Terrorist Bingo

From ACLU comes word this week that the official double-secret probation list of suspected terrorists in our midst has hit a million names.

Let's look at the math. On the morning of September 11, 2001, there were no more than about 6,000 people in the world with a violent terrorist agenda, a willingness to commit suicide to serve that agenda, and the resources and connections needed to actually carry out a serious terrorist attack. We are literally talking about one in a million people. It is sobering to contemplate the fragility of a global society that cannot withstand human contaminants on the order of one part per million.

In any case that number, despite the Bush Administrations best efforts to vastly increase the number of people who hate us, hasn't really changed that much. Let's say for the sake of argument that it's up to 10,000 people now. Even if you make the heroic assumptions that every one of those people is in or headed to the United States, and even if you assume that the Ministry of Homeland Security has managed to get every one of those people on the magic list of People We Don't Like (improbable), the list is 99% fluff. If you make far more realistic assumptions - say, 10% of the people we should actually should care about are both on the list and have a sudden urge to fly around the US -  the list is 99.9% fluff. And that's generous. There are a lot of Robert Johnsons and Gary Smiths and Jim Robinsons in the world, but they are only three of the names on the list.

The next target to celebrate will be the point where the number of names on the terrorist watch list exceeds the US prison population, sometime towards the end of McCain's first term.