Terror Warnings Are a Trap

Sure I believe this Administration is playing political games with their Terror warnings during this election season, but I don't think the game being played is the obvious one. I think they expect that terrorists WILL strike somewhere in the U.S. before Election Day, even if they are clueless about any real specifics. I think they are intentionally fishing for Democrats to attack their warnings as just being political theater, that's why their timing is so obviously clumsy. They will only lose at this game if there are no significant Terror attacks in a Western Country prior to Election Day.

It's a calculated risk, but without a great deal of downside to it, because non Democratic partisans are resistant to believing that their government plays political games with our Nation's security. Kerry (or Nader) already has the votes of everyone who is highly cynical about our government, who won't be staying home in November. It is hard to fully prove that the warnings are political in nature, and since there are so many other issues out there already, regarding Bush misleading the public, this one will not be at the forefront, it will not draw much fresh blood stemming from their lack of credibility that Republicans are not shedding already anyway. That's if there is NOT a new terror attack.

If there IS a new terror attack, even one far off in Italy say, with pictures of buildings like the ones we have in American cities lying in smoking shambles, that's when their warning game will pay off for the Republicans. That's when they will twist every quote they can find from a Democrat who once voiced any suspicion about political motives being behind Terror warnings, into evidence that Democrats didn't take the threat facing our country seriously enough, that we are always looking for an angle to discredit the government when we should be lining up with it to protect the American people. They will say this Administration tried to act responsibly by passing on the information it knew of about pending attacks, to prepare the public, and the Democrats chose instead to play politics with the warnings. And it doesn't matter how many false warnings this Administration gives, if one real attack finally does happen. The drama of that moment will wipe out any prior doubts about false sincerity.

Rather than attack the motives behind changes in the color code system, we should attack the color code system itself, as less than a band aid response to terrorist threats. It is not the timing of the changes in the color codes that is the political theater, it is the color codes themselves. There is no ready reserve of fresh security resources that can be tapped when a code level is changed, our National Guard is pinned down in Iraq. There is no funding mechanism that releases millions of dollars to effected high risk areas to pay overtime pay for doubled police shifts. There is no clear change in daily activities that the public is recommended to undertake during times of elevated threats. If those measures were actually in place, this Administration would hesitate before they raised an alarm. As it is the biggest change that happens when a color code is raised is an increase in public anxiety and deeper deficits at the local level. Meanwhile, as Bill Clinton pointed out in his speech to the Democratic Convention, this Administration refused to ask the wealthiest one percent of Americans to give back $5,000 of their Bush Tax Cuts to pay for doubling the number of containers entering our ports that are physically inspected.

We should say we know Terror came to America, and all our government bought us is these stupid Code Orange Tee Shirts.

I know those who know exactly how far the current Administration will go to manipulate the public and use any issue to further an ideological agenda can't help but scream, "They're doing it again!" because they are. I think it is important to consider the possibility though that this is a Republican version of a "Rope A Dope" strategy. Get Democrats out swinging early in the campaign about false terror threats instead of focusing on Bush Administration specific short comings when it comes to actually keeping our country safe. Then, further into the campaign, if a car or truck bomb (or many) actually is used against us here at home, they can shift attention again away from their own failed security policies onto the "fact" that Democrats undermined Administration efforts to "prepare" the public for near inevitable attacks. Instead we were "too busy playing politics with the issue", challenging our own government's sincerity while underestimating the threat Americans face from Al Quada.

Am I alone in thinking suicide car bomb attacks are virtually certain to take place here in the U.S. ?

A car bomb. Driver dies. Tom Ridge, Rudi Guiliani, and George Pataki (or a registered republican fire fighter/ police officer) will save a mother and child who are trapped in a fourth floor apartment and/or office, conveniently situated near one of the terrorist targets.

See, voters! Bush will protect you!

Recently arrested whose computer coughed up moldy intelligence, are actually small fish, according to the Israelis:

http://www.debka.com/article_print.php?aid=885

DEBKAfile’s counter-terror experts are skeptical about the sourcing of the intelligence which prompted the terror alert - declared Sunday at five financial bastions in New York, Washington and New Jersey - to Pakistan’s two newest al Qaeda captives, the Tanzanian Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, caught on July 25, and the Pakistani Muhammed Naeem Noor Khan, apprehended on July 13.

US Homeland Secretary Tom Ridge made a point of thanking Pakistan for its intelligence assistance in forewarning against terror attacks, naming the IMS and World Bank in Washington DC, the New York Stock Exchange and Citicorp and Prudential in New Jersey at targets. But ascribing the “unusually specific information” to these two detainees in Pakistani custody poses questions.

Ghailani fled to Afghanistan after the 1998 twin US embassy bombings in East Africa and reached Pakistan after US troops invaded Afghanistan in 2001. He remained in hiding among low-ranking al Qaeda adherents from then on without holding any important jobs in the organization.

Khan is equally improbable as al Qaeda’s present communications manager. According to DEBKAfile’s terror experts, the use of coded Internet and e-mail messaging for transmitting signals and orders was more or less abandoned from mid-2001, months before the 9/11 attacks. Since then, messengers and personal couriers have carried most of al Qaeda’s coded messages, usually without knowing what was in them or even the identities of the recipients.

The two men are not of the usual a Qaeda caliber for preparing a complex, spectacular attack in the United States - or even acting as the top level’s repositories for the necessary foreknowledge. Only very limited information must therefore have been elicited from the two men detained in Pakistan and their computers:

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