Yesterday I began to read friend Antonio Soler's weekly article in Diario Sur and almost from the start it wasn't making sense to me. Something about the FBI and Gaspar Llamazares, the head of Spain's communist party and a member of congress. I had to google it. Last week the news got out that the FBI had used a photo of Llamazares in mocking up an image of what Ossama Bin Laden might look like today. How incompetent can you get? This is national security? It seems a lot more like national embarrassment. (According to Madrid daily El Mundo, the FBI admitted they had googled the image of Llamazares. Hmmm, why Llamazares?) Wow, these guys at the FBI are really working hard: incredibly, parts of Llamazares show up on the composites of two other wanted terrorists!) But the seriously dark side to this is that the FBI was being terribly reckless in their stupidity and risked creating an even bigger diplomatic mess than the one they've already created: imagine if Llamazares had travel plans to the US before this had become public. It could have been really ugly. Anyway, Soler had a funny take on all this: part of what really has Llamazares upset is that some hack at the FBI must have considered him sufficiently irrelevant to pull this keystone cops stunt. That hurts!
1.25.2010
Your tax dollars at work
Yesterday I began to read friend Antonio Soler's weekly article in Diario Sur and almost from the start it wasn't making sense to me. Something about the FBI and Gaspar Llamazares, the head of Spain's communist party and a member of congress. I had to google it. Last week the news got out that the FBI had used a photo of Llamazares in mocking up an image of what Ossama Bin Laden might look like today. How incompetent can you get? This is national security? It seems a lot more like national embarrassment. (According to Madrid daily El Mundo, the FBI admitted they had googled the image of Llamazares. Hmmm, why Llamazares?) Wow, these guys at the FBI are really working hard: incredibly, parts of Llamazares show up on the composites of two other wanted terrorists!) But the seriously dark side to this is that the FBI was being terribly reckless in their stupidity and risked creating an even bigger diplomatic mess than the one they've already created: imagine if Llamazares had travel plans to the US before this had become public. It could have been really ugly. Anyway, Soler had a funny take on all this: part of what really has Llamazares upset is that some hack at the FBI must have considered him sufficiently irrelevant to pull this keystone cops stunt. That hurts!
