Monday, December 7, 2009

With Lure of Cash, M.I.T. Group Builds a Balloon-Finding Team to Take Pentagon Prize

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/07/technology/internet/07contest.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=m.i.t.&st=cse


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Mon, Dec 7, 2009 at 9:36 AM
Subject: re: With Lure of Cash, M.I.T. Group Builds a Balloon-Finding Team to Take Pentagon Prize
To: letters@nytimes.com


To the Editor:
   It is tempting to speculate how Donald Rumsfeld's Pentagon would have found these same eight red balloons. They would spent thousands of tons of aviation fuel flying aircraft with video gear over the whole country, while a crew of image analysts studied the video for signs of red balloons. Given the same task, the Pakistani intelligence service (ISI) would have offered small monetary rewards to the millions of people already on the ground to report back where they saw red balloons. One hopes that Obama's Pentagon has the wisdom to learn what they just paid for. Those red balloon could as easily have been leaders of al-Qaeda.
Barry Levine

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