Dickie Ross, RIP

Dickie Ross was my best friend at Amarillo College. I knew him through my entire 32 years there and I cannot remember a cross word between us. He suffered a terrible stroke two years ago and battled back to return to work at the College. He would call me numerous times each week after his return to the College to "check up on me and to see how I was doing." In the week prior to the 4th of July this year, he suffered a terrible accidental fall and never regained consciousness. I will miss him. If this is (fair & balanced) sadness, so be it.



Richard J. "Dick" Ross: 1946-2004 


Richard J. "Dick" Ross, 57, of Amarillo died Thursday, July 22, 2004.

A memorial gathering will be at 10 a.m. Monday in Amarillo College Ordway Hall with Bernard Cohen officiating. Arrangements are by Schooler Funeral Home, 4100 S. Georgia St.

Mr. Ross was born in Colorado Springs, Colo., on Dec. 20, 1946, to Dr. William and Evelyn Ross and was raised in Denver. He married Judy Harrell on July 24, 1983. Mr. Ross earned his Bachelor of Arts in psychology from the University of Colorado in Boulder and his Master of Arts from West Texas State University. He was a national certified counselor, a certified career counselor and a Texas licensed professional counselor and achieved the rank of professor. He was also a member of MENSA. Dick was employed at Amarillo College since 1971 in the Advising and Counseling Center.

He was a certified ski instructor and ski patrolman at Loveland Basin ski area. He developed and initiated one of the largest indoor ski ramps in the country and directed the Amarillo College ski program. Dick was very involved with the Student Activities Council of Amarillo College and various student and college organizations.

Dick was actively involved in the community of Amarillo through his activities with the American Diabetes Association, Tascosa High School Band and Orchestra program, community ski programs and the Porsche Club of America.

Dick loved his family, his work with students at Amarillo College and maintained a love for skiing, fast cars and life.

Survivors include his wife, Judy; two sons, Andrew Ross and Eric Ross, both of Amarillo; a brother, Dr. James Ross of Grand Junction, Colo.; his mother of Grand Junction; three nieces; and three nephews.

The family suggests memorials be to the Amarillo College Foundation, P.O. Box 447, Amarillo, TX 79178, the American Diabetes Association, Potter/Randall Chapter, P.O. Box 50433, Amarillo, TX 79159 or to ITA (Texas Tech Trombone Choir), Texas Tech University, School of Music, in care of Don Lucas, P.O. Box 42033, Lubbock, TX 79409.

Copyright © 2004 AMARILLO GLOBE-NEWS

We Still Don't Get It!

In addition to the 4 Moms in the 9/11 Families, Richard Clarke has been a good voice in our midst. His take on the 9/11 Commission Report gets at the sources of our malaise. After all this time, we still don't get it. There will be a spasm of Congressional activity: hearings and speechifying, but in the end it will be a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing. W will be reelected and we will go back to business (bidness in Texas) as usual. If this is (fair & balanced) resignation, so be it.

[x The New York Times]
Honorable Commission, Toothless Report
By RICHARD A. CLARKE

Americans owe the 9/11 commission a deep debt for its extensive exposition of the facts surrounding the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks. Yet, because the commission had a goal of creating a unanimous report from a bipartisan group, it softened the edges and left it to the public to draw many conclusions.

Among the obvious truths that were documented but unarticulated were the facts that the Bush administration did little on terrorism before 9/11, and that by invading Iraq the administration has left us less safe as a nation. (Fortunately, opinion polls show that the majority of Americans have already come to these conclusions on their own. )

What the commissioners did clearly state was that Iraq had no collaborative relationship with Al Qaeda and no hand in 9/11. They also disclosed that Iran provided support to Al Qaeda, including to some 9/11 hijackers. These two facts may cause many people to conclude that the Bush administration focused on the wrong country. They would be right to think that.

So what now? News coverage of the commission's recommendations has focused on the organizational improvements: a new cabinet-level national intelligence director and a new National Counterterrorism Center to ensure that our 15 or so intelligence agencies play well together. Both are good ideas, but they are purely incremental. Had these changes been made six years ago, they would not have significantly altered the way we dealt with Al Qaeda; they certainly would not have prevented 9/11. Putting these recommendations in place will marginally improve our ability to crush the new, decentralized Al Qaeda, but there are other changes that would help more.

First, we need not only a more powerful person at the top of the intelligence community, but also more capable people throughout the agencies - especially the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency. In other branches of the government, employees can and do join on as mid- and senior-level managers after beginning their careers and gaining experience elsewhere. But at the F.B.I. and C.I.A., the key posts are held almost exclusively by those who joined young and worked their way up. This has created uniformity, insularity, risk-aversion, torpidity and often mediocrity.

The only way to infuse these key agencies with creative new blood is to overhaul their hiring and promotion practices to attract workers who don't suffer the "failures of imagination" that the 9/11 commissioners repeatedly blame for past failures.

Second, in addition to separating the job of C.I.A. director from the overall head of American intelligence, we must also place the C.I.A.'s analysts in an agency that is independent from the one that collects the intelligence. This is the only way to avoid the "groupthink" that hampered the agency's ability to report accurately on Iraq. It is no accident that the only intelligence agency that got it right on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction was the Bureau of Intelligence and Research at the State Department - a small, elite group of analysts encouraged to be independent thinkers rather than spies or policy makers.

Analysts aren't the only ones who should be reconstituted in small, elite groups. Either the C.I.A. or the military must create a larger and more capable commando force for covert antiterrorism work, along with a network of agents and front companies working under "nonofficial cover'' - that is, without diplomatic protection - to support the commandos.

Even more important than any bureaucratic suggestions is the report's cogent discussion of who the enemy is and what strategies we need in the fight. The commission properly identified the threat not as terrorism (which is a tactic, not an enemy), but as Islamic jihadism, which must be defeated in a battle of ideas as well as in armed conflict.

We need to expose the Islamic world to values that are more attractive than those of the jihadists. This means aiding economic development and political openness in Muslim countries, and efforts to stabilize places like Afghanistan, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Restarting the Israel-Palestinian peace process is also vital.

Also, we can't do this alone. In addition to "hearts and minds" television and radio programming by the American government, we would be greatly helped by a pan-Islamic council of respected spiritual and secular leaders to coordinate (without United States involvement) the Islamic world's own ideological effort against the new Al Qaeda.

Unfortunately, because of America's low standing in the Islamic world, we are now at a great disadvantage in the battle of ideas. This is primarily because of the unnecessary and counterproductive invasion of Iraq. In pulling its bipartisan punches, the commission failed to admit the obvious: we are less capable of defeating the jihadists because of the Iraq war.

Unanimity has its value, but so do debate and dissent in a democracy facing a crisis. To fully realize the potential of the commission's report, we must see it not as the end of the discussion but as a partial blueprint for victory. The jihadist enemy has learned how to spread hate and how to kill - and it is still doing both very effectively three years after 9/11.

Richard A. Clarke, former head of counterterrorism at the National Security Council, is the author of Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror.

Copyright © 2004 The New York Times Company