We are Absurd

Apparently, the PTB have been negotiating with an imposter they thought was a high-ranking official of the Taliban. It's pretty bad when you don't even know who the top leaders of your enemy are.

The United States government has no idea how to fight the war in Afghanistan. They have no idea how to stop people from blowing up or hijacking aircraft. They have no idea how to defend our borders against invasion or even how to define an invasion.

Or else they are doing a very good job of pretending that they don't.

In either case, we as a nation have become absurd. We deserve the ridicule of the rest of the world.
Update: I don't know whether these kinds of actions are the spasms of a pre-rigor corpse or a sign of fitful life:

Several members of Congress — including Reps. John Mica, R-Fla., and Rep. Thomas Petri, R-Wis., who are set to assume leadership of aviation issues in Congress next year when Republicans take control — have demanded that the TSA restrict the use of the thorough pat-downs. Last week, state lawmakers in New Jersey announced a resolution calling the machines' scans a violation of the Fourth Amendment against unreasonable search and seizure, and members of New York's City Council said they would introduce legislation to ban use of the machines in the city.

Update 11/24/2010: I agree with rienzi's comment at voxday:

We're told that this Al-Queda organization has an organized structure, plenty of funds, and thousands of jihadis who just can't wait to be martyrs. Yet, in more than nine years, they have supposedly been able to pull off only a handful of bombings.

If they really are such a threat, how come stuff isn't being blown up on almost a weekly basis? Either they're the most passive, lazy, incompetent terrorist organization that ever existed, or they've been so thoroughly infiltrated that they can't pull off the smallest job without having most of the world's security sevices know about it in advance, in which case they are no threat whatsoever.

Also puzzling, it that they never follow up on success, and seem obsessed with airplanes. Blow up subway stations and buses full of Brits. A big success, but never tried again. The country is full of soft targets that ought to be tempting as hell to any self-respecting terrorist: football stadiums, shopping malls, schools, government offices, and yet in more than nine years they haven't pulled off one successful major attack. Two guys in a van, with one rifle, freaked out the entire DC metro area, and yet, a supposedly large and well-funded terrorist organization can't do the same thing?

With every passing day, the idea that there really is no such thing as an "Al-Queda" organization out to get get us, and that its mostly just false flag/black ops with a few independent loose cannons thrown in seems to be less tin-foil hat, and more realistic.