Movie Plot Threat: Terrorists Attacking US Prisons

Kansas Senator Pat Roberts wins an award for his movie-plot threat: terrorists attacking the maximum-security federal prison at Ft. Leavenworth:

In an Aug. 14 letter to Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter, Roberts stressed that Kansas in general—and Leavenworth, in particular—are not ideal for a domestic detention facility.

“Fort Leavenworth is neither the ideal nor right location for moving Guantánamo detainees,” Roberts wrote to Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter. “The installation lies right on the Missouri River, providing terrorists with the possibility of covert travel underwater and attempting access to the detention facility.”

Not just terrorists, but terrorists with a submarine! This is why Ft. Leavenworth, a prison from which no one has ever escaped, is unsuitable for housing Guantanamo detainees.

I’ve never understood the argument that terrorists are too dangerous to house in US prisons. They’re just terrorists, it’s not like they’re Magneto.

Posted on August 25, 2015 at 2:19 PM64 Comments

Comments

UKJim August 25, 2015 2:33 PM

I’ve never understood the argument that terrorists are too dangerous to house in US prisons.

The danger is surely not that they escape, but rather that the courts notice that they are on US soil, human and may be allowed some human rights.

Anura August 25, 2015 2:35 PM

Hmm… I was hoping for a more fear inducing article from the title like “Terrorists plan on assaulting maximum security prisons, releasing all of the violent criminals.” This one is “We can’t put terrorists anywhere on or near land or water or they can escape!” which I find to be a bit boring.

Chelloveck August 25, 2015 2:35 PM

It’d be a much saner discussion if we dropped the label “terrorist” and simply used “mass murderer” instead.

America has been watching too much Marvel August 25, 2015 2:35 PM

but, but the terrorists DID have a submarine in X-Men: First Class

see, it IS really really plausible

Q August 25, 2015 2:43 PM

Leavenworth is on the Missouri, which is bad because it’s water and, um, reasons.

So, clearly, we should let these water-borne remain at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, which, as I understand it, is nowhere near any kind of water body.

tyr August 25, 2015 3:02 PM

We must immediately expand DHS to place guards around every
pond, lake and river to make the US feel safe from this
imminent threat. I think his real worry is that Chelsea if
freed might wink at him.

Jimbo August 25, 2015 3:04 PM

if US of A ever does get mutant villains, we have folks in The Gov’t exclaim FINALLY! NOW WE CAN HAVE THE martial law we have been waiting for…[insert drooling, maniacal cackling, and other sounds]

edge August 25, 2015 3:05 PM

Never been there, but looking at it in google maps – it looks like the prison is a good mile away from the river (provided I’m looking at the right place).

Matt August 25, 2015 3:29 PM

Also, I wanted to add that USP Leavenworth is about a MILE from the river. So I’m not exactly sure how underwater terrorists have any better access to the prison than someone tunnelling in from nearby land (say, one of the hundreds of private homes that are within a couple hundred yards of the prison).

kingsnake August 25, 2015 4:36 PM

Just because something has not happened before, does not mean it is impossible or unlikely. (Exhibit #1: WTC.)However … In the case of ISIS submariners sneaking up a poop pipe into Leavenworth? Not happening …

tz August 25, 2015 4:38 PM

Even better, the terrorists could release gas or a bioweapon into a prison – I think Maricopa County AZ has tents. Prisons would be the ultimate death-trap since there is no way for the prisoners to flee or be evacuated.

Spaceman Spiff August 25, 2015 4:39 PM

@Anura – I vote for a supermax on the moon. Oh, right. That was already done in a SciFi movie! The prisoners still escaped!

Name August 25, 2015 4:51 PM

Rather than calling them “just terrorists”, how about calling them “mere criminals”? Or if space is limited, “criminals”. “Criminals” has one less letter than “terrorists”, and extra bits waste electricity (burn more carbon atoms). Also, the word “criminal” is well-defined while “terrorist” is anything BUT well-defined.

Since we’ve already mostly agreed that the word “terrorist” is far easier to apply wrongly than correctly, we really should stop saying it in academia. And this comment section more or less IS academia, ain’t it?

rgaff August 25, 2015 4:52 PM

I’m with @UKJim… the real danger in moving them is that someone might notice that they appear to be humanoid, not animals… thus deserve the treatment (and rights) of actual humans, instead of animals…

The fact that our country treats people like they aren’t human, is a shame to every principle we founded this country upon. We act no differently than HITLER HIMSELF when we behave this way!

And yes, every single thread about human rights needs to say stuff like that, preferably in the first couple posts. Thanks @UKJim, but you forgot the “H” word.. Fixed it for ya 🙂 Heil Pat Roberts!

Ronnie August 25, 2015 5:07 PM

@Name – if you start calling terrorists anything other than terrorists then the terrorists will have won.

WW August 25, 2015 5:07 PM

Instead of a submarine, ISIS might be building a gigantic drilling machine, use it drive to USA under the Atlantic Ocean, and then release all terrorists where-ever they are.

No body thought about this possibility, I suspect.

999999999 August 25, 2015 5:26 PM

Never happened?

“Former United States Disciplinary Barracks Inmate David Newman escaped from the Wood Shop Detail in Pope Hall on 17 August 1988. He hid in the detail area while the rest of the inmates went to lunch and then quickly assembled a crude ladder with pieces of wood hidden inside the detail area. He kicked out a window screen at the rear of Pope Hall and used the ladder to climb over the USDB wall between Towers 2 and 3. He was captured about 4 days later in Kansas City by an off-duty police detective. Newman was fishing coins out of a fountain at the time he was captured. As a result of this escape, bars were installed on the exterior windows of all the buildings in the old USDB complex and an interior fence line (chain link with razor wire top guard) was constructed throughout the complex.”
Source: http://arba.army.pentagon.mil/documents/Vanguard%20Vol%203.pdf

Daniel August 25, 2015 7:01 PM

@Bruce

“I’ve never understood the argument that terrorists are too dangerous to house in US prisons. They’re just terrorists, it’s not like they’re Magneto.”

Because when one creates a bogeyman one has to act scared of him, otherwise people might suspect he’s not really a bogeyman.

Dirk Praet August 25, 2015 7:31 PM

I guess Senator Roberts’ movie-plot threat is symptomatic for the culture of fear and paranoia that has held the US in its grip for more than a decade now.

@ Ronnie, @ Name

if you start calling terrorists anything other than terrorists then the terrorists will have won.

Actually, it’s the other way around. It’s exactly what these lamers want. And it’s why the BBC in the UK – amongst other slightly more intelligent media outlets – is even carefully avoiding that term and consistently using other words like “attacker”, “bomber” or “gunman” instead. You can even find that in their editorial guidelines.

The word “terrorist”, especially in the US, has become a political rather than a factual attribution, referring to anti-US and radical Islam inspired extremists only, whereas any other type of attacks – whatever the number of casualties – are considered (and dealt with) as acts of criminal/deranged groups or individuals. Examples a plenty.

Mainstream media and politicians should really stop using this word. They have created a climate of fear and paranoia that is affecting us all and in the end is doing way more damage to society than any so-called “terrorist” act ever could have done. Which is their ultimate goal. Perhaps we should rather refer to these clowns as beebees (BB = braindead bastard) or zombies, whatever their colour, faith or conviction.

Demystification and even ridicule of said folks arguably would contribute much more to the way there are being perceived by the general public than the hysterical “we’re all gonna die” fear-mongering being spread today. Which in its turn can only create much more people that refuse to be terrorised by idiots, just like the blokes who beat the cr*p out of that death cult moron who tried to machine gun the Amsterdam-Paris train last Friday. No virgins for this here guy. Personally, I hope he ends up in a cell with the French equivalents of Bubba and Leroy, both of whom haven’t seen a woman for a very long time.

Mitch August 25, 2015 7:41 PM

I’ve never understood the argument that terrorists are too dangerous to house in US prisons.

Because being identified as a terrorist would get them killed in prison and remove any potential intelligence value.

Alien Jerky August 25, 2015 8:01 PM

@Mitch

Because being identified as a terrorist would get them killed in prison and remove any potential intelligence value.

Well after more than a decade in solitary at Gitmo, completely cut off from everyone, if they have not gotten everything possible out of them by now, they should find a new interrogator. Maybe we are not torturing… er… enhanced interrogating them enough.

Clive Robinson August 25, 2015 8:30 PM

TThis is an obvious result of injured “American Pride” by Sen. Pat Roberts. Every one knows that in America everything is “bigger and better” than anywhere else in the world (with the exception of Texas where it’s a state law they have to have the biggest of the big 😉

So the news that south of the border in the politicaly despised Mexico they had built a motorbike speedway track underground to get a petty criminal drug lord out of jail must have been a very significant ego deflator for a proud political flag waver. Thus these claims are just to re-establish American Pride, so the US people can proudly hold their heads up high in a Tex Mex eatery.

More seriously though, it’s a case of “not in my back yard”. It would be obvious political suicied to have gitmo detainies in your state, as there is a good chance they are going to act as a “lightning rod” for a home grown radical. Who is thus likely to come and do a bit of shooting etc in the state to show his brotherly support and get a quick trip to paradise in the process.

@ Bruce,

Not just terrorists, but terrorists with a submarine!

I read through the article you linked to, and it did not mention a submarine. As for what Sen. Pat Roberts was quoted as saying “… providing terrorists with the possibility of covert travel underwater…”, that could apply equaly as well to rebreather equipment.

Rebreather equipment has been used by Navies all over the world for the past century. And considerably predates scuba equipment. For covert work the closed circuit rebreather is definatly prefered by the likes of the UK SBS and US Seals and will likely continue to be so for a considerable time into the future. The reason is it is very simple and reliable in design –more so than scuba equipment– and does not make bubbles in the water which become visable on the surface or get easily picked up by hydraphones. It works by taking the air a person breaths out and removes the CO2 via a chemical absorber, this slightly depleated air goes into a “bag” into which a small amount –aprox 4%– of oxygen is added to replace the oxygen the user has metabalised.

The first commercial closed circuit rebreather was designed and built in 1878 by the well know underwater salvage and engineering experts Siebe Gorman of London, and gave the user around three hours underwater time. By modern standards it was a very simple design and examples can be seen in a number of museums around the world.

Importantly anyone who can competently cut bend and weld 3mm steel plate could build one. The absorber chemical used in the original was Caustic Potash (KOH) which has been made for “soap making” since the Elizabethan times. As a chemical it’s relativly easy to get hold of without question and can be made very very simply. The US Navy LAR V or MK16 rebreather absorber uses an even more readily available chemical “limewater” (Calcium Hydroxide) which is even easier to obtain as it’s used in quantity in the food industry, but is also trivialy made from ‘builders lime’, which in turn is trivial to make. Thus any of the many Middle east “articifers” who repair vehicals and AK 47s could definatly build an effective rebreather system for other “terrorists” to use to swim covertly up the river and any outfall pipe from the prison.

However you can also very easily buy high quality rebreathers at many professional diver outlets as they are used as part of the standard emergancy set of scuba equipment to give sufficient time to ascend and decompress safely should the less reliable scuba system fail.

On a further historic and personal note, four years after the design and construction of the Siebe rebreather apparatus a young lad by the name of Robert Davis started as an office boy there and worked his way up through the engineering side to become General Manager. In 1910 he successfully designed the Davis Submersibale Escape system which the Royal Navy purchased and other Navies quickly did likewise. He was knighted for this design, and later moved the factory out of central london to Tolworth in Surrey. I went to school a couple of miles up the road and one of my friend’s father was a senior engineer there and I got shown around the factory a number of times as I looked like a suitable person to take on as an engineering aprentice. However I plumped for electronics not mechanics as my engineering subject –although by then I was already designing boats– and nearly ended up across the road from Siebe working for Decca Radar. Later on when working in the Petro Chem industry designing intrinsicaly safe telemetry systems I had occasion to work with Siebe’s engineers one of whom was my old school friend. It is as they say a “funny old world” in the way things go around.

Anura August 26, 2015 12:23 AM

Actually, reading up, Leavenworth Penitentiary is a medium security prison. I think they are probably talking about Fort Leavenworth Disciplinary Barracks, which is a maximum security military prison. It’s a lot closer to the river, 500m, but still not exactly on the water.

https://goo.gl/maps/Wb4jo

Anselm Lingnau August 26, 2015 3:22 AM

The point about rebreathers is well taken, but it should also be noted that the Missouri is quite silty and would be very difficult to navigate for divers. It is not called the “Big Muddy” for nothing. It is also fairly shallow (the navigable channel is maintained to 9 feet of depth by the US Army Corps of Engineers) and therefore not really suitable for submarines of any size, which would in any case either have to go undetected all the way up the Mississippi from the Gulf of Mexico to St Louis and then another 400 miles up the Missouri, or else have to be assembled locally from parts in someone’s back yard and then launched into the river without anybody noticing. This happens in Frederick Forsyth novels but not in real life.

Anyway, if the proximity of a large body of water to a high-security prison under military guard is indeed a problem, why don’t we hear a lot more about assaults on Guantanamo Bay, which is right next to a major ocean and therefore orders of magnitude easier to reach by water? It’s not like the Marines there are constantly being called upon to repel submarine or diver attacks from islamists trying to free their buddies.

Geeyore August 26, 2015 5:15 AM

Quite a few terrorists – both domestic and foreign – have been imprisoned at ADX Florence for at least a decade or more, including the WTC 1993 group, Kaczinski, and other notables such as Hansen.

Snarki, child of Loki August 26, 2015 7:24 AM

Housing the “worst of the worst” terrorists in Gitmo is ITSELF a massive security breach!

Why? Because it tells EVERYONE the location of the US Strategic Kryptonite Reserve, of course!

ianf August 26, 2015 7:35 AM

@ America… too much Marvel

the terrorists DID have a submarine in X-Men: First Class (2011)

That was Hollywood. This is Palestinian victory over Israel the U-boat way-PROPHECY by Swedish thriller & historical novelist Jan Guillou (interestingly enough, the book has not been bought by any Middle Eastern publisher, nor translated into Arabic, maybe wasn’t bloody enough for the region?)

@ QLeavenworth is on the Missouri, which is bad because it’s water and, um, reasons.”

You’re too young to have watched (experienced!) young Nicole Kidman escape the notorious Bangkok “Hilton” via a sewer to the river. So, forewarned forearmed!

Chuckarama August 26, 2015 8:13 AM

The risk assessment if you’re a person/politician in charge of such decisions, has got to be two fold.

If a single one of them EVER manages to escape, the press and everyone else will hang it around your neck – for releasing an enemy directly into our midst and any harm they inflict in their escape. So if you’re one of those decision makers, the risk isn’t necessarily to the public, it’s to your own career and legacy, making it very personal. It would be a huge propaganda win if certain groups could manage to break out detainees as well, so you would have to assume, although maybe not with as much theater as a submarine, that plots to free them would increase significantly if they were on US soil and not on a highly inaccessible military island base.

Then there’s the possibility that it opens up these foreign prisoners to regular Constitutional law, rather than military and international war laws. (those are my very technical law terms 😉

It almost sounds like I defended his remarks or apologized for them, but that is not my intent. Just trying to get at what they’re probably facing in such decisions and why their imaginations may run wild over it. The submarine is over the top for sure.

Personally I expected the current administration would have swapped them all out for bad hostage deals of some kind by now. At a ratio of five or six to one, we should have run out of detainees already and solved the problem!

rgaff August 26, 2015 9:48 AM

@ Chuckarama

What “international war law” says you can freely kidnap people, hold them without charges forever, never have a trial, subject them to torture and inhuman treatment, etc, etc, etc? Is this the international war law of I GOT THE BIGGEST GUN SO I DO WHATEVER I WANT? Is that the international war law we’re talking about? So… this is really the Nazi holocaust law, then, right? Just making sure we understand what laws the USA is following here!

albert August 26, 2015 10:35 AM

This is obviously a political hot potato and thus defies logic.
.
The solution is simple and I’m surprised no one mentioned it:

Washington, D.C.! The District of Columbia has only tacit representation inCongruous, which has absolute authority over it. So there’s no voter backlash:) The prison/industrial complex could lobby for a new prison, with plenty of solitary confinement capacity, and separate Shia and Sunni wings.

Problem solved.
. .. . .. o

Smirk August 26, 2015 10:45 AM

Huhm quite a disappointing movie plot. I whas more hoping for drones dropping laser guns and explosives in the prison yard or something similar.

NDA-27 August 26, 2015 1:47 PM

Why do would we bother housing them? If they are terrorists then just execute them and be done with it. If that violates some treaty, well then do it in secret and keep no record they ever existed.

rgaff August 26, 2015 2:06 PM

@NDA-27

What if you are unjustly suspected of being a “terrorist” too (whatever that means)? You’d like that treatment too? What if you belong to the wrong race, or religion, like you’re a Jew, or a Japanese? Should we herd you all off and put you in internment camps for doing nothing wrong, and the consider (secretly) exterminating you too because we don’t know what to do with you so you’re embarrassing us?

See, this is why things like the Constitution exist. It’s why we have things like “human rights” that are SUPPOSED to apply to ALL HUMANS!!! It’s why we are SUPPOSED TO HAVE TRIALS when we arrest someone too!!! And it’s why we accept the fact that some guilty go free in our system, just so that we can be MUCH MORE SURE that we aren’t herding off the innocent with them. It’s not a perfect system, but it’s the best there is. You subvert that so completely and you really are left with Nazism.

rgaff August 26, 2015 3:05 PM

@Sancho_P

How about the “double taps” that we do with the drone strikes? You know, because medical people coming to rescue survivors after a missile attack MUST BE terrorists too! So we must kill them all too with another strike on the same spot a few minutes later! Why do we never have anyone but war criminals for presidents anymore? Geneva convention anyone?

Anura August 26, 2015 3:23 PM

@rgaff

“Why do we never have anyone but war criminals for presidents anymore?”

Start one industry who wants perpetual war in order to capture economic rent. Whisk together with fear, uncertainty, and doubt. Grease a presidential campaign with ungodly sums of money, and dust with an electoral system that marginalizes any party that goes against the message. Pour the FUD into the campaign, throw it in the oven with the public, and then bake until they take the desired shape.

rgaff August 26, 2015 7:16 PM

@Anura

At some point, a third party’s supposed to suddenly win in situations like that and upset the system. But it takes a few people giving a crap. Must I quote Martin Niemöller here with the old “first they came for…”? 😛

Joe August 26, 2015 7:24 PM

Submarines? All you need, apparently, to break out of a maximum security prison in New York is the ability to paint and a large endowment (and I don’t mean of the philanthropic variety).

Anura August 26, 2015 8:13 PM

@rgaff

If a third party gained enough support, people might support them, but until then people are not going to support a third party as it is basically throwing your vote away. I wish we could get all the people who are too fed up with the system to vote to go down to the polls and vote for a third party instead, but I don’t think that will happen any time soon.

Chuckarama August 26, 2015 10:18 PM

@rgaff
Wow. It’s like you’re inside my head! I don’t believe I condoned or defended it, just pointed out that there are indeed entire courses of law that make what is happening, technically legal, not necessarily ethical, but yes, in their minds their containment of these guys gets harder legally if they end up on proper US soil, in proper civil detainment facilities. They then have to fight these things through another branch of law that they will likely lose at. Again. I’m not saying it’s right or wrong, but that’s almost certainly a part of what’s going through these peoples heads.

rgaff August 26, 2015 10:35 PM

@ Chuckarama

No worries mate, I wasn’t intending to attack you personally either, just the excuses these guys make up for doing whatever they want and being like Hitler risen from the dead and etc… I fully intend to break out Godwin’s law on every thread on such subjects, I encourage others to do so too, people need to wake up to just how bad this really is. Hopefully BEFORE 11 million people are exterminated this time!

Wesley Parish August 27, 2015 12:28 AM

@albert

Washington, D.C.! The District of Columbia has only tacit representation inCongruous, which has absolute authority over it. So there’s no voter backlash:) The prison/industrial complex could lobby for a new prison, with plenty of solitary confinement capacity, and separate Shia and Sunni wings.

Brilliant idea! Put a solitary confinement wing on Capitol Hill! It’s already got 24/7 high security coverage and is thus ideal for hosting pterorists. All you need to do is to make sure nobody can escape – but then, all that needs to be done in that case is run the pterorists through the election system, and the chance of them escaping that becomes miniscule …

rgaff August 27, 2015 1:07 AM

@Wesley Parish, albert

Dungeons under the Capitol building? We can call them “heretics” like medieval times too, maybe have a few beheadings and burnings at the stake? Maybe build a colosseum so we can all be entertained by hungry wild beasts ripping them apart and devouring them? And we can do it in the name of “God” because they don’t belong to the same denomination as us too! I think you’ve stumbled onto something better than calling us all Nazis, we can all just be Catholics instead.

rgaff August 27, 2015 1:16 AM

And this way we get to murder somewhere between 50 to 150 million, instead of the measly 11 million Hitler did…

Smirk August 27, 2015 10:01 AM

@rgaff

A colleseum sounds like a good plan, can we all vote who to send in? Or is it only for a certain demographic group? Because in that case we should make it accesible for anyone, especially politicians.

On the other hand maybe we should stop voting at all and let the politicians have a proper battle to the death in which case the biggest and strongest warlock wins and becomes the new president?

albert August 27, 2015 10:43 AM

@Anura,
“…but until then people are not going to support a third party as it is basically throwing your vote away….”
.
Shirley you jest. Votes are meaningless, as is the whole political theater sham. Imagine for a moment, a 10-15% turnout for the next Prez election. What a strong message to send to the system, and the world. In countries with state-controlled media, the people are basically brainwashed, and as long as they have their bread and circuses, they’ll ignore anything of real importance. Yes, that includes the US and EU countries.
.
. .. . .. o

Anura August 27, 2015 11:19 AM

@albert

Like it or not, it’s how the mindset works in the US, but yes most of the vote doesn’t matter regardless. I was going to do analysis on two figures, one I call “wasted votes” and the other I call “inconsequential votes” but have never gotten around to gathering statistics on votes by states to compute it.

Wasted votes, by my definition, is the size of the largest set of ballots where if any combination of ballots from the set had not been cast, the result of the election would not have changed. If you have 100 people, and 60 vote for A and 40 vote for B, then there are 59 wasted votes, as all the votes going to B are wasted, and 19 votes for A (60-40+1) are wasted. Because of the electoral college, every single person who voted in a state that went to Romney in 2012 had their vote wasted, as well as everyone who voted for a third party, everyone who voted for Romney in a blue state, and a portion of the people who voted for Obama in a Blue state. Our wasted vote was probably on the order of 80%-90% in 2012.

Inconsequential votes, by my definition is the size of the largest set of ballots where no combination of votes within that set could have effected the results by changing who was voted for. This is, again, every single person who voted in a state that went to Romney in 2012, plus a much smaller portion of the people in the states that went to Obama, and the bulk of people who voted for Romney in a blue state (not necessarily all, as they could have caused a third party to win the state), but less than the wasted vote. My guess is that this constitutes around 80% of the ballots cast in 2012.

Anonymous Cow August 27, 2015 1:40 PM

…Dungeons under the Capitol building…

Most government buildings in DC already have ‘dungeons’. They just need to be ‘remodeled’.

M. August 28, 2015 3:03 AM

Lest we forget that Jim Carrey’s character in I Love You Philip Morris was based on a real guy. Evidently the movie’s prison breaks via faxes, fake AIDS tests, and smoke breaks were taken straight from the federal complaints and affidavits.

I love your blog, but why have a movie contest when you have Westlaw?

Wesley Parish August 29, 2015 2:43 AM

@albert

The system needs changing. Instead of electing representatives from a set of 1%ers who get bribed to run for office like it’s escaping from them, by other 1%ers who pay the bribes to get 50% ROI, elect who gets to spend time in the remodeled High-Security Capitol Hill under bogus charges of pterorism …

tank August 29, 2015 9:04 PM

Honestly, the thought of someone using a submarine to free terrorists is just ridiculous.

The real danger is terrorists getting hold of a Landkreuzer P. 1000 Ratte or a Landkreuzer P. 1500 Monster.

If terrorists could get one under control, they could do some real damage and the police would not be able to stop them with their outdated equipment!

The first tank has a main armament of 2 × 280 mm 54.5 SK C/34
and a secondary armament of 1 × 128 mm KwK 44 L/55, 8 × 20 mm Flak38, and
2 × 15 mm MG 151/15, the latter has 800 mm shells.

I just contacted my representative to let him know about this danger and recommend you to do the same.

Further information can be found on a website called ‘Wikipedia’.
I don’t know why the government lets them publish such dangerous information, which I am sure is classified.
They make it too easy for terrorists to build landkreuzers in their suburban garages.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landkreuzer_P._1000_Ratte

KROOB, Leader of Intergalactic Security Alliance August 29, 2015 10:13 PM

@tank

Landkreuzer, pffft

I say on a site like Schneier.com discussions must center around more realistic security concerns.

Based on my simulations it is very likely that Terrorists will eventually join forces with the Aliens in Area 51. They would subsequently attempt to free fellow Terrorists using an Intergalatic UFO, model EQDUH_8000. This is the largest ever spaceship built by the NaOOO Empire and is equipped the capability of teleportation, tractor-beams, and laser guns.

You eaaarthlings must contact Kansas Senator Pat Roberts and waarn him of this danger

Fascist Nation August 30, 2015 3:47 PM

Virtually none of them are terrorists in anything but the US legal systems’ definition which pretty much varies from day to day, policy to policy and evolves down to ‘terrorists are whoever we say they are, when we say they are and for as long as we say they are.’

A large minority have been cleared for release years ago but still rot in Guantanemo usually because the US military refuses the order including from their chicken in chief to release them.

Or they are combatants with a legitimate claim to have done nothing more than answer the call to take up arms to drive out murderous plunderers.

Utter Martyr Semmitch August 31, 2015 3:51 AM

I nominate Kansas Senator Pat Roberts for the position of Director of the Department of Silly Walks. Do we have a seconder? And a vote?

We have long needed such a foresighted individual to lead our proud nation in the development of Silly Walks, in the which we have been roundly trounced by mere Europeans … be a True Patriot and develop your very own Silly Walk before its too late!!! (My brother Hammer Necks Semmitch, working in the Dept of Silly Walks says it is not too late, though he is often stressed from overwork assessing and declining silly walks that are not at all silly. You will make his job a lot easier by putting facetious thought into your very own Silly Walks.)

Bill September 2, 2015 7:38 AM

Just a note perhaps this is segregation so that terrorists don’t do what domestic criminals do in prision – build criminal contacts.

George September 4, 2015 12:04 AM

Maybe when Hank Johnson’s idea of Guam tipping over will create a tsunami that will travel around South America, then into the Gulf and the terrorist sub will ride the wave up the Mississippi to the Missouri? It would happen in Sharknado, so it must be possible.

Pete September 17, 2015 1:23 PM

Insurgents and terrorists have a long successful track records and breaking out of prisons. They aren’t regular inmates, who don’t have a support structure outside of the prison. The combination of extra-prison material support and an almost complete lack of respect for human life, they get the job done. The US had to AIRSTRIKE a prision holding terrorists that got out of control.

Plus, I’ve spent time at Leavenworth Fort, as a TDY at FMSO. I’ve seen the prison and the public road they mention. What they didn’t mention was the fact that the prisoners maintain buffalo by the perimiter fence. Some of thesse terrorists are expert animal handlers and if the fence was cut, could ride off and out of that one stoplight town in a heartbeat. Add that to your movie escape plot list!

Leave a comment

Login

Allowed HTML <a href="URL"> • <em> <cite> <i> • <strong> <b> • <sub> <sup> • <ul> <ol> <li> • <blockquote> <pre> Markdown Extra syntax via https://michelf.ca/projects/php-markdown/extra/

Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.