National Woes - Army anti-terror expert sees a need

To ask the right question - at the right time - is paramount

While talking to a dozen voters at a roadside barbecue stand
in the Waco suburb of China Spring, Dr. Dave McIntyre looked
up at the host, a Baylor doctoral candidate in statistical
math, and asked him what is the most important element in
one of his investigations.

The answer came in less than a heart beat.

You have to first pose the correct question, the inquiry
that will reveal the totality of the problem or phenomenon
you are studying.

You don't go and pursue the answers to dozens of questions.
You focus on one question at a time if you want to achieve
results.

A 30-year veteran of the Army, a Colonel who spent the last
half of his career teaching and writing about matters of
national security, anti-terror, border control, and drug
smuggling, the candidate in the Repubican Primary for
Congressional District 17 says the focus should be out-of-
control government spending and attacking a national debt
that will engulf and strangle the American economy - not if,
but when the prime rate rises from its present ground zero
level.

"The challenge is to develop moral courage."

He sees that as the difference between himself and a large
field of other candidates, one of whom is a former CIA
Station Chief with a lot of experience in African nations
emerging from brush fire wars of national liberation, Chuck
Wilson of Waco, another of whom is a retired petroleum
executive, a small business man and a Registered Nurse.

It's knowing the question before you take action to learn
the answer. That's the key.

"We've got to get the right question."

He thinks he has the right question.

The Baylor doctoral candidate explained that a young
research biologist came to him for a mathematical model that
would explain "basking" among turtles on the Brazos River.
They bask in the sunshine because, as cold-blooded reptiles,
they must somehow increase their blood temperature at will.

The goal, then, was to determine why they bask where they do
and when they do.

But there was a further, insurmountable problem facing the
mathematician. The biologist had supplied tons of
information about the logs where the turtles bask. There was
no doubt as to which logs turtles preferred because of their
angle of declination, their height above the water, their
shape and surface. But she had neglected to give him any
information about the logs eschewed by turtles in search of
a sun bath.

Part of the question, then, was to determine which logs
turtles find undesirable when it's time to warm their blood
and get started on their day.

At this point, Dr. McIntyre interjected a comment.

"Remember, now, we paid for all this."

The audience burst into merry laughter.

"There was no control information," the mathematician
concluded.

As a frustrating result, the statistical analysis was skewed
and flawed.

Dr. McIntyre agreed.

"Knowledge is power." He sees an out of control government
in a runaway mode with no one at the switch to curb
excessive spending and the addition of pork barrel items to
literally any appropriations bill that may come along.

Why?

Because the members of Congress have no really reliable
information by which to guide their decision-making process.

They have to bring home the bacon and they will do it any
way they can.

How to remedy the situation?

Change the culture - one member of Congress at a time.

"Our problem in America is not political; it's moral."

Item: He sees an "unremitting hostility" toward Christianity
in the American government. How does one remedy something
that admittedly emanates from the court system.

Transparency is the answer, according to the candidate.
Senators should have complete access to a judge's past
performance in court, his opinions and the way he has
treated people and their issues.

The key to destabilizing the American culture has been to
remove parental control in families and replace it with a
bureaucratic solution for every problem involving a couple's
progeny.

Other than that, "I think the government should be
respectful toward religion."

What about the problem of lawmakers passing bills they could
not have possibly had the time to read?

He says he assigns his doctoral students 100-page reading
assignments based on the amount of time it takes the average
person to read 25 pages at a page a minute followed by a
break of so many minutes between pages.

How long would you expect a person to take to read 1,000
pages, then?

"You're looking at a forty-hour work week."

And yet, complex bills such as the Patriot Act or the Health
Care Reform Act land on lawmakers' desks on any given day
and the leadership of their party expects them to vote on
the matter the next night, an impossibility if one expects
an understanding of the matter at the time the vote is cast.

And yet, it happens all the time.

"Our party has to do something that has never before been
done in history," he said. "Put the bills on the internet."

He wants to see all bills delivered to a website in "clean"
language, not chopped up into notes about how this language
will replace the existing language in this subsection of
that Article of whatever Title of the U.S. Code.

"Why in the world in the 21st century can't we have a clean
copy of the law?"

TEA Party enthusiasts in the throng readily agreed after
their experiences trying to interpret the Health Care Reform
Act and other measures that rankle their sensibilities.

It won't be an easy thing to accomplish, Dr. McIntyre added.

"All the power centers that exist now will be opposed to
this."

How to lower costs so that taxpayers can deal with the
enormous prices of items such as health care?

To lower the cost of apples, one needs to produce more
apples. Supply and demand is the only true control and
predicter of what an item is worth.

That's why trauma centers are built to accomodate casualties
in major disasters. Once the facilities are in place, they
may service the needs of more people at any given time.

He predicts a nuclear attack on American soil some time in
the future. When the time comes, the casualties will fill
every burn unit in the nation.

How does Obamacare stack up against that reality?

"It's not about health care; it's about redistribution." He
explained that the present legislation will not increase the
amount of aspirin by one unit. It will merely redistribute
the method of dispensing aspirin. To lower costs, provide
more health care resources.

That includes the training and certification of more doctors
- both general practitioners and specialists - and nurses.

Drug smuggling and border security and control?

We need to do what every other nation from Germany and
Czechoslovakia to Israel and Japan has already done.

"We need a 15-minute response time to any threat or breach."

How will that be done? Helicopters. A lot of helicopters.

"Border Patrol officials have done so much with so little
for so long," he declared, "they have trouble seeing their
way clear to any expansion of their forces whatsoever."

We're dealing with a 19th century bureaucracy that is trying
to meet the challenges of the 21st century.

Colombian drug lords now bring in $100 million loads of dope
on mini-submarines the size of two tour buses. Once the
mission is accomplished, they scuttle the subs and build
more of them. That's how lucrative the American market for
drugs really is.

"You would think when you're dealing with an item like that
- a minisub - that you would be talking about four or five
of them. That's not the case."

At any one time, there are as many as one hundred of these
mini-submarines in operation.

At the anti-drug task force's border intelligence center in
El Paso (EPIC), you will find DEA officials sitting at desks
next to Border Patrol agents and FBI officials who refuse to
share their information within earshot of BATFE cops.

Why? The big bust, the huge success, sets the pace for next
year's budget. They wouldn't dare let anyone get ahead of
them.

Drugs are a DEA problem. Human trafficking is an INS and
Border Patrol problem. Sex slavery is an FBI problem.

The solution?

Go after the corruption attendant with drug money and the
proceeds of organized crime - megabucks that have to go
somewhere.

Drug smugglers don't put their money in the bank; they buy
the bank. No one in the community says anything about the
violence and the corruption because, it's simple enough to
see, "They can't call the cops. They're illegal aliens.

"I saw it with the opium trade in the Burma Triangle.
Public officials from the military to the courts were bought
off within a matter of months. You're talking about
multibillions of dollars in cash flow."

It kind of made it hard to prosecute a war on behalf of a
nation like South Vietnam when its officials were making
billions of dollars in illicit drug money. After all, war
requires all of a man's attention, and it's hard to maintain
a focus when one is thinking about where that next block of
megacurrency is going - Switzerland or Hong Kong?

Hawaiian real estate or Los Angeles liquor distributorships?

On the American border, banks, courts, cops, county and
state governments and Federal agencies are co-opted by the
multibillion dollar onslaught of drugs.

"We've got to go after the corruption."

At one point, he looked point blank into the gathered voters
and said, "Congress has to grow a spine."

jim@downdirtyword.com