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This Washington Post story exposes the Bush administration's ineptitude and dropping of the security ball as well as anything you'll come across:
FBI Agents Still Lacking Arabic Skills
33 of 12,000 Have Some Proficiency
By Dan Eggen; Washington Post Staff WriterFive years after Arab terrorists attacked the United States, only 33 FBI agents have even a limited proficiency in Arabic, and none of them work in the sections of the bureau that coordinate investigations of international terrorism, according to new FBI statistics.
Counting agents who know only a handful of Arabic words -- including those who scored zero on a standard proficiency test -- just 1 percent of the FBI's 12,000 agents have any familiarity with the language, the statistics show. ... [O]nly six FBI agents ... scored a 4 for "advanced professional proficiency" in Arabic on standardized speaking tests administered by the Interagency Language Roundtable for federal agencies....
Here's the rest.
They're happy to stoke your fears, Mr. and Ms. Middle-America, but have little interest in actually confronting the dangers they ceaselessly cite.
Mere moments ago, I spotted Helen Mirren, looking casually regal, at Joe: The Art of Coffee on 13th Street.
I'm told she's a regular there when she's in town.
Garrison Keillor nailed it in the Chicago Tribune last week:
Congress' shameful retreat from American values
By Garrison Keillor; October 4, 2006I would not send my college kid off for a semester abroad if I were you. Last week, we suspended human rights in America, and what goes around comes around. Ixnay habeas corpus.
The U.S. Senate, in all its splendor and majesty, decided that an "enemy combatant" is any non-citizen whom the president says is an enemy combatant, including your Korean greengrocer or your Swedish grandmother or your Czech au pair, and can be arrested and held for as long as authorities wish without any right of appeal to a court of law to examine the matter. If your college kid were to be arrested in Bangkok or Cairo, suspected of "crimes against the state" and held in prison, you'd assume that an American foreign service officer would be able to speak to your kid and arrange for a lawyer, but this may not be true anymore. Be forewarned.
The Senate also decided it's up to the president to decide whether it's OK to make these enemies stand naked in cold rooms for a couple of days in blinding light and be beaten by interrogators. This is now purely a bureaucratic matter: The plenipotentiary stamps the file "enemy combatants" and throws the poor schnooks into prison and at his leisure he tries them by any sort of kangaroo court he wishes to assemble and they have no right to see the evidence against them, and there is no appeal. This was passed by 65 senators and will now be signed by President Bush, put into effect, and in due course be thrown out by the courts.
It's good that Barry Goldwater is dead because this would have killed him. Go back to the Senate of 1964--Goldwater, Dirksen, Russell, McCarthy, Javits, Morse, Fulbright--and you won't find more than 10 votes for it....
Here's the rest.
I was on my way home on a warm Indian summer evening, strolling west on 21st Street and feeling chipper. I was pleased and relieved that my guest appearance in a class taught by a former student had gone well and tickled at the very thought that I should be asked to appear as an esteemed -- coughcough -- author before a group of college students.
As I neared Eighth Avenue, I noticed just ahead a little girl out frolicking on the sidewalk, with a smiling man I took to be her father watching over her.
She was an adorable child -- almost impossibly cute, really -- with ebony curls that fell just past her shoulders and a pretty little dress. She was four or five -- six at the oldest -- and had a lovely dark complexion that, in the dim light, made her ancestry hard to pinpoint. She could have been Greek or Iranian or any of two dozen other nationalities. She resembled no one so much as Hugo's Esmerelda as a child.
As I drew within fifteen or twenty feet, I caught her eye and she stopped where she stood with each arm straight out, parallel to the ground. Clearly, she was playing sentry and I was not to be allowed to pass.
She had a twinkle in her eye and a grin slowly forming on her lips, and I couldn't have been more charmed.
I crouched down a bit, to let her know that the game was on, and as I scurried to my right a few steps, as if to skirt her in that direction, she moved with me, blocking me from passing.
"Teresa!" her father gently chided her, warmth and affection in his voice.
I scurried back to the left, as if to evade her in that direction, and she was right there with me, giggling all the while. We went to and fro a couple more times until finally I tiptoed quickly past her to the right, thinking the game was at an end.
"Wait," she protested. "That's not how it goes!"
"Oh, no?" I asked, returning to her. "How does it work?"
"You come up to the gate" -- clearly she was the gate -- "and you say, 'Open Sesame.' Then the gate lets you pass."
"Oh, I see," I said, as if the scales had finally fallen from my eyes. I returned to my initial position, crept up to her, and, leaning over, said, "Open Sesame!"
With a beaming smile, she stepped ceremoniously to the side, saying, "Now you can pass."
I patted her lovely head as I passed, saying, "Thank you, little gate." A few steps further down the sidewalk, I turned and said, "I'll see you next time, little gate."
"See you next time!" she called back.
As I continued homeward, my heart swelled so that I feared it might burst. The entire silly, serendipitous encounter couldn't have lasted more than ninety seconds, but I expect I won't forget it as long as I live.
I got a chance to look at Annie Leibovitz's lovely new book, and it's a must-have, in my opinion.
As some B&Y readers know, I'm more than a little biased toward Ms. Leibovitz's work, since she was kind enough to take the author photo for my book back in January 2000. I found her to be a lovely and generous person, and I can obviously never fully repay the gift she gave me, so frankly, even if the new book weren't up to snuff, I'd probably tell you it was.
But I'm not kidding you -- it's terrific.
And it can be had at Amazon right now for 40% off -- just $45 instead of the $75 list price.
Yes, you can click on the link at the left and I'll get a small cut of your purchase, but never mind that -- go directly to Amazon.com if this feels like a self-serving recommendation meant only to line my pocket.
And if you'd like to read the account of my experience of sitting for Annie that I wrote for Salon.com, it's here.