Center of the Greater Muleplex
It reads like a tally of terrorist targets that a child might have crafted: Old MacDonald’s Petting Zoo, the Mule Day Parade, Sweetwater Flea Market and an unspecified “Beach at End of a Street.”
The National Asset Database, as it is known, is so flawed, the inspector general found, that Indiana, with 8,591 potential terrorist targets, had 51 percent more sites listed than New York (5,687) and nearly twice as many as California (3,212), ranking the state the most target-rich in the nation.
In addition to the Huntsville, Ala., petting zoo and the Mule Day Parade in Columbia, Tenn., the auditors questioned many entries, including “Nix’s Check Cashing,” “Mall at Sears,” “Ice Cream Parlor” “Tackle Shop,” “Donut Shop,” “Anti-Cruelty Society” and “Bean Fest.”
Even people connected to some of those businesses or events are baffled at their inclusion as possible terrorist targets.
Angela McNabb, manager of the Sweetwater Flea Market, which is 50 miles from Knoxville, Tenn., said: “I don’t know where they get their information. We are talking about a flea market here.”
I haven’t looked to see if Muleshoe, Texas, is on the list or not. It’s the center of the world of mules and should be included.
It’s hard to imagine what it must be like — working in IT for such a crew of bungling incompetents? I wouldn’t admit it to friends and neighbors.
Me neither, how humiliating.
good Lord! what sort of monster would attack the Bean Fest?!?
Muleshoe is in west Texas where I am from and I dont worry about terrorists much, Texas has a concealed carry law and most of the farmers carry rifles also, so no self repecting idiot terrorist would even show his face in these parts and if they tried I dont think they would get far . But muleshoe has a very fine bootshop and you should stop by if you are ever in the neighborhood
There’s a whole new species evolved in Washington. They’re report writers. They have to produce a maximum number of pages without saying anything that might rock the boat. PC is nothing compared to these dweebs.
I just surfed around DHS website to see if they had this database up online. Just today — they put up a .pdf 54 pages long on examining the practices used to produce the database. But, I never did find the db.
So, I wandered through some of the other crap. You and I pay for all this, anyway.
I bumped into a five page report on just a single incident where an airline flight apparently ended with an investigation of 13 men of “middle eastern appearance” whose presence made the flight crew and some passengers nervous.
Absolutely NOTHING was included about behavior, testimony, results — what happened to the passengers, middle-eastern or not — just a single paragraph that said the DHS would learn from this experience and their procedures would have to be re-evaluated. I guess the rest is Top Secret.
I’ll bet this report cost a couple of bucks a copy. Thousands were likely distributed. Who knows how many hours to produce? And to what end?
There’s an endless list of reports like this — wandering down the yellow brick road of bureaucracy.
While I don’t think that Indiana would be a huge terrorist target, it would be possible that it would be a target of some strategic military importance. A good deal of military tech is produced in and around Indianapolis. We have Raytheon, The Naval Avionics Center, Allison-Rolls-Royce (which produces engines and transmissions for tanks and helicopters), and Ft. Harrison, which is a large office-business complex for the military.
As for terrorist targets, the only thing of significance i can think of off-hand would be the large gatherings of people a couple times every year: Indy 500, Brickyard 400, NCAA Final Four, etc: places where a couple hundred thousand people gather over a couple square miles.
As for terrorist targets, the only thing of significance i can think of off-hand would be the large gatherings of people a couple times every year: …
You missed my kid’s softball tourney. That draws at least 40 people to the games. BTW, my kid’s team won. The other team forfeited because of not enough players. Now they are on to the finals; that’ll draw at least 50 or 60 Hoosiers. I’d tell what field and when but I don’t want to tip off any terrorists. A terrorist hit on the Softball Tourney would really hit this town hard.
(pssst, the High School, Saturday, 10:00)
Keeping explosives (or any open flames) away from Bean Fest is of national importance!
Indiana is also host to a very large stockpile of relatively unprotected VX nerve agent (they never call it ‘nerve gas’, always agent, why?). If that were targetted it’d be very bad.
I sterted a Quarum awhile back about HOw you could commit terror in the country.
If you really wish to know.
2 facts…Did they mention anything about the under ground silos??
I would REALLY watch during the harvast season, as the parks, and fileds are open targets…But that is about 1/2 the land mass of the US..
Jon,
VX is a liquid dispersed as an aerosol. It’s not a gas. That’s why they call it an agent.
IMNSHO, the only things that are real terrorist targets are places that people outside of the USA have heard of.
I’ll take devils advocate here. Take a look at a map of commercial US nuclear facilities, and prevailing winds. A reactor would be hard target to crack, and would require military precision not yet seen in terrorist groups. Remember that many of these plants are reaching their designed life limits. There are some reports that years of radiation has weakened containment structures, making them vulnerable to a direct hit from an heavy aircraft. Even if you don’t penetrate the pile, enough cooling capacity could be knocked out to cause serious problems. Remember the idea is terror and fear. Terrorism is a psychological weapon used when conventional war isn’t possible.
I don’t think this list has anything to do with incompetence, and everything to do with congressional pork-hunting. Money was divvied up not by true security needs, but by which congressmen had the most influence on the drafting of the report. The congressman from Indiana said “I want THIS much”, and the report writers had to put SOMETHING on the list to match the amount of money being allocated to that state. Don’t attribute to incompetence what can be explained by absolute corruption and greed. (The same applies to the current administration.)
This is no lie…
Several years ago my sixth grade son came home from middle school here in Indy reporting what his TEACHER told him:
“Terrorists rate Indianapolis as the highest on their list of targets because the signs on the Interstates into town clearly state: Indianapolis, the CROSSROADS of America.”
I don’t know who is more stupid… the terrorists or the teachers.
I don’t know, but if I had to guess I’d say terrorists were more stupid. Anyway, I think Indiana changed its slogan to Restart your engines, so it’s not going to be a big target anymore; not with such a lame slogan. Fifty or sixty people might be a significant dent in Indiana, but not in the whole United States. I know we have military depots around here, but they haven’t been used since the Cold War or before, and I’ve not seen anyone around them since I’ve been alive. Maybe Indiana was a target 20 years ago, but it has dried up since then. SO if the terrorists did target Indiana, they’d definitely be more stupid than teachers.