Personal patches

[Kevin Golding]

In article <20040107042006.GA65900 at kosmos.my.net>, Allan Bowhill
<abowhill at blarg.net> writes
>On  0, Brad Knowles <brad.knowles at skynet.be> wrote:
>:At 4:10 PM -0800 2004/01/06, Allan Bowhill wrote:
>
>:> No organization (or nation) with plenty to lose will base it's practices
>:> on institutionalized trust. It's always institutionalized mistrust that
>:> makes it possible to conduct business. Like with banks.
>:
>:      The biggest crimes are always committed by insiders.  You or I 
>:would be unlikely to steal thousands of dollars from a bank, and 
>:totally unable to steal billions of dollars from a bank, but for 
>:insiders it could be very easy.  Indeed, for them the larger the 
>:numbers, the easier they are to hide.
>
>Batting 1000. The biggest act of terrorism in the U.S. was not performed
>by insiders. 

Timothy McVeigh was convicting of killing 168 Americans, including young
children, with his Oklahoma attack.  He was American through and
through.

The WTC attacks were 17 people killing 3000.  According to my maths
that's only 176 victims each, many of whom weren't American.

The biggest act of terrorism may not have been by Americans, but the
terrorist who killed the most Americans was.

>However, you have a good point. Preventing domestic terrorism is another
>aspect of homeland security.

The word *home*land would suggest it's quite major in my eyes :-)

America has had a history of not caring about terrorism overseas; even
supporting terror groups both morally and financially.  That's a large
reason why people outside the USA find the recent attitude to terrorism
a little hard to comprehend.

Kevin