Thursday, October 29, 2009

Outrage of the Week

. . . and it's only Thursday.

A bit of background on this story: evidently, the USAF conducts periodic inspections of its installations to ensure that they are in compliance with all regulations, programs, and policies. These are called "Unit Compliance Inspections" or UCIs, and are a pretty big deal. They occur every few years and a base will typically spend several months in intense preparation for one.

I received an email from a friend stationed at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, OH. They are undergoing a UCI this week, pursuant to which they are conducting anti-terrorism exercises for the benefit of the inspectors.

According to my contact, the first paragraph of today's exercise bulletin reads:

FBI announced yesterday they had added “liberty DEFENDERS”, an Ohio based group to the domestic terrorism watch list. This group, to date, has been a non-violent organization based on beliefs that the federal government exercises too much control over state governments and civil liberties. Historically, this group has used special interest lobbyists and underground news letters to spread their ideologies and voice their discontent with the federal government.

Right. Because we all know, now that Jesus is president, that the only people complaining about civil liberties violations are terrorists.

What a travesty.

3 comments:

Kirt33 said...

Okay, do I understand this correctly? The 'liberty defenders' are a fictional organization made up for the purpose of the training ex? If so: *shrug* Sounds like the people making up the exercise were just intellectually lazy more than anything.

Justin said...

Thanks to the intenet, we don't need "underground newsletters" anymore! The Web is one big underground newsletter.

Burke said...

For added effect, the anti-terrorism exercise was called CRIMSON HAWK, which turns out to be the name of a cartoon porn star. (Google it, pervs.)

Kirt33: I'm not sure "intellectually lazy" is an adequate explanation. Given the current real-world threat environment, I would expect that radical Islamic terrorists would be the default exercise scenario. Instead, the exercise planners fabricate a terrorist organization that just so happens to share the motives of the administration's political opponents. And nobody in the chain of command has the guts to throw a flag.

Meanwhile, I personally have written far more plausible scenarios with far less visibility that nonetheless get pulled for being excessively controversial.