Joel Mowbray points out a serious problem. From the Washington Times:
The federal Bureau of Prisons is holding 119 persons with "specific ties" to international Islamist terrorist groups, yet has no full-time Arabic translators or a system to monitor their communications, The Washington Times has learned.
A congressional aide said Bureau of Prisons officials maintain an informal list of 17 employees who are proficient in Arabic. The prison officials acknowledge, however, that none of the workers had been tested to determine Arabic fluency or undergone a special screening or background check, the aide said.
Capitol Hill is starting to notice.
"It's ludicrous to think that the Bureau of Prisons doesn't have a single full-time translator to monitor their communications," said Sen. Charles E. Grassley, Iowa Republican, in a statement given to The Washington Times before Thursday's multiple terror bombings in London.
Mr. Grassley called the current system "a recipe for disaster."
"
"There is no question that the number of Arabic translators should be beefed up as quickly as possible -- the very last thing that prisoners should be able to do from behind bars is write a letter to encourage, recruit or aid terrorists in their plans to attack here or around the world," Sen. Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat, said in a separate statement to The Times.
After inquiries from members of Congress and The Times, prison officials said last week that they had hired one designated, full-time Arabic translator and plan to hire one more. But the employee had not begun work as of today and there was no indication of any fluency test or special background check...
Read it all.
This kind of bureaucratic inertia will continue until
(1)there is a bottom-up protest that moves the political-government jobs people to begin to make CYA noises...and then, after the first catastrophe, to do something,
or
(2)We have a top-down determination to change the direction and energy of our response. Remember Kennedy's decision to beef up the sciences in this country in order to win the space game? This needs the same kind of mobilization of spirit.
Bush could do it, but will he?
Why are we not churning out Arabists from our institutions of "higher" learning? Three guesses.
This is an easy problem to fix. First why we can't fix it. The libs don't want this country to survive. Second when we do get translators islamic arabs are given a preference say over coptics.
Now the fix. Make the US an english speaking country. Allow no verbal communications written or phone to occur from a prision to the outside except in American English. And that includes communication to lawyers. If the guy only knows arabic tough shit. He learns english or rots in prision. The only time he can use arabic is on rare cases in court where there is a trusted speaker and conversation recorded so other trusted people can check and double check.
Also serve pork they can starve if they like but islam allows them to do this if no choice so its ok its permitted.
Why not enlist the aid of the Israelis? They have plenty of arabic speakers. I know of an Rabbi who lived in the Gaza and speaks Arabic. What about the Christian Arabs in Iraq and Lebanon and Egypt? And the Christians in Saudi Arab... uh, forgot their forbidden in that country. Theres probably some Kurds and what about the Assyrians?
ecil_man ... thats a good idea and it don't cost a dime.
and save the american tax payer some money.
How many Arab Christians live around Detroit? Pay them to translate.