The twin bombings at the Boston Marathon are a tragic event and of course it brings out all of the politicians to capitalize on the event for their own ends.
Barney Frank: "In this terrible situation, let's be very grateful that we had a well-funded, functioning government. It is very fashionable in America, and has been for some time to criticize government, belittle public employees, talk about their pensions, talk about what people think ... of [their] health care. Here we saw government in two ways perform very well. ... I never was as a member of Congress one of the cheerleaders for less government, lower taxes. No tax cut would have helped us deal with this or will help us recover. This is very expensive."
David Axlerod: And I'm sure what was going through the president's mind is -- we really don't know who did this. It was tax day. Is it someone who was pro-[unintelligible]? You just don't know. And so, I think, his attitude is let's not put any inference into this. Let's just make clear that we're going to get the people responsible.
Well that certainly isn't suspicious rhetoric at all. One is bloviating on why taxes are good and you should pay more and the other is implying that beause it was tax day that it *may* have been pro-tax cut/libertarians/right-wing militia types that would have done this. He stops himself but not before the suggestion is in people's minds by inference.
For now that takes care of the politics. Time for the reality.
The FBI had a "drill" going on at the start and finish lines with bomb sniffing dogs and they were announcing to the public that it was a drill. Y'know to keep people from panicking. And then of course bombs ACTUALLY (not a drill) go off. This makes the facade of a drill drop. They had to have had a tip on solid information as to there being bombs, but no information as to exact location of said bombs. So They decided to try and have their cake and eat it too. They tried to keep the event going and still be heroes.
The simple explanation is that the FBI screwed up and should have evacuated the start and finish areas and cordoned it off so they could find the weapons easier than in the throngs of the crowd. But instead of prioritizing civilian lives they prioritized the bombs and the person planting said bombs. The marathon goers were nothing but bait and if there is anything to learn about law enforcement...you're cattle, bait so they can catch the criminal. Casualties are expected and simply the cost of doing business so to speak.
One would theorize that if they evacuated the area they might have scared off the person planting the weapons and the event would have simply happened later and they would have been even more off guard. Like at the Japanese Cherry Blossom Festival or some other event. From the intelligence analysis side this was an opportunity to get more intelligence and track things back more. From a public service side this was a failure of leadership/wrongful prioritization of short-term intelligence gain over public safety.
The FBI has a duty to come clean on this entire matter to clear itself with the public, but as one can see from above that the spin machine is already out and in full force to deflect attention from scrutiny and misdirect attention towards other entities to either obfuscate/deflect blame or frame-up an unrelated organization due to political unpopularity.
This is all based on a lack of malice by our own government and not everyone is as charitable as I am. The FBI was simply incompetent with zero leadership.
Good luck Boston.
