The US Government translated an al Qaeda training manual, found in a computer file in London.  The file is being used as evidence against bin Laden.  They have also released the intelligence that England shared with the US, which is an impressive body of evidence.  The government has posted this information on the internet.

            I now have a copy of the al Qaeda terrorist training manual.  (Why?  Insight into how they work.  "Know your enemy better than you know yourself."  --Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings.)

            I've been trying to get a copy of The Anarchist's Cookbook for several years now.  You never know when something like that could come in handy.  (The unforeseen circumstances that come up.  The neighborss barking dog finally drives me over the edge with its incessant barking.  Canada and Mexico get squirrelly and stage a joint invasion of the United States.)  It's next to impossible to get a copy of the Cookbook without leaving a paper trail that a blind man could follow.  But I can walk into a bookstore and buy a copy of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf.  Or open a newspaper and get the exact recipe that Tim Mc Veigh used to blow up children and innocent people in Oklahoma City.

            Or I can download a copy of the terrorist's handbook that gives information on intelligence gathering and how to cause the most damage with the fewest losses.  And if I can find this (it took me several weeks to figure out how to post pictures on this site), and download it, any Prozac-filled five-year-old can get ahold of it.  It took me longer to download the first section of the document than it did for me to find it in the first place.  I was not even looking for it.

            I know that just reading it (let alone downloading it) has "flagged" me as a potential subversive (at best).  With modern technology, it is terribly easy to find out who has accessed a site and the files it contains.  My little Bravenet counter lets me know the way that my site was accessed (which ISP, if it was a direct hit or through some other portal; nothing specific, as it is free).  I can only imagine how much information the US Government can get with the resources that they have.

            It's like gun registration.  The story is that it makes the weapon easier to track if it gets stolen or used in a crime.  The reality is that the government has a database of registered gun owners and what weapons they have in their possession.  Why would they want that information?  So that they know whose doors to bust down when Martial Law goes into effect.

            Why, then, would they make the al Qaeda training manual public?  Would it not be an issue of national security to keep it under wraps?  Should it be enough to say that they have this in their possession?  After all, any yutz with five bucks and a vendetta can walk into Kinko's and invisibly download it to disc.  It's almost as though the government is asking for another series of attacks.  They need an excuse to justify the "Homeland Security" progrom.  It seems that they are looking for a reason to increase their stranglehold on the citizens.

            If you believe that the Homeland Security progrom is aimed at profiling potential terrorists among forgein nationals in this country, or seeking out the groups that pose a direct and violent threat to this country, think again.  They are profiling everyone.  Twenty-one agencies, from the CIA, FBI, INS, and ATF, to the health care system, have fallen under the Homeland Security blanket.

            No one is safe.