"Liberal" Loony Land vs. the Realm of Reality

From "Liberal" Loony Land:

The prospect of revisiting the immigration reforms [which were stripped out of the Intelligence "Reform" Bill] alarmed others.

During a pointed exchange on the House floor last night, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi called the reforms "egregious" and "extraneous" and signaled that Democrats would oppose them.

"I have serious concerns," the California Democrat said. "I hope Republican leaders won't tarnish the achievements of today" by bringing up the immigration reforms again after the new year.

From the Realm of Reality:

"We are here today because on September 11, 2001, 19 men, all of whom entered our country illegally, overstayed their visas or obtained fraudulent visas, boarded four airplanes and used them as bombs to kill thousands of our citizens," said Rep. Nathan Deal, Georgia Republican. "The primary identification documents that allowed them to board those airplanes were state driver's licenses. Nothing in this bill would prevent those hijackers from using those same driver's licenses to board those same airplanes and repeat the events of 9/11."

Quotes from the article "Border security up next, Bush says". It starts with this generally unbelievable bit:

President Bush is vowing to help House Republicans enact tighter immigration-security controls "early in the next session" of Congress...

Comments

Let me suggest that the idea of using more restrictive ID schemes to prevent terrorism is not a very practical one. In China and Russia, the security services are far more intrusive than they are here in America - they can stop anyone on the street anytime they want to and ask for ID. The penalty for not carrying proper ID involves jail time. And yet terror attacks occur on a routine basis in both countries. (China tends to stonewall until the reality is undeniable). The reason 9/11 occurred was because terrorists had this really neat one-off idea and decided to test-drive it on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center.

Preventing illegals from getting driver's licenses will deter illegal immigration - but it won't do much of anything for the terror threat. The initiative rests with the terrorists - if they want to stage an attack in America, they can do so quite readily. We can no more prevent terror attacks than we can prevent murders or serial killings.

The trick is to do what Sherman did - burn Atlanta - attack something that then enemy holds dear and must defend at any cost. That got the Confederate Army to do what they had wanted to avoid doing all along - go face-to-face with the Union Army in a stand-up fight. Afghanistan and Iraq are Atlanta. And both jihadis and jihadi wannabes are the Confederate Army being ground to dust in unwinnable battle after unwinnable battle.

Article: The primary identification documents that allowed them to board those airplanes were state driver's licenses. Nothing in this bill would prevent those hijackers from using those same driver's licenses to board those same airplanes and repeat the events of 9/11.

They could also have used their passports, which are generally used by foreign tourists for travel within the US. There are other reasons to deny US driver's licenses to illegal immigrants. But being able to deny potential hijackers the right to board planes isn't one of them.*

* Note also that driver's licenses can be forged or stolen. Even if there's a central registry for information on license holders - which we don't have today - how do you know that the person standing in front of you is the person whose name is on the license?

What will it take to save us from that wretched old wardheeler revelation that there can't be any undesirable aliens, in the warrens of honest graft?