TIRED THINKING KILLS BOLD WAGER PLAN
EDITORIAL

30 July 2003
Dayton Daily News
A6

The pentagon's genius is being underestimated. Its plan to deter terrorism 
by setting up a wagering pool has been abandoned under bipartisan pressure, 
universal ridicule and unreasoning fear of comedians. It's a shame. Here the 
Pentagon had this subtle strategy for convincing the terrorists that the 
American government has been taken over by bobbleheads who wouldn't know 
foreign policy from rec room activity at a mental hospital. The advantages 
of imparting this impression can hardly be overstated. The terrorists would 
stop bothering to encode their e-mail and could be rounded up quickly.

Admittedly, there was one flaw in the strategy: Non-terrorists noticed the 
apparent bobblehead takeover even before the terrorists. The non-terrorists 
decided that such a takeover has downsides. And they turned out to be a more 
potent force than the obsessed terrorist fighters in the Pentagon remembered.

The now-abandoned wagering plan was deviously elegant. The government would 
establish and monitor a pool on when and where terrorist attacks were going 
to happen. That would provide the government with crucial information, much 
the way the government can find out how the dice are going to roll in Las 
Vegas by watching a high-roller's bets.

If you don't get the appeal of the government's plan, you just don't 
understand the genius of free markets the way the bureaucrats in the 
Pentagon do.

Some critics have suggested that real terrorists could have confused the 
government by betting that an attack would not take place, even as they were 
planning one. Those critics seem to think the terrorists are willing to lose 
their money. This is ridiculous, of course. Terrorism is about risking 
lives. Are people going to risk lives and money?

The wagering-pool idea was associated with the Pentagon office of retired 
Adm. John Poindexter, a central figure in the Iran-contra scandal of the 
1980s. Iran-contra was the plan to illegally raise money for Nicaraguan 
insurgents by selling arms to terrorist- supporting Iran in contravention of 
the announced policy of Mr. Poindexter's president. So some people are not 
surprised at the Poindexter connection. They will likely not resist the 
temptation to call the wagering pool the worst idea since Iran-contra.

But now it's back to square one for the government. The terrorists will have 
to be combatted through the regular gathering of intelligence. That 
intelligence will come through the same agencies that had President George 
W. Bush talking so certainly before the Iraq war about an Iraqi nuclear 
weapons program and about existing chemical and biological arsenals.

No wonder the people at the Pentagon were so eager to find another way to 
gather information.