If they know with such clarity that the terrorist are going to attack

a certain building on a certain day, why in the hell don't they keep their mouth shut set a trap and catch them?
It seems to me that if they wanted to make us safer, then taking people out who wished to do us harm would do a hell of a lot more good than going on the public airwaves and crying wolf.

maybe it's all bullshit ?

But YOU are not running for office!

I think the professional spooks are getting ulcers over all of this spewing about what we know and what we don't know............

hmmmmm...... brings up an interesting question....

What role did the CIA play in getting this intel?

Did this intel come from CIA, FBI or did it come from Military Intel?

Is CIA being bypassed?

known gnomes and unknown gnomes?

I know two CIA analysts and they are both completely fed up with this administration.

anyone is going to change their plans based on this specifically unspecific clearly vague information? Proof that it is entirely politically motivated. A news anchor with a credible bone in his body would point this out.

how many more times can they pull this without making it happen?

I think the answer is clear. This is a TERRA alert. A straw man. The democratic convention was last week and the speakers there from Kerry down kicked some serious ass. What better way to cap it off than to issue a Terra alert and broadcast it loud and clear.

...will be stepped up dramatically in a certain area and to expect delays in getting where you are going...but specific buildings? Other than alarming the public, I can't see what good naming these sites does. It is not like your average Joe is going to be running around inspecting Ryder trucks or anything. Telling people what to watch for would be nice.

by the terra-ists pre-911, so.....what's the big hurry today?

Divert the post-convention positive messages and flatten any convention "bounce."

I think this wil backfire just like the so-called terrorist threat against an LA-area mall earlier this year.

They chose NOT to put out a specific "terror" alert. There going to try to CATCH the terrorist with the info. MY,MY,MY.

to prove their success. The whole press conference and non-stop, in your face reminders by the news media makes me ask more questions than it does make me feel "safer".

:tinfoilhat:

I'd really, really, really like to believe the current administration is credible. Especially when it comes to this subject. But their track record just doesn't allow me to.

As soon as I saw Ridge's display yesterday, red flags went up saying it just doesn't make any sense. They're telling us that car/truck bombs are the preferred method at the same time they're providing the public with info on specific targets...targets which, from what I understand, haven't allowed car/truck traffic anywhere close for quite some time.

Second, the financial institutions bugs me too. Over and over we hear "they want to kill us". So if the goal is to kill as many as possible and cripple us, it seems to me that greater security needs to be focused on things such as public transportation in major urban areas. Yet, Bush won't pony up the necessary resources to do that.

I guess I just don't have the imagination of a terrorist. *sigh*

Americans, in large numbers, there are many venues that would suit their purpose much better. Sport stadiums, shopping centers, that would affect everyday man much much mire than blowing up the stock market.
Hell, for that matter hitting a few of these mega churches would be tit for tat.

although I truly favor the plain old lying bullshit for political manipulation hypothesis.

Nevertheless, if you have a screening instrument that screens for rare events, and especially if your instrument doesn't really detect things all that well to begin with, then you're going to have a pile of false positives. Now, what do you do with those? They look just like true positives. Well, you can quietly investigate (screen) further, and pare down the pile and figure out what's real or not (if any) or you can make lots of excited noise about every false positive you see. Not quite the same as making them up, you see, so Tom RIdge isn't lying, but....

This has parallels in medicine, by the way. There was a push, for instance, in the early 80's to require HIV testing of any couple applying for a marriage license. Public health experts turned that down because, even with good HIV screens, HIV positivity is rare enough that you'd be overwhelmed with false positives - and those would be very unhappy people.

...the Oklahoma City bombing and comparing it to the current situation, I am more convinced than ever that the OK City attack was in part a plan to set a trap to catch a band of sick people in the act. It obviously went wrong. The risk to the public is just too great to try to catch the bad guys in the act of placing the bomb.