Quick, run and hide! The terrorists are coming! We're all going TO DIE!!!
Well, maybe not right away. But, according to a Homeland Security database of assets vulnuerable to terrorist attack, Indiana has:
8,591 potential terrorist targets . . . 51 percent more sites listed than New York (5,687) and nearly twice as many as California (3,212), ranking the state the most target-rich in the nation.
The reason we rank so high, notes a report from the department's inspector general (full report here), is that the database is flawed, listing numerous "unusual or out-of-place" sites "whose criticality is not readily apparent." No kidding. Listed as potential terrorist targets are such "critical assets" as a petting zoo, a flea market, a bean fest and a bingo parlor. (Further examples Download chart.doc of out-of-place assets.)
What happened? According to the inspector general, states were asked to list whatever assets they had that "met national level criteria" and "had considerable latitude in determining what DHS meant by a nationally critical asset." And the states, not to put too fine a point on it, screwed up, resulting in a database in which noncritical assets outnumber the critical ones 3-to-1. A fair assessment would be that Indiana screwed up the most.
These out-of-place assets "make resource allocation decisions more challenging," the IG said. The database is used by Homeland Security to help divvy up the hundreds of millions of dollars in anti-terrorism grants each year, including the program announced in May that cut money to New York City and Washington by 40 percent, while significantly boosting spending for cities including Louisville, Ky., and Omaha, Neb.
All the news stories I've seen in the last few hours stop about here, having gleefully noted what seems to be a big foulup. What they fail to note is that this is a process, and the IG's report is one step in that process to weed out the "out-of-place" assets and make the list valuable.
Does this remind anyone of anything? Remember the book of short stories by Fort Wayne Native Michael Martone, "Fort Wayne Is Seventh on Hitler's List"? We've moved up in the world.
