Monday, September 15, 2008

because terrorists are dumb?

The city of Washington, DC, needs to calm down. I've said this before and last week this blog inadvertently proved to you just how far some people may go to demonstrate this. Now not only am I convinced this blog's e-mission is needed more than ever, but The Anti DC is ready to take on much bigger, more powerful entities, like the U.S. Secret Service.

Yep, despite the Secret Service being armed with high-powered scopes and sniper rifles, this blog's about to come at them with two giant middle e-fingers displayed clearly in the ether:

nllm mlln (It kind of works, right? I-66 thinks so.).

The reason I'm e-flicking off the Secret Service is because of this incident, written by Too Much Skunk In Your Trunk. Basically, this woman's bike almost got snuffed out by the Secret Service for looking "suspicious" and being locked about half-a-block from the White House:

apparently i parked it a little too close to the white house (about a half block away), and my little basket in the back was filled with dirty clothes, which understandably looked bomb-like. by the time i got back to my bike after the too-short tour, some security guard warned me that my bike was very suspicious-looking and because a bomb threat had been called into the white house (which i assume is a common occurrence), they were about to cut my lock and blow up my bike. [All lowercase was TMSIYT's choice, btw.]

What the mothereffing what?! While I have no intention of fact-checking this story to learn if it's actually true, I'm going to err on the side laziness and just believe what I've read -- The United States Secret Service saw a bike with some laundry on it, mistook it for an improvised explosive device (IED) and decided to blow it up. Seriously, in what world (besides DC) is that not retardulous? Here are my qualms:

1) Isn't there technology to "sniff" out IEDs now? Actually, I know there is. They have robots to do this.

2) Also, terrorists probably know the best way to terrorize America is to keep G.W. Bush in power. (ZING!)

3) It's a f*cking bike with some laundry shoved in the basket.

Now, I get how a bundle of dirty laundry could be used to disguise an IED, however, let's dip into the mind of an aspiring terrorist for a second. How amateur would it have been if that actually was a bomb? Check-minus, terrorist! How obvious!

Now, terrorists might not be the most sane of persons, at least as the word "sane" is defined in my very Western-World view, but they're also not the dumbest. They've done their research and I'm assuming they'd know not to just put a pipe bomb in a f*cking bike basket and cover it in dirty laundry. Terrorist school must teach them something, no? Or maybe not. I guess I wouldn't know since I'M NOT A TERRORIST (please take note of that, Department of Homeland Security).

Anyway, in the end, the Secret Service didn't blow up TMSIYT's bike because she came back just in time to claim it. However, let's assume for a moment that she didn't and they did blow it up. As those ridiculous commercials would say, "Now what?" Would they have left a note for TMSIYT telling her of their plans? Would they make it look like the bike was simply stolen? Would TMSIYT get reimbursed? If so, would it be out of the federal or District coffers? Or would TMSIYT simply be f*cked? Do we automatically give up the rights to our property if the Secret Service mistakes it for that of a terrorist?

There are so many unanswered questions that I vow never to get to the bottom of (I don't like legwork). And so, we shall assume the answers to the aforementioned queries are: Yes and it would read, Dear Suspected Terrorist, We have taken your bike and will blow it up in a controlled environment. Suck it, U.S. Secret Service; No, they'd make it look like it had never been there at all just to further f*ck with you; No and you'd be sent to Gitmo; What does it matter, you're in Gitmo; Yes, you'd simply have been f*cked (in Gitmo, remember?); Probably.

Anyway, watch your bikes!

5 comments:

I-66 said...

But did anyone stop to ask how our bomb sniffing technology feels about it?

John Foster said...

I couldn't read any further once I saw that she had 1) a basket in the back of her bike and 2) it was filled with dirty clothes.

Stevious said...

I'm pretty sure my dirty undies could just do with being taken away to laundranamo.

If they took my bike though I might have to declare war on everything.

Laura said...

Ugh. This further exacerbates my frustration remaining from when I worked on K St., and there were often homeless people's shopping carts filled with dirty clothes and rubbish at the very busy pedestrian intersection of Conn Ave & K. It was always looking like haphazard IEDs strewn about, but the ever-present police force ignored it... [Incidentally, that is a very good site for spotting Croc-and-suit sporting, horrifically-dressed downtown Washington cogs.]

Granted, I have embarrassingly little patience for the homeless given my usual excessively liberal stance, especially when they're cluttering my morning walkway (don't tell!). But really--any learned terrorist could have easily disguised whatever the hell they wanted as more bum-luggage and blown that place to bits. We'll ignore that, but by God, we'll fuck up your environmentally-friendly mode of transportation if it's too close to Georgie-Woo!!

Anonymous said...

Hippies. Hippies all......

:)