Good post from Dave Pollard about the consequential costs of homeland security and the war on terror post 9/11.
Particularly liked this para :
[The significance] of the horrific attacks of 9/11 was not their high death toll or visual spectacle, but their ability to provoke a knee-jerk reaction in American conservatives that a recurrence of those attacks must be prevented at any cost. That cost has so far included the bankrupting of the US treasury, a widening of the disparity in quality of life between the rich and the poor to a gulf, and the opportunity cost (what otherwise could have been achieved by peacetime spending) of over a quarter trillion dollars per year.
“At any cost” – is just too simplistic a response to any real-world situation.