thrall to the Fundamentalist Islamic movement?"

~Jay

Jay, you are incredibly stupid.

Kevin wrote: "Why is it reasonable to mandate a timetable for 100% pass rates on standardized tests for schoolchildren, but not reasonable to mandate a timetable for 100% inspection of cargo containers headed for U.S. ports?"

Mandating standardized tests puts money in the pockets of Republican Fascist Party supporters who produce the standardized tests and the prep courses for them, for example The Washington Post, whose right-wing-dominated editorial page acted as a bullhorn for the Bush administration's sickening lies about nonexistent "Iraqi WMD" and which just hired a former Bush speechwriter to contribute more pro-Bush op-eds:

The Washington Post Co. yesterday reported that profit in the first quarter increased to $66.6 million ($6.87 per share) from $59.4 million ($6.15) in the comparable quarter a year earlier, due primarily to increased operating profit at its Kaplan education division. Revenue increased to $833.9 million from $759 million, despite a 22 percent decline in ad sales at Newsweek.

Revenue for the growing Kaplan education division increased 26 percent, to $325.4 million, while operating income increased 58 percent, to $32.6 million. The division includes prep courses for standardized tests and online higher education classes and career training.

--- The Washington Post, 05/07/2005

Whereas mandating container inspections would take money out of the pockets of the Republican Fascist Party supporters in the shipping industry.

So, of what use would an actual theological argument be?

I can think of two uses.

To highlight the inherent inconsistencies in a wide swath of Christian theology accepted by modern American Christians, assuming arguendo the fundamental posits of Christianity, and thereby expose the destructive and unholy nature of the alliance between evangelical American Christianity and the Republican party.

Also, on a personal note, I enjoy debating theology, atheist though I might be. Conservative Christians often make the the mistake of assuming that I can't talk the talk just because I don't believe their ghosts and goblins anymore. It's amusing to demonstrate the all-too-frequent lack of serious philosophical and rational thinking about their own beliefs, not to mention rank textual and historical ignorance.

"Subsidies or tax incentives could be used to keep the prices closer to market prices..."

Hahahahahahah.

SecularAnimist wrote:

"Whereas mandating container inspections would take money out of the pockets of the Republican Fascist Party supporters in the shipping industry."
________________

Well, that's obviously not true. If they all have to do it, the cost is simply passed on to their customers and ultimately to the consumer.

Randy,

You state, "Port security is not the issue. Keeping nuclear weapons out of the hands of terrorists is."

What on earth are you suggesting? That scanning containers will not keep weapons of mass destruction or their components out of the hands of terrorists??? The Israeli government and just about every country with a seacoast would take issue with such a wacky security strategy.

And don't forget, America has hundreds of airports. Why do we scan baggage as well as sweep the airplanes if, as you say, keeping weapons out of the hands of terrorists should be our main priority?

Rather than making sense, your position sounds like an Ann Coulteresque rationale for invading Middle Eastern countries and killing innocent Muslims.

Do you have any evidence that invading Iraq has directly prevented a single attack on the United States? Military intelligence tells us our actions in Iraq have greatly expanded Shiite and Iranian influence in the region, and that this has created more threats for the US than existed before the invasion.

In the face of these mounting security threats scanning America-bound cargo containers is the least we could do.

Didn't I just post the link to the shipping industry giving thirty some percent of its contributions to Democrats?

http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.asp?Ind=M

I agree with the comment that we should subsidize port inspections rather than making the poor shipping companies pay for it. We can pay for the subsidy with one more tax cut for the richest Americans. There are Bush-haters and terrorist sympathizers who might wonder how you pay for increased expenditures by reducing revenues, but they just don't understand modern Republican patriotism. Why do they hate America?

And why aren't our guys writing articles about how Republicans aren't serious about winning the War on Terror. They want ever more tax cuts, they won't ask companies to do their part and pay for port security, and they've chosen to allocate terrorism funds based on political clout not actual risk of attack. If they were serious about winning the War on Terror they'd be willing to sacrifice some of their policy preferences, not just things Democrats like - civil liberties, etc.

Thomas1 - I think he might have mentioned it, had he ever bumped into him. As it is, he only ever claimed to have heard his voice on the road to Damascus. In any case, you claimed that Jesus supported torture, citing Romans. That is incorrect.

"I don't think...that Republicans hate America." - thomas1

"I don't think....anybody anticipated the level of violence that we've encountered.." - VP Dick Cheney 6/19/06

"I don't think....anybody anticipated the breach of the levees..." - President GWB 9/1/05

"I don't think....anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and...use an airplane as a missile." - National Security Advisor Dr. Condoleezza Rice 5/16/02

And thus, yet another thread dissolves into the inevitable spate of facile snarkiness. lol

thomas1: Over 15 million containers imported per year into the U.S. would be a nightmare to inspect each one

as opposed to a nuke exploding in a major u-s port?

1-percent doctrine sucks...huh...

I'm glad to see that Thomas1 backed off of an argument in which he so painfully wrong, for once. Any student of religion knows that the Bible is an historical document written by humans in a political context. The New Testament was written years after Jesus died (often not by first-hand sources), and that it was then translated and edited by various factions to serve the church's needs of the moment. And Th1, if you think translations from Aramaic to Greek to English haven't tweaked it some more, you are ignorant of history, language, and culture.

By the way, you spend an inordinate amount of time and energy here. I hope you've made a huge donation.

I think he might have mentioned it, had he ever bumped into him. As it is, he only ever claimed to have heard his voice on the road to Damascus. In any case, you claimed that Jesus supported torture, citing Romans. That is incorrect.

I think, JT, that Thomas1' elaborate doctrinal beliefs lead him down a convouluted path to the conclusion that "Jesus wrote the entire Bible," but since he is unwilling to debate an apostate on theological matters, who can say?

Of course, you are correct that the verse(s) he quotes says nothing facially on point about torture being a morally permissible action for Christians, so the argument is somewhat spurious.

Of course, I've looked into this more, and that percentage includes ALL "transportation" sectors like UPS, Ford, GM, etc. When you look at just individual container companies, some give more to Democrats:

http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/affiliates.asp?ID=D000000148&Type=P&Cycle=A (40% to Democrats, 60% to Republicans)

http://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/lookup2.asp?strId=C00397893 (70% to Democrats, 30% to Republicans)

It is all a lie!! Look there is 260 million people in the U.S. at least 100 million above 21 years old,Anyone of them could go to Walmart,Costco,Sears or any number of places and buy the matierals to make a bomb.If someone is hell bent on blowing us up it would take no time at all to blow something up.The fact that this has not happened tells me The threat is not any where near where these scared little righties say.

Spoofing me with the 12:08 and 12:32 posts? And lame points, to boot? Somebody must be pretty angry, and fairly chickenshit.

Make your lame points under your own handle.

Isn't Kevin's thread about NUCLEAR bombs though, Mann? You can't get those at WalMart.

Well, that's obviously not true. If they all have to do it, the cost is simply passed on to their customers and ultimately to the consumer.

Posted by: Trashhauler

True, but if the $8 per container cost is accurate, then it's a question of spreading that over the contents of the container. Obviously there could be quite a range, but I'd think the absolute minimum number of units would be in the nieghborhood of 2,000; I know my company imports items from China that go ~4,000 units to a container. So pretty minimal impact to the consumer (~0.004 USD).

I'll pay it for 100% inspection at the ports. This is, after all, an existential struggle for civilazation itself: "In truth, it is a struggle for civilization." --GWB

Gotta do our part.
: )

Trex you sir are an IDIOT.It is about terrssst haven't you heard the President.We have terrssst trying to kill any way they can.And you can put a Chem bomb in a Conex box too.A nuke in a Conex box is not very likely They tent to be very large and cumbersome.

pj,

Re; "What on earth are you suggesting?"

I'm not "suggesting" anything. I've stated plainly several times now that if terrorists get their hands on a nuclear weapon they don't have to use the ports to get it in. A true 100% inspection would require inspecting every single boat, plane, truck, or small group of people crossing our borders at any point. Just think like a terrorist for a minute. Why deal with port security when you can just drop it off on a channel island and let a shrimp boat pick it up? - Or have a small group of guys carry it across the border to the nearest dirt road with a pickup waiting? Remember prohibition? Remember the smuggling? The g-men were never able to stop it. Nor did the union blockade stop the blockade runners during the civil war.

They've only got to get 1 weapon through. Just 1. Get it? We cannot let them have it.

trex wrote: "Isn't Kevin's thread about NUCLEAR bombs though, Mann? You can't get those at WalMart."

We're working on that. The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

Randy,

Is there any reason not to have a mulitlayered defense? I think you're right that denying nukes to the terrorists is necessary. But why can't inspections at ports be a part of our defenses? Inspecting at the "ship from" ports would also seem prudent, as some commenters have suggested (and I think we do this for some locations now).

Trex post at 12:32 I like when these righties post and use the now ever famous SOME.Would you like to elaborate on that more or are you happy with SOME!!!

I mean gee there is still the matter of all those Chem and Bio weapons that we never found don't they count antmore.Or is it only Mushroom clouds we are suppose to worry about,Bush can't seem to make up his mind and it confuses us.

We are getting to multilayered defense, cyntax. You don't want 5 mph speed limits, do you?

5MPH in parking lots sounds about right. But I'm not at all convinced that this can be accurately characterized as the equivalent of slowing out highways down to 5MPH:

This is not a pie-in-the-sky idea. Since January 2005, every container entering the truck gates of two of the world’s busiest container terminals, in Hong Kong, has passed through scanning and radiation detection devices. Images of the containers’ contents are then stored on computers so that they can be scrutinized by American or other customs authorities almost in real time. Customs inspectors can then issue orders not to load a container that worries them.

Why don't we want to do this at all ports shipping into the US?

Cyntax,

I see no problem with applying security measures at ports - lots of things can come in through ports that we don't want in the country. But statistical methods will suffice. If I remember my statistics, a 25% random sample yields a 95% degree of confidence - or something like that.

But nuclear weapons are a whole other issue. A 100% inspection of ports will be costly, but it will not provide anything close to a 100% degree of confidence, because the terrorist are unlikely to use the ports to bring such weapons in - and they certainly don't have to.

Sorry, inspection of ports is not the answer. I'll leave it to you to ponder what is.

cyntax, from my post above:

"From this sentence we know the Chinese (in part of Hong Kong, at least) are scanning outbound cargo, not inbound from ships. (The outbound cargo comes on trucks through the gates.) This being China, they have less of a problem with identifying outbound shippers and inspections from false positives. This could account for their report of no delays involved in the scanning process. We have no idea if their procedures will work as well in other ports, nor does the article tell us how they handle inbound containers."

Trashhauler,

I read that but I didn't see why that wouldn't be effective at other ports shipping into the US:

Hutchison’s chief executive, John Meredith, is an outspoken advocate for improving container security and has championed the Hong Kong pilot program, which runs in one of its terminals.

Hutchison Port Holdings along with PSA Singapore Terminals, Dubai Ports World and Denmark’s APM Terminals handle nearly eight out of every 10 containers destined for the United States. If they agreed to impose a common security fee of roughly $20 per container, similar to what passengers are now used to paying when they purchase airline tickets, they could recover the cost of installing and operating this system worldwide. This, in turn, would furnish a powerful deterrent for terrorists who might be tempted to convert the ubiquitous cargo container into a poor man’s missile.

Randy,

Inspection at ports isn't the answer but no one thing is: it's part of the answer. Why build a hole into your defenses when you can patch it up?

Randy,

Yeah, yeah. Keep nukes out of the hands of terrorists is the real issue.

So why is President Bush unilaterally extending US nuclear weapons technology to India? Not only does India have a domestic terrorist problem if its own, but this will only incent Pakistan to accelerate their nuclear weapons development. Pakistan . . . hmmm . . . let's see . . . isn't that the country where the CIA thinks Osama bin Laden is holed up?

And why does President Bush want to flout the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty? Doesn't this encourage other nuclear powers to develop their own new weapons of mass destruction?

And what kind of money and attention is President Bush devoting to Non-Proliferation? Very little, relative to the size of the potential threat you describe.

Check out Hans Blix's latest proposals for controlling weapons of mass destruction at http://www.carnegieendowment.org/npp/weapons/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3000059.

You remember Hans, right? The one with the correct assessment of WMDs in pre-war Iraq.

Because it will cost too much for little to no added benefit -- see above re: false positives -- I bet you didn't even know that coffee and bananas set off these detectors. The biggest problem with even an effective system, cyntax, is if the port itself is a target too.

$20 a container is too much? I don't see that at all.

I didn't see anything in the article about coffee and bananas setting these detectors off and wasn't aware that either product shipped from HK. I think you might be talking about problems the NJ port but I'm not sure they're using the same detectors as HK, can you clarify?

If consider doing inspections at the out-bound ports, are you still concerned that the port is a target?

As far as I can tell, what the usual gang of Bush-bootlickers are saying is that we just have to accept that it's inevitable that eventually terrorists will smuggle a nuclear weapon into the USA, detonate it, destroy an American city and kill millions of Americans.