The ease with which Congressional Republicans, with an assist from the MSM, have been able to derail President Obama's plans to close the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay has gotten me thinking about risk assesment.  The reaction of  the US Senate and the MSM to the prospect of incarcerating terrorism suspects in the US has been irrational at best and hysterical at worst.  The counter arguments based in objective fact seem to gain no traction against the completely unarticulated risk to our safety that would follow the movement of "the worst of the worst" from Guantanamo to US prisons.  We react viserally to the risk and dismiss the evidence that would allow us to properly asses that risk and put it into context.  When did we become so risk averse?  Why does this aversion to risk persist even in the face of evidence showing that a particular risk is minimal?

Take for example the way parents are expected to eliminate the risk of a stranger harming one of their children.  New York Sun columnist Lenore Skenazy published an article in April of 2008 explaining why she allowed her then nine year old son to ride a subway and a bus alone after being left alone in New York's Bloomingdale's Department Store.  The result, vast numbers of readers threatening to turn her in for child abuse.  Are there risk involved in letting a nine year old find his own way home in New York using public transportation.  Yes, there are. Are those risk relatively small?  Yes, they are.  The research center STATS.Org reports that, "The statistics show that this (stranger abduction) is an incredibily rare event, and you can't protect people from very rare events.  It would be like trying to create a shield against being struck by lightening."  Further the US Department of Justice reports that the number of children abducted by stangers - already an incredibly small number - has been going down over the years.  So why would so many parents not even consider letting their nine year old do such a thing.  I have come to the conclusion that in this instence it is because we are overwhelmed by too much information on one side of the issue and practically none on the other.  The MSM makes big money off of stories of child abductions.  To include the information necessary to correctly asses the risk to one's own child would kill the buzz surrounding these stories and decrease the ratings earned from non-stop reporting of them.  So, this statistical information is rarely, if ever, reported.  The result is a nation of hyper vigilant parents and of children whose natural inclination to explore, experiment, and learn to be self sufficient is stifled.

No wonder Americans are so pliant when it comes to terrorists held at GITMO.  It has been duly reported by the MSM that these guys are the "worst of the worst" according to the Bush administration, and that these men are such a danger to the lives of Americans that they must be held in legal limbo forever.  No facts are included to allow us to asses the true level of risk these men might pose collectively much less individually.  Our fear is a knee jerk response to the notion of what seems to be an avoidable risk.  Of course very little research is required to discover that 500 or so of the "worst of the worst" have already been released from GITMO.  Although the Pentagon reports that one in seven former GITMO detainees return to terrorism, these are individuals who were released back into the caldron of Islamic fanaticism.  Is it not rational to conclude that we would be safer if these guys were released and monitored in places where access to continued fanaticism would be more limited, such as well the US?  Here is another fact that should help us asses risk.  The only detainees likely to just be released into the US are the Chinese Uighars, I believe there are 11 of them.  These folks had no beef with the US prior to being held at GITMO for years without charges.  NPR reports that the community of Uighars already living in the US has pledged itself to take these former detainees into their homes and communities and to assist them in making the transtition into society.  Not so scary really.  The truly scary and dangerous guys will face either military trials or trials in federal courts.  Once convicted - and seriously, the prosecution especially at the federal level is incredibly effective generally and would surely be so in these instances - the real "worst of the worst" would be held in federal supermax prisons.  In his speech today, President Obama reminds us that "Nobody has ever excaped from our supermax prisons which hold hundreds of convicted terrorists."  Doesn't is seem obvious that our fear is disproportionate to the actual risk?  Once again, because we so happily ingest the scary stuff as infotainment, we fail to receive the mitigating information, and we seldom seem to seek it out.

Correct assesment of risk requires information.  The MSM has compelling financial reasons to ignore mitigating information and push fear because ratings seem to indicate that fear sells.  The MSM is a profit driven business.  They will continue to provide us with the information that increases ratings and therefore increases advertising dollars.  Mitigating information is actually fairly easy to locate.  Each of us must become more responsible about our consumption of information and become more willing to check out the facts on our own.  Otherwise, like the parent who stifles a child to the child's future detriment, we will stifle our nations growth and progress to the future detriment of us all.