|
|
|---|
|
American Politics Journal Atrios Barry Crimmins Betty Bowers Buzzflash Consortium News Daily Howler Daily Kos Democatic Underground Disinfotainment Today Evil GOP Bastards Faux News Channel Greg Palast The Hollywood Liberal Internet Weekly Jesus General Joe Conason Josh Marshall Liberal Oasis Make Them Accountable Mark Morford Mike Malloy Political Humor - About.com Political Wire Randi Rhodes Rude Pundit Smirking Chimp Take Back the Media Whitehouse.org More Links |
Pot
growers are terrorists?
Any garden is a terror garden
What were they smoking?
Federal, state and local officials carrying out a counter-terrorism
drill in Northern California Wednesday
played out a scenario in which local marijuana growers set off bombs
and took over the Shasta Dam,
the nation’s second largest, to free an imprisoned comrade.
According to an account in the Redding (Calif.) Record Searchlight,
the 12-hour drill was part of the
U.S. Bureau of Reclamation's Critical Infrastructure Crisis Response
Exercise Program, begun in 2003.
“More than 250 people from more than 20 agencies took part,” said Sheri
Harral, a spokeswoman
for the Bureau of Reclamation, according to the paper.
Harral said the stupid drill took 18 months to plan and cost the taxpayers $500,000.
The other agencies covered their own costs with more money from taxpayers.
The paper made only passing reference to the scenario's designation of
pot growers as terrorist villians.
In the otherwise realistic mock-terror scenario, the marijuana growers’
“red cell” set off bus and car bombs
as distractions, took over the dam with three hostages, and then
“threatened to flood the Sacramento River
by rolling open the drum gates atop the dam,” according to the paper.
No matter how worthwhile a drill, said marijuana legalization
advocates, envisioning pot growers as
a terrorist threat in laid-back Northern California was ridiculous.
"That was so stupid," said Dale Gieringer, head of the California
chapter of NORML,
the decades-old National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.
"I don't know what inspired it,” Gieringer told the Drug War Chronicle.
“I can see the need to do better
pat downs for air travelers to
make sure they're not holding joints in their underpants, but this?
It sounds like something some yahoo redneck county sheriff would dream
up."
Pretending pot growers are terrorists is so stupid.
The truth is, Teabaggers screaming "Nigger in the White House"
are LOTS more likely to start a bloody civil war than pot growers.
When it comes to pot, we'd like less government, please,
but Obama and Holder are going down the Path of Illogic.
I wish Obama knew what the word "priorities" meant.