NYT:Pentagon,Citing (terror) Fears,to Shut Child Center(parent "outrage")

[DeepModem Mom]

Pentagon, Citing Fears, Plans to Shut Child Center
By ERIC SCHMITT

Published: July 15, 2004


....Citing intelligence that the Pentagon is the second most likely target for a terrorist attack in the capital region after the White House, military officials want to shut the day care building next to the Pentagon by the fall. Officials said that they hoped to build a new center nearby but that it would not be finished until 2007.

Dozens of Pentagon parents are expressing outrage at the decision, which was announced on July 7, arguing that their day care center faced no greater risk of attack than those operated for Senate and House employees on Capitol Hill or centers at other federal agencies like the State Department and Central Intelligence Agency.

None of those sites plan to close, federal officials said.

Some parents said they suspected that the Pentagon appetite for additional parking, storage space or even a heliport was behind the decision, suspicions that Pentagon officials dismissed as scurrilous rumors....

***

At stake are the 140 or so coveted child care spots that parents say they have in some cases waited months or years to claim. The center, which opened in 1989 and is operated by a contractor, is a one-story concrete building about 200 feet from the southern end of the Pentagon....


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/15/politics/15pentagon.html?hp

[izzie]

1. Well it is good the golf courses were build far enough away.

They will not need to be shut. After all that would be a shame when Congress built so many of them for the higher rates in the last congress under Newt.

[FormerOstrich]

2. We might as well cut the defense budget

and pack it in if they don't have confidence they can protect our elections or theirselves (within 200 feet). Good Grief. I feel so much safer now.

I think I'll go shopping. Ooops, but I have no money.

[Hekate]

3. Washington DC has been turned into an armed camp, a fortress

Can't remember which newscast I was watching tonight (maybe CBS) but they had a segment about how all the tourist sites have been completely blocked to visitors. Take the $25 day-pass tour but don't bother to get off the bus: the White House, Washington's Monument, and just about everything else is barricaded behind several layers of concrete, chain-link fencing, and view-blocking plastic.

It's a grotesque and horrifying lock-down. Normal newscasts that use the Capitol building and other sites as background are either using telephoto lenses to "see" past all this crap or perhaps old footage.

You know that thing we were all saying three years ago? About how if we throw away our freedoms in the name of safety the terrorists will have won?

Look at what the Bushies have done to us.

Hekate

[Cooley Hurd]

6. I love the city of Washington...

The history that radiates from so many sites is, to a history buff like myself, is truly palpable. However, I haven't been there since Bush took office - I have a feeling that the "radiant history" has been replaced by fear, loathing and the smell of chimp dung. Once Kerry is elected, DC will be back on my vacation itinerary...

I want my Capital back! :(

[DeepModem Mom]

7. Feel the same way about the city --

One of my daughters went a couple of years ago, and was walking across the Mall and just started crying. None of the rest of the family has been, or wanted to go, since the Bush cabal seized that beautiful city in its evil grip.

[MountainLaurel]

17. Don't come -- you'll be sick

Last summer I went down to the Mall for the first time in a couple years. (I actually live here, but grad school rules my life.) I almost cried -- everything there is surrounded by concrete jersey barriers and orange snow-fence, or by 6-foot wooden fencing. To enter one of the Smithsonians, you have to wait in line to be anally probed by the security officers, so no quick trips to enjoy the air conditioning or go to the restroom. And everywhere there are police and federal law enforcement (not to mention the camera system) examining you as the enemy.

[Redhead488]

9. Yeah, that's why there are so many tanks

and AAA batteries in the streets of DC. I mena armed troops EVERYWHERE you go. It is SUCH an armed camp.

[LizW]

10. True

We took the kids to Washington this spring and there were so many things we didn't get to see because of high security and the resulting long lines. I can't count how many times my bag was searched. The thing that pissed me off the most was not being able to get close up and see the Constitution. You can see it, but only in small groups and the line is forever. We also couldn't go in the FBI building, which the kids had been looking forward to. They had a really surly guard out front, too.

The boys begged an armed guard at the front of the Capitol to let them reach through the barrier and touch the steps, just so they could say they had touched it. I remember when I was a little girl, you could just walk in and wander around the Rotunda. :(

[DeepModem Mom]

11. LizW, the image of your boys reaching to touch the Capitol steps...

is quite moving. (I remember being able just to walk in, and wander around the Rotunda, too.) Their desire to touch those steps indicates to me that you've talked to them about the importance of that building, and they understand it. I'll bet they grow up and make us all proud.

[LizW]

22. It was a very special moment

I was proud of them for not being intimidated by an armed guard, but at the same time, I was sad that this is the only world they know.

:(

[Hekate]

23. I fell in love with DC the first time I saw it, 20+ years ago

Since I've lived my whole life in Hawaii and California, a visit to the nation's capital was not on any school field trip agenda. I went to Massachussetts for my sister's wedding and made a side trip to DC to visit a college friend.

I spent several days in May walking the city and felt for myself the impact of all the early architecture -- I understood the Jefferson Memorial as a secular cathedral to the noblest ideals of humankind, and it just about brought tears to my eyes. I was blown away by the Smithsonian museums. I vowed to find a way to bring my kids there.

Fifteen years ago, when my daughter was 13 an my son was 11, the airlines had a bodacious fare war and we went, staying with the same old friend. (Going in July turned out to be a bit of a mistake as it was hotter than blazes and humid to boot. A brief rain caused all the buildings and pavement to steam.) By contacting my Representative beforehand I got tickets for guided tours to the White House, the Capitol, the Mint, the FBI, and other places. We went to the NASA museum to see the biplanes and the space suits. When we had been in the Jefferson Memorial for awhile I asked the kids: "Did you know he was a Unitarian too?" My son said, "Yeah Mom, I read your T-shirt," meaning the one I bought at a church fundraiser and sometimes wore around the house.

I am so glad I took the kids back then. When my daughter and I went to the pro-choice march on Washington a few months ago we didn't have the time to do anything but march-related activities in those few days, so we didn't see what had been done to our city, our national shrine to the ideals of freedom and equality.

What a nightmare.

Hekate

[demnan]

4. If it were my kids

I'd want them off site close by. I actually moved from close to the Pentagon. It made me feel like a sitting duck to live on the hill above that building. I moved 30 miles down the road. They can still have a convenient day care close by. There are plenty of places along Columbia Pike that would be better sites for Day Care, some of which are near park areas.

[ronabop]

5. 3 frigging *years* to build a day care?

I'm glad these fools don't think they can destroy a country, and then claim they've rebuilt thousands of schools and hospitals, and officially turn over control before the shooting has even stopped...

Oh, wait...

-Bop

[Zech Marquis]

8. even on my recent trip to the DC area

I was actually closer to Baltimore. I imagine that DC has been turned nto a massive fortress :-( That pretty much sums up the clowns n charge now, hiding in their bunkers and leaving the rest of us to fend for ourselves...

[hackwriter]

12. Sounds like a way to send the wimmenfolk back home

If there's no child care, women can't work, right? I'm sure they see this as a solution to the outsourcing problem -- reduce the work force by sending women back home.

[Redhead488]

15. I think there's only about 100 kids

in that day care facility...not sure it will make a huge dent. At least that's what I heard on the radio whilst driving by the Pentagon this morning.

[MountainLaurel]

18. space for 170

but only about 140 in there now, even though there is a waiting list. And if you're one of those parents who now has to scramble to find care that's affordable, near work or home, and of quality, I'm sure that dent matters.

[Redhead488]

20. The point I was making was it would not make a dent in the

number of women working at the Pentagon. BTW, I personally know 8 children who are currently in that facility. All of them have parents who are Lt Cols or above. In one case, the father is a Col and the mother is a Lt Col (accounts for 4 children). Affording child care is NOT a problem for any of them. The DoD is doing the right thing...that facility is too big a target.

[merh]

13. We are much safer now - yeah right.

These idiots just don't quit - how many Americans can we piss off today and still win the election is not a very bright game to play.

Or, maybe pentagon knows it will hurt the weed that would be king?

Interesting....

[drscm]

14. Are they going to shut down child care for the * boy king at the WH? eom

eom

[lostnfound]

16. More children left behind. nt

[nodehopper]

19. oh REALLY?

As someone who lives in New York City, and who was living here when 9/11 happened, I beg to differ with this:

"Citing intelligence that the Pentagon is the second most likely target for a terrorist attack in the capital region after the White House..."

[tom_paine]

21. Makes you wonder what the Busheviks want that building for

This is as phony as the Phony Ricin Scare, which was merely an excuse to get Bushevik Spooks into an empty Senate building to destroy the evidence of Senate Judiciary Memo theft (by Busheviks, of course).

Gosh, whatever happened to that investigation? Died of lack of evidence shortly after the Phony Ricin Scare, did it?

This smacks of the same thing.

I don;t think this is about parking an all. Perhaps a new office for the Imperial Ministry of Dsinformation?

Who can tell with monsters like the Busheviks? It could be innocent, but then, since Imperial Amerika bowed down and licked the boots of a torturing murderer, what HAS been innocent in the Empire?

Nothing.