Politicizing Terror Alerts
Aside from the occasional snarky post, I try to shy away from accusations that terror alerts are politically motivated. It isn’t because I think the Bushies are 100% sincere when alerting the public about impeding attacks. On the contrary, I think the timing of terror alerts always seems to be…well, convenient, but accusations about the subject are a dead-end politically. The brilliance of this strategy is that we can’t prove definitively that Bush and co. are abusing their power, so any speculation turns into a “he said, she said” situation in which we end up being lumped in with the conspiracy theorists.
So it’s with a level of care that I go out a limb ans say that the Bush Administration is scaring the shit out of people for no reason :
The decision to warn key U.S. financial centers they may be attacked by al Qaeda was based largely on three-year old information, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said on Tuesday, but he insisted the threat was still real.Ridge’s appearance in New York at the Citigroup building named on Sunday as a potential al Qaeda target came as U.S. terrorism intelligence has come under fire again, this time for forcing police in New York, Washington and New Jersey to massively increase security based on old information.
“I don’t want anyone to disabuse themselves of the seriousness of this information simply because there are some reports that much of it is dated, it might be two or three years old,” Ridge said.
But he insisted al Qaeda had updated its surveillance of financial buildings, “as recently as January this year.”
. . .
The latest “code Orange” warning drew mild scorn from U.S. allies in the war on terror, who say such high-profile alerts cause panic and could undermine trust in intelligence.
Whoops, too late for that. Which is really tragic if you think about it. I really want to trust the people who are supposed to be protecting us, but they keep making it harder and harder.
At the bottom of the article is a reminder about this distressing problem with our homeland security funding (emphasis added) :
The high-profile police presence in New York comes when officials here have complained about a lack of funds from Washington for a city deemed at high risk of attack.The city now has 4,000 fewer police officers than it had on Sept. 11, 2001, when planes hijacked by al Qaeda destroyed the World Trade Center, killing almost 2,800 people.
New York, with 8 million people, secured only $5.47 per head in homeland security grants in 2004 — the second lowest in the nation — compared to $38.31 per person in Wyoming.
For more information on our criminally underfunded homeland security (gotta save a few buck for those tax cuts, y’know), check out this and this .
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Less cops = less danger right? Thats like saying rich people who have more money are more likely to spend it then poor people who NEED money and who NEED to spend it. Just keep telling yourself that yes, we are safer – nobody has attacked us since 9/11 so we are safer. Duct tape and plastic will keep out airborne agents – if I wrap myself up in them I’ll be safer. If I build a bomb shelter and stock up on canned goods, I’ll be safer. If I ‘duck and cover’, I’ll be safer. If I act more vigilant on an ‘orange’ day then I do on a ‘yellow’ day, then I’ll be more safer. If I go about my daily business as this administration destroys this country, I’ll certainly be more safer! If I’m old (If I live that long), broke (no job and no car – not that I could afford gas anymore), and without retirement savings (because I was never rich enough to get a tax cut and social security no longer exists), homeless (because debt forced me to foreclose on my house), jobless (because my manufacturing job was outsourced to India), and ill (because I served in the military during the Iraq/Afghanistan/Syria/Iran/whoever’s next war and came home with radiation poisoning due to the use of DU, and had my veteran benefits cut – oh and since I can’t afford health insurance premiums, I was dropped by my insurance company and can’t afford to see a doctor or afford my medication) I can at least remember the good old days when George W. Bush made the world safer and saved the US from the evil terrorists because he has a rainbow colored warning system.
Comment by mbf1978 — August 3, 2004 @ 12:12 pm
We’d have to be full-on coincidence theorists to believe that this latest ploy to panic the public was anything but politically motivated, wouldn’t we? Billmon thinks so too.
Comment by eRobin — August 3, 2004 @ 2:29 pm
I saw Clinton on Letterman last night. Dave asked Bill if he thought the alert was politically motivated since most of the info was 3 years old. Bill said he didn’t think it was. He said something like, a lot of those plots by terrorist take years to develop so he didn’t think it unusual for the intel about something that might happen any day to be based on something years old. That’s what I remember of his answer anyway. I couldn’t find a transcript to check my memory.
Comment by Mike — August 4, 2004 @ 5:32 am
He also said that the bigger concern is that the info came with the help of Pakistan along the Afghani border and if we weren’t pissing away lives and money in Iraq, we may have been able to spend our resource more productively in that region and have received this info a year or two ago.
He didn’t use those words exactly.
As to the politicizing question – he always takes the high ground on that question and questions like it. Letterman didn’t ask for his opinion on the New Republic’s story that exposed BushCo’s pressuring Pakistan to come up with a high value operative during the Dem’s convention and how that colors his perception of the latest terror alert. I’d like to have heard Clinton answer that.
Comment by eRobin — August 4, 2004 @ 5:43 am
Good post. My question is this: If there is really a threat to these locations, an ongoing plot, isn’t the correct approach to keep it a secret and actually prevent the attack while arresting the terrorists? Why the hell tell everybody about it, thus allowing the terrorists to simply vanish into the woodwork and pick another target to attack? Or are they so incompetent that they can’t prevent an attack wven when they know which places they will be attacking and what their probable method of attack would be? This, like the entire terror alert system, stinks of PR and manipulation of the public.
Comment by Joe — August 4, 2004 @ 12:45 pm
Say I’m working at N.S.A. Somebody puts a code on my desk, something nobody else can break. So I take a shot at it and maybe I break it. And I’m real happy with myself, ’cause I did my job well. But maybe that code was the location of some rebel army in North Africa or the Middle East. Once they have that location, they bomb the village where the rebels were hiding and fifteen hundred people I never had a problem with get killed. Now the politicians are sayin’ “send in the Marines to secure the area” ’cause they don’t give a shit. It won’t be their kid over there, gettin’ shot. Just like it wasn’t them when their number got called, ’cause they were pullin’ a tour in the National Guard. It’ll be some guy from Southie takin’ shrapnel in the ass. And he comes home to find that the plant he used to work at got exported to the country he just got back from. And the guy who put the shrapnel in his ass got his old job, ’cause he’ll work for fifteen cents a day and no bathroom breaks. Meanwhile my buddy from Southie realizes the only reason he was over there was so we could install a government that would sell us oil at a good price. And of course the oil companies used the skirmish to scare up oil prices so they could turn a quick buck. A cute, little ancillary benefit for them but it ain’t helping my buddy at two-fifty a gallon. And naturally they’re takin’ their sweet time bringin’ the oil back and maybe even took the liberty of hiring an alcoholic skipper who likes to drink seven and sevens and play slalom with the icebergs and it ain’t too long ’til he hits one, spills the oil, and kills all the sea-life in the North Atlantic. So my buddy’s out of work and he can’t afford to drive so he’s got to walk to the job interviews which sucks ’cause the shrapnel in his ass is givin’ him chronic hemorrhoids. And meanwhile he’s starvin’ ’cause every time he tries to get a bite to eat the only blue-plate special they’re servin’ is North Atlantic scrod with Quaker State.
So what’d I think? I’m holdin’ out for somethin’ better. I figure I’ll eliminate the middle man. Why not just shoot my buddy, take his job and give it to his sworn enemy, hike up gas prices, bomb a village, club a baby seal, hit the hash pipe and join the National Guard? Christ, I could be elected President.
Comment by Good Will Hunting — August 4, 2004 @ 1:07 pm
THAT WAS SO WRONG IT WAS RIGHT!!!!!! HAHAHAHAHAHHAHA, I wonder whether Damon or AAAAFLAAAAK (sorry Ben) wrote that one, but it describes our current leader to a T!.
Great post whoever you are!
Comment by mbf1978 — August 4, 2004 @ 1:39 pm
Rumor has it Kevin Smith had something to do with that rant, maybe just as an influence with his films. I don’t know, I just recall laughing my ass off seeing that in the theater. It was on cable recently, and it still cracks me up.
Unfortunately, it’s a laugh to keep from crying. But your “less cops = less danger” post made me go look it up.
Comment by jeff — August 5, 2004 @ 9:26 am
Glad I could stir the pot a little. Seriously, that is about what goes through my head every time I hear something from this administration…..And no doubt Jeff, the quote has the flare of Smith (underappreciated genius).
Cry tears of joy, not sorrow as the nightmare will all be over in November (I hope).
Comment by mbf1978 — August 5, 2004 @ 10:03 am