Note that the government official to whom these intrepid, adversarial reporters gave anonymity accused the new Awlaki of being guilty of exactly that which has been repeatedly been blamed on the Old Awlaki: "He also inspired Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad and failed airplane underwear bomber Farouk Abdulmutallab." Maybe that can just be the all-purpose accusation which justifies a whole litany of assassinations: anytime we want to kill someone, we just have a government official anonymously claim in the newspaper that he inspired the Undewear Bomber and Fort Hood Shooter. After all, there's no limit on how many people can "inspire" someone.
All of this underscores the ambivalence I've had in watching the TSA controversy unfold. In one sense, this has all the ingredients of the last decade's worth of Terrorism exploitation: fear-based increases in pointless though invasive government power, surveillance and privacy infringements; further training the citizenry to mindlessly and meekly submit to directives from government functionaries; and, most of all, sleazy Washington influence-peddlers who spend time in Government ratcheting up fear levels and then return to the private sector to profit from that fear (Michael McConnell is the poster child for that behavior, but in this case, it's Michael Chertoff). As a result, my first reaction was that the public backlash could be productive in finally drawing a line the citizenry will not permit the Government to cross with these manipulative tactics.
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