Plan for 'terror market' canceled
When I first heard this story, it felt like a flashback to my consulting days at Enron. Surely, I thought, no one (much less a public servant) with so much as a SHRED of human decency would come up with a cynical, half-assed scheme like this. God, I can be SO naive at times....
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Pentagon will abandon a plan to establish a futures market to help predict terrorist strikes, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee said Tuesday.
Sen. John Warner said he spoke by phone with the program's director, "and we mutually agreed that this thing should be stopped."
Warner announced the decision not long after Senate Democratic Leader Thomas Daschle took to the floor to denounce the program as "an incentive actually to commit acts of terrorism."
"This is just wrong," declared Daschle.
What, you may ask, would cause such moral outrage amongst those not normally known for experiencing pangs of moral relativism? Well, DARPA has come up with a plan that transcends the macabre, blows by the merely tasteless, and descends into the depths of the incomprehensibly amoral.
The little-publicized Pentagon plan envisioned a potential futures trading market in which speculators would wager on the Internet on the likelihood of a future terrorist attack or assassination attempt on a particular leader. A Web site promoting the plan already is available.
When the plan was disclosed by two Democratic senators Monday, the Pentagon defended it as a way to gain intelligence about potential terrorists' plans.
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton said she was appalled to hear of plans to set up "a futures market in death."
Other Democrats expressed similar alarm.
"The idea of a federal betting parlor on atrocities and terrorism is ridiculous and it's grotesque," said Sen. Ron Wyden one of two lawmakers who disclosed the plan Monday.
Yes, you read that correctly. DARPA will be running a futures market (i.e.- a gambling parlor) where people can essentially bet on the timing and location of terrorist attacks. Talk about trading in human suffering. Did anyone at DARPA stop to think what this might look like to the general public?? Apparently not.
Traders would buy and sell futures contracts -- just like energy traders do now in betting on the future price of oil. But the contracts in this case would be based on what might happen in the Middle East in terms of economics, civil and military affairs or specific events, such as terrorist attacks.
Holders of a futures contract that came true would collect the proceeds of traders who put money into the market but predicted wrong.
A graphic on the market's Web page Monday showed hypothetical futures contracts in which investors could trade on the likelihood that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat would be assassinated or Jordanian King Abdullah II would be overthrown....
....Democratic Sen. Byron Dorgan of North Dakota criticized the market.
Dorgan described the market as "unbelievably stupid."
"Can you imagine if another country set up a betting parlor so that people could go in ... and bet on the assassination of an American political figure or the overthrow of this institution or that institution?" he said.
It is difficult to fathom how normally well-intentioned public servants could conceive of a scheme where "investors" could profit from political assassinations and other forms of politically-motivated violence and terrorism. Of course, DARPA IS the agency that gave us the clusterf**k that is Total Information Awareness. That explains a lot, eh?
"Unbelievably stupid" is really an undeservedly charitable description of what is a horrifically cynical, tasteless, and senseless program. As I've said previously, sometimes the DUMASS AWARD wieners just choose themselves, and that is certainly true here. While I would prefer not to give an award to an institution, these folks have truly proven them DUMASSES (Call it TOTAL DUMASS AWARENESS if you must...). Congratulations to DARPA...yes, America, your tax dollars are hard at work...or something close to it.
