Wonkette
Remember on the ANNIVERSARY OF 9/11 when the Coast Guard held some make-believe high-speed boat chase — they were chasing Osama bin Laden, on the actual Potomac River! — with guns shots and radio screams but didn’t bother to tell a single human being beforehand that it was a drill? Never will such miscues happen again! See, this time around, we know in advance that hundreds of emergency response officials are going to waste insane amounts of resources on a pretend 24esque high-speed Osama Chase tomorrow across all of Northern Virginia, so it’s okay! And if all goes as planned, homeland security teams will be prepared for the real Al Qaeda-coordinated triple-bomb/chemical weapon spill on Route 50 car chase scenario, scheduled for a Christmas release.
And just to make this article as surreal as possible, for good measure, of course the main dude’s name has to be Mark Penn:
Hundreds of police officers, fire and rescue personnel, FBI agents and hospital workers will respond to a simulated terrorist attack in Northern Virginia to test the region’s emergency response system Saturday morning.
“This is the largest full-scale exercise we’ve had in this region,” said Mark Penn, Alexandria’s emergency management coordinator and co-director of the day’s events.
A “bomb” on the tracks north of Crystal City will result in damage to a rail car carrying hazardous materials, leaving multiple burn victims. A second simulated bomb will go off at a Park and Ride near the Dulles Greenway and Old Ox Road, and a third will detonate between the parking lot and the station platform at the Virginia Railway Express Rippon Station in Woodbridge. In Fairfax County, a police chase will end when a truck carrying bombs and chemicals overturns near Route 50 and the Fairfax County Parkway. Volunteers will act as victims in need of medical attention.
Exercises and play scenarios are the cornerstone of first-response readiness, and local jurisdictions are adept at working together on everyday emergencies such as car crashes and house fires, Penn said.
A widespread disaster presents additional challenges as incident commanders across the region attempt to assess patients’ needs and allocate limited resources accordingly. In addition, they have to be able to coordinate with hospitals so some trauma centers aren’t overloaded while others sit empty, and hospitals have to be able to deal with a surge of patients.
“A truck carrying bombs and chemicals.”
This is bullshit. Have they even thought this out? What are they going to do when Tony Almeida comes back from the grave and turns “heel” on Jack Bauer and steals a canister of the bombs and chemicals from the truck and then threatens to vaporize the chemicals into the atmosphere with a new robot device, killing upwards of 300,000 civilians — and that’s before he uses the bombs. He could sell those bombs for a profit to any number of rather unsavory global corporates! Didn’t it occur to any idiot at DHS to consider how the GODDAMN PROFIT MOTIVE figures into Tony Almeida’s thinking??
(While all of this is happening tomorrow, Osama will just nuke us.)
‘Disaster’ Will Test Readiness [Washington Post]
BREAKING: The Boston Police have begun locking down the entire city…
Is that Lost Boy roughing up ESPN’s Scott Van Pelt or Karl Rove? Because either one is fine with me.
This is what happens when your president has a deep-seated hatred for white culture.
and where will the Counter Terrorist Unit (CTU) be while this is going on? Oh, I forgot, the nazi commies shut them down for … well, something.
The Army of Northern Virginia?
How can I get involved? I want to be a pretend victim, and go “off-script” when the hot EMT guy comes over and starts working on me. I can fake respiratory arrest (holds breath), what’s the treatment for that, stud?
So they’ll think that it’s the real Rock Ridge, while we’ll know that it’s the fake Rock Ridge!
Sounds like a good time to bomb the rest of Virginia.
homeland security’s gonna hafta take a raincheck on this, guys, they’re busy up pittsburgh way, wearing combat fatigues and bundling protesters into unmarked cars. (the identity of the bundlers is completely unverified, but most of the rest of this rumor is true, i saw it on the internets and you know lying is not allowed on the internets.)
norbizness: it’s Truman Capote.
Jack sure as hell better win that AK-47 raffle, or we are FUCKED!
keifer chokin rove…i like…I LIKE!
Are we gonna practice cavity searches?
Great. I’ll have to take a black helicopter to get home tomorrow.
Wag the bomb.
This is not a drill…I repeat, this is not a drill.
Authorities are rushing to arrest Glenn Beck for the murder and rape of a young girl.
Or so I hear.
Mark Penn is an emergency management co-ordinator? I mean, he did make a disaster of Hillary’s campaign, but I guess Alexandria isn’t quite up to speed on what a disaster manager is supposed to do.
OT, but apparently at G20 there was a glorious and very realistic wax museum:
http://images.huffingtonpost.com/gadgets/slideshows/2889/slide_2889_40867_large.jpg
Haha..look at Barry keeping horny leather sex goat Berlusconi in check.
They should save a buck and do it the New Orleans way. Instead of
‘Disaster’ Will Test Readiness
try
Disaster Will Test Readiness
SayItWithWookies: “deep-seated” is a condition that most conservative pundits including rush and glenn suffer from. i think you meant “deep-seeded.”
Extemporanus: PHEW!
Judging by this photo taken at the BBQ, he’s got that shit in the bag.
Chain Tattoo: Heh..that’s funny. Mark Penn would be the last person I want handling a 3 am call.
Come here a minute: Il Douche
That’s almost as much of a timely and detailed warning as Bush had in August 2001.
user-of-owls: Win.
Piff! Sounds like a Grumpy Family reunion. Good times.
Larry Fine: Roscoe wants you to call him now.
ChernobylSoup v2:
“Bin Laden Determined To Drive Poorly Near Route 50 And The Fairfax County Parkway.”
iantenna: You tell me.
deep-seated
deep-seeded
Have they even scouted out a fuckpad for Bernie Kerik?
Here’s a real entrepreneurial idea. Have a factory make life like Osama bin laden blow up dolls. If everyone puts Osama in the front seat of their cars and drive around the “exercise” site, that would be a blast.
SayItWithWookies: whoops. i guess my desire to make a large ass joke ran away with my knowledge of the english language.
El Pinche: I’m going to bet Rove does, too…
mephistopheles jefferson: ty
G20
New Toys
Police State
Homeland Gestapo
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY
TRAINING EXERCISE OFFICE
WASHINGTON, D.C, HEADQUARTERS
PRESS RELEASE
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY ENLISTS ACTORS TO HELP IN DISRUPTIVE TRAINING
EXERCISE IN WASHINGTON, D.C., METROPOLITAN AREA; EXPECT NOISE, CONFUSION
SEPT. 25, 2009, Washington, D.C.—The U.S. Department of Homeland Security today announced its lineup of professional actors who are helping with what officials expect to be a very disruptive, loud and confusing training exercise in the Washington, D.C. area.
Here are the professional actors expected to help out during the confusing exercise: Chuck Norris, Jean Claude Van Damme, Bruce Willis, Sylvester Stallone, Stephen Seagal, Daniel Craig, Clive Owen, Pierce Brosnan, Nicholas Cage, Jason Stratham, Vin Diesel, Jet Li, Chow Yun Fat, Michelle Yeoh, Jackie Chan, Carl Weathers, Jim Brown, and Tom Berenger.
# # #
Car 54, where are you?
good because tomorrow I will not be in Virginia. I hope this fake crap doesn’t screw up Metro even more than it is currently screwed up.
They’re calling it “Operation Sherman”. I predict that something will be set on fire.
Whatever. They’ll get to Tysons Corner and get stuck in traffic forever THE END.
Al Quaeda will now have to cross that Five Guys in that Rt. 50 strip mall off its list of priority targets.
But unlike Civil War Re-enactors, they won’t have to waste millions of taxpayer dollars on Union greys and fake mutton chops.
Tony Almeida is DEAD!?
Thanks for the Spoiler Alert, jerks!
[/a little behind on 24.
SayItWithWookies: WIN.
WOLVERINES!
So al Queda’s targets are the pentagon, the world trade center, the white house, and the park & ride near the Dulles Greenway and Old Ox Road. Check.
Scruffy_The_Janitor: Don’t play with my emotions.