May 31, 2004
Crying Wolf
Friday evening, the top story on MSNBC.com was headlined “QUESTIONABLE SOURCE: Ashcroft’s information on threat may not be credible”. And we were treated to a typical pic of the glowering Big Brother John himself. (See my site for a pic.) The June 7 issue of NEWSWEEK has a story on the vague warnings called “Enemies Among Us” and includes this:
Once again it appears that politics and national security are bedfellows in post-9/11 America. That is not to say that Bush administration officials are crying wolf. It's just that they know less—and want more—than the attorney general appeared to be saying.Well, NEWSWEEK won't say the administration is crying wolf. But NEWSWEEK seems to hope you'll think they are.
This sort of press strikes me as far more surreal than just about anything else I've been blasted with lately. How is it, that in a post-9/11 America during an election year, major news organizations can all but dismiss threats of terror because the information might be "questionable"? If 20 Arabs had been arrested on September 10, 2001 and Special Forces sent into Afghanistan the following week based on info in the August 8, 2001 PDB, then I'd be listening to this line of thinking.
Twenty guys without anything bigger than box cutters are going to destroy the Twin Towers, the Pentagon, and either the Capitol or the White House? With airliners? And THAT is why we're going to overthrow the poorest nation on the face of the planet? Riiiiight.
But this is a different world.
NEWSWEEK seems to be banging the "politics of the terror alert" drum pretty loudly. In fact, the second link in the headline box on MSNBC.com last Friday led to a NEWSWEEK column by Elanor Clift entitled "Washington Intrigue". The link on the MSNBC.com front page called it, well, "Politics of terror alert". (Incidentally, the Clift story is interesting and worth a read.)
Forgive me if I'm confused. I know that not everyone thinks so, but we are at war. Even the most anti-war among us won't shut up about how the invasion of Iraq has made the world less safe and put America even more solidly in the crosshairs of international terrorism. Those who opposed the invasion of Iraq but agree that military action against the Taliban and Al Qaeda is justified moan about how the overthrow of Saddam and the reconstruction of Iraq have diverted our attention from the "real enemy". If this is the case, shouldn't we be hypersensitive to warnings from the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security, or the White House? (Yes, I know all about the Goering quote. Please don't repeat it again.)
We were told in April that the administration had shirked its duties when it didn't move heaven and earth in response to the 8/6/01 Presidential Daily Brief entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike Inside the US". Now, if you've read that PDB, you'll know that it is full of information of unknown credibility from questionable sources. Do I wish that the administration and others had done more based upon that spotty, inaccurate, questionable information? Of course I do. But I do understand why that brief didn't set off the downfall of the 9/11 hijackers.
Now, less than two months later, Ashcroft is being pooh-poohed by NEWSWEEK because he's warning about threats that may not be credible? Using information from sources that may not be above question? I agree that Ashcroft's warnings don't really spell out what's going to come down. I agree that too many vague threats condition us to ignore all of them. I agree that politics is a big part of what the politicians do.
But either Bush & Co. were wrong for under-reacting to the 8/6/01 PDB or they're wrong for over-reacting to this latest information. It can't really be both, can it? Not to those who are watching at home. We don't have 1% of the information available to us that the decision-makers do. Members of the press probably have much more information available, and they can find out things that we cannot. But is it just possible that NEWSWEEK and MSNBC.com's headline writers are playing a little politics, too?
The "Enemies Among Us" story includes this:
The November elections are not far away. The White House, NEWSWEEK has learned, played a role in the decision to go public with the warning. According to a White House official, President Bush signed off on the press conference after meeting with Mueller, Ridge and Ashcroft, the former senator who has a taste for splashy publicity. With the president's poll numbers dropping, the Bush administration is surely eager to divert media and public attention from Iraq to the terrorist threat. Instead of the images of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, the White House would prefer that voters see the faces of terrorists who aim to kill them.I believe that the writer is 100% correct. If you were the President, wouldn't you want to make sure Americans remember that there are actually bad guys out there? I mean, after a straight month of Abu Ghraib coverage on the front page of the NEW YORK TIMES, wouldn't you hope that people, many of them voters, don't forget that there is more to all of this than that one prison?
The WASHINGTON POST writes "Terror suspects beating charges in Europe". An empty rocket launcher is disovered beside train tracks near Atlanta and no one seems to care. The ACLU is fighting a No-Fly list intended to keep questionable people off of US jetliners. Pretty much everyone everywhere comdemns the USA Patriot Act.
How is it that terror warnings, increased security measures at airports, and events at home and abroad get little more than a few late-night television jokes and claims of partisan politics? Isn't this a lot of what we wish had been done before 9/11? One of the main provisions in the Patriot Act is the sharing of information between intelligence agencies, which has been highlighted as one of the primary shortcomings in US policy that allowed the 9/11 plans to succeed.
Yes, there is politicking involved. Yes, the USA Patriot Act could potentially endanger a lot of what we want America to stand for. Yes, the Bush administration has kicked the CYA policies into full-gear.
But why are so many in the media and elsewhere, who coincidentally oppose the President on just about every other subject as well, working so hard to dismiss these warnings? It's good that NEWSWEEK is on the record with "That is not to say that Bush administration officials are crying wolf". Because the wolves have already eaten some of us. We know they're there, and we know they want more.
The government doesn't have all the information. And you and I only hear a tiny bit of what they DO have. Our want of and need for the latest news makes things more than a little confusing. Why are some working so hard to make it even worse?
Posted by murdoc at May 31, 2004 07:56 PM | TrackBack (1)murdoc:
You see the sadness of the current situation. Those who are against Bush are against him—-doesnt matter why, what when where—-they just ARE. So if his fault is that he is a flip flopper or that he is too rigid in his beliefs, what difference does it make?
They dont care if parts of the economy are up (notice that jobs are not the issue any more) as long as there is some sector that is down. That way Bush can be blamed.
They dont care that civilians like Nick Berg are brutally murdered as long as there are Abu Ghraib stories with which to beat Bush over the head with.
They dont care that they rail against too little information, then rail against too much information in their next breath.
This is not about being right or wrong. This is aout getting Bush out of office. IF it hurts our country to do so, then so be it. It will be worth it to some. Why??? Because it is their grail—their holy task in life.
Posted by: joebagodonuts at May 31, 2004 10:56 PMI don’t see what’s so wrong with the Newsweek article. Sure, it’s not telling Americans that they should be pooping their pants with fear, as perhaps you think it ought to. But it is not “dismissing” the alert at all, as you allege it is. The paragraph immediately after the one you quote begins with:
“But just because the administration may have been playing politics to shift attention from its own failings does not mean the terror warnings are unwarranted.”
The whole article is about the difficulty the administration has in publicising the terror threat when there are conflicting interpretations of that threat even among the various Departments. That’s an interesting topic and certainly worthy of further investigation and discussion.
And honestly, I do want to know the difference between terror warnings that are the result of unanimous concern among the Departments and those that are not. I want to know the details behind the alerts, and as this episode so aptly shows, sometimes the administration omits certain relevant details. Sometimes the press is left to sort out the missing facts, and in this case those missing facts don’t quite jibe with the picture Ashcroft was painting.
This particular warning really did seem to lack many of the hallmarks of a “real” warning: Homeland Security didn’t raise the alert levels. No local police departments were informed of the alert nor asked to do anything about it. None of the ‘suspects’ were thought to be in the country at all. The warning was two months old. Are you suggesting that it is wrong of us to demand to know all of these facts, or that the drive to make these facts known can only be the result of a cynical political motivation?
Do these discrepancies not concern you at all? Don’t you think that the government should be held under a microscope every time they issue these warnings? Do you honestly believe that our government is infallible, that the Bush Administration never makes mistakes?
I’ll concede that brazenly accusing the Bush administration of raising terror alarms for purely political purposes is a bit over the top, especially without evidence. But I’m glad at least that someone’s looking for the possibility that such evidence might exist.
I really don’t know exactly who you are trying to say are the bad guys here.
Anyway, with regards to the ACLU fight over the No-Fly list: Are you opposed to improving the list to make it more accurate? Or do you just trust the government that the list is fine enough as it is?
With regards to the increased security at airports: It was the *left* who urged the de-privatization of the security forces, and who urged more spending on the training of these forces, and the Bush administration initially opposed both ideas and continues to oppose any increase in airport security that might jeaopardize ticket prices. If I had my way, there would be a HELL of a lot more security at airports, even if it means MASSIVE increases in ticket prices resulting in few poorly-run airlines tanking in the process.
-Cf
Posted by: Christopher Fahey at May 31, 2004 11:39 PMYou left out some key aspects to this story that created the interest in the first place. Tom Ridge was left out of the loop, there was no new information proceeding the alert, the alert didn’t coincide with a “alert-status” upgrade, and it wasn’t coordinated through the White House. In other words, all of that legal stuff that the Department of Homeland Security bills created was circumvented. That makes people’s eyebrows raise.
Posted by: Gaelen Burns at May 31, 2004 11:41 PMJOE,
You are absolutely correct in your assessment. I am a moderate or atleast a really good cynic and it’s absolutely true. The things they should be loathesome of Bush for they don’t understand the complexity of and the rage they have are of the banal pedantic little boogers that they can cerebrally follow with little research other than. Such as Gore losing the election in Florida, I don’t like the way it was handled by republicans it lacked decorum and suave but Gore actually lost, dems are still bickering.
I can’t stand Bush because he’s a danger to America in many ways, but to a Bush hater as I’ve read on so many poli-sites they hate not out of following the dollar trail to the real locale of this administration’s shortcomings but just out of a group psychology like one monkey bangs a drum, now they all know that it’s a drum that they can bang on and get approval for by the others in the flock. Not unusual for republicans either, check out the FReeper site sometime. It’s all just blind hate breeding dismissal without forethought.
It assumes all Dems are anti-christian and all dems are weak minded hippies who hug trees or don’t support the troops that are our family members too. I mean primates banging drums for approval is all Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter and Al Franken do because there are audiences looking for that entertainment, it stimulates a tribal connection.
Put yourself in independent shoes and hate all sides for real technical reasons and causal effects, it’s mysanthropically fun-tastic!
:>D#
Posted by: skunkbud at June 1, 2004 01:06 AMVery well said skunkbud.
At the heart of the issue however is mistrust. Back in the 60’s Americans were awakened to government of secrecy, self-interested politicians, and abuses of public trust. For all of the regulations and safeguards enacted since that time, mistrust has only grown, and not without good reasons.
I watched a movie this afternoon named Of Gods and Generals, or something close to that, about the Civil War of the 19th century. The movie reminded me of today, in terms of the mistrust amongst fellow Americans along political lines.
The invasion of Iraq was a horrible setback for the American people on the road to reestablishing trust. We started down a road of trust with the invasion of Afghanistan and seeking out al-Queda. Bit it was a short trip. And once again, like Clinton, Bush has broken faith, whether intentionally or inadvertently, with about half the population, and appears to them, with justifiable reason, not to be trustworthy. And if the President is not trustworthy, government is not trustworthy.
Posted by: David R Remer at June 1, 2004 05:05 AMCf:
Maybe it’s my personal bias, but I don’t really see the NEWSWEEK article as a straightforward look at the “difficulty the administration has in publicizing the terror threat when there are conflicting interpretations of that threat”. I guess I see it more as an example of exactly why this administration (or any administration) has difficulty.
To be honest, I personally think the Department of Homeland Security is pretty much a waste of time and money. I’ve written some about it on my own site. I don’t feel any (much) safer.
The NEWSWEEK article says Ashcroft is “part Joe Friday, part Prophet of doom”. But maybe listen to him. His warning are based on sketchy, questionable information in an age where “politics and national security are bedfellows”. But he might not be crying wolf. Although, then again, he might be.
Is this an even-handed look at the situation? Is this helping readers form a meaningful opinion?
And the seven suspects ominously displayed by Ashcroft? They are disparate and somewhat shadowy individuals who have some ties to America but are probably scattered around the world. Most of them have been on the well-publicized FBI most-wanted lists for months, if not years.And that means—what? You could have said the same thing about the 9/11 hijackers on 9/10/01. Bush is panned because he didn’t do more to stop 9/11, but now, AFTER 9/11, the admittedly tentative and uncertain anti-terror moves are usually just brushed aside if not ridiculed.
The NEWSWEEK article is not a middle-of-the-road discussion. It wouldn’t be even if it were taken totally out of the magazine’s standard context.
And yes, of course I want the No-Fly lists to be improved. I noted the ACLU’s lawsuit as an example of how difficult it is today (more than two years AFTER 9/11) to run programs a lot of folks are blaming Bush for not kicking into place between August 6th and September 11th of 2001. Based on information that, to me, appears even more sketchy and uncertain than the latest vague warnings.
Posted by: murdoc at June 1, 2004 01:29 PMIf the NEWSWEEK article is a straightforward, even-handed look at the “difficulty the administration has in publicizing the terror threat when there are conflicting interpretations of that threat”, why is the subtitle “Besieged by the atrocities at Abu Ghraib, Team Bush turned attention to the hunt for Al Qaeda. Politics, fear and the story of another California drifter”?
Sounds pretty dismissive to me.
Posted by: murdoc at June 1, 2004 01:31 PMMurdoc, I concede that the article is more dismissive than I may have portrayed it. Still, do you think that the dismissiveness is the result of an anti-Bush agenda, or is it the result of looking at the facts, interviewing Administration insiders, and reaching a logical conclusion? The facts presented in the article certainly raise great doubt about the legitimacy (or at least the importance) of the threat, and this administration is very well known for the primacy of their political engine (Rove).
Now, regarding your comparison between this warning and the pre-9/11 situation: Admittedly there are very few parallels, but you are correct that both intelligence situations were very vague.
First, that fact doesn’t address the issue of why Ashcroft saw fit to issue this warning to America. My impression is that the information he shared last week wasn’t much different from information they get on a pretty regular basis. If Ashcroft intends to hold a weekly high-profile press conference to announce information like this, that’s great. But it hardly should be couched as an especially grave warning to America when there is no actual recommendation of action for citizens (nor for law enforcement agencies) to take. My reaction to the announcement was similar to that of many Americans: So? The only real concrete effect the press conference could possibly have, and Ashcroft must have known this walking in, was to scare people. It didn’t serve to help anyone, did it?
Secondly, and more relevant to your defense-of-Bush point: In neither case did the Administration do what I think it should have done in August 2001 and what it should be doing today: Order all airports to a permanent state of high alert and hire expensive expert security forces for the airports, and buy expensive top-of-the-line security technology for all American airports right away. And pass the cost directly on to passengers (and thus to the Airline industry).
For what it’s worth I doubt Kerry will do much of this, either, but I do think he would have probably given the PDB a little more attention than the pre-9/11 Bush Administration did (“lone wackos and fringe groups aren’t the problem! it’s rogue states! build missle sheilds!”). This is of course all hindsight and speculation.
-Cf
Well, I don’t want to be a “defense of Bush”-type guy, since I’m not a big fan of his despite the fact that I do happen to agree with some of his policies (most notably aggressive action against terrorism and regime change in Iraq).
My reaction to the Ashcroft announcement was also “So?”. They did outline a few vague things and they did highlight those seven wanted guys, though it certainly wasn’t any earth-shaking drop-what-you’re-doing type stuff. As for specific instructions, at least they didn’t tell us to buy duct tape and plastic sheeting.
My issue here is more the coverage of the event than the administration’s actions (or lack thereof). I’m not overly thrilled with the approach the administration has taken with the public since 9/11. But I’m even less thrilled with the reaction that things are getting in the press. For the most part, anyway.
I’m not arguing your airport security plan, either, though I’d think the government would have to at least help with the bill. At least we’d get some return on our DHS dollars, which I don’t really see at this point.
Posted by: murdoc at June 1, 2004 03:18 PMWhether you believe the current economic indicators are positive or not the Republocrate policies share a common goal of stealing more and more from the middle class, in ways which are impossible to fight. Haliburton, Exxon, or Blue Cross can spend $40 million to steal $10 from everyones pocket, while a citizen would have to spend $10,000 in time and aggravation to fix the injustice. Middle income growth has been dead for thirty years, a problem which transcends Bush. Americans have compensated by sending women into the work force and calling it progress. On and on it goes, who’s to blame nobody knows.
Posted by: bayviking at June 1, 2004 04:30 PMJoe on so-called Bush haters:
They dont care that civilians like Nick Berg are brutally murdered as long as there are Abu Ghraib stories with which to beat Bush over the head with.
Can’t figure out what you are driving at here. Are you saying that Bush’s critics don’t want to acknowledge the brutality of Berg’s murder because that would somehow count in the “win” column for Bush (with Abu Ghraib counting in the “loss” column)?
Posted by: Woody Mena at June 1, 2004 10:00 PMAbu Ghraib is definitely being spun as a “loss” for Bush, but the Berg beheading is neither a loss or a victory. I’m sure Bush doesn’t see it those terms. What happened to Berg, like what happened on 9-11, what happened to Daniel Pearl, what happens daily to innocent people in Israel and the innocent Iraqis that Baathist and the Fedayeen have killed and oppressed is the reason we fight. Bush understands that there are things more important than a presidential election in America—it’s others who have either forgotten or lacked the big picture to begin with.
Posted by: Martin at June 1, 2004 11:22 PMMartin, just for the record the Baathists and the Fedayeen weren’t and aren’t part of the same global movement that killed Nicholas Berg or Daniel Pearl. They’re just armed Iraqi groups grappling for power in Iraq. They couldn’t care less about the goals of fundamentalist Islam or Al Qaeda.
If, in US-occupied Iraq, these groups forge alliances with Al Qaeda type groups, it will be a marriage of convenience, not a ideological convergence.
If we are truly fighting the ideology of fundamentalist Islam and anti-democratic terro groups like Al Qaeda, and if we truly want to win the war through a deep understanding of the enemy, then we should at least have the intelligence to not lump simple local nationalist groups and opportunistic warlord thugs into the same group.
-Cf
Posted by: Christopher Fahey at June 2, 2004 07:04 AM> Bush understands that there are things more
> important than a presidential election in
> America.
LOL, that’s hilarious!
-Cf
Posted by: Christopher Fahey at June 2, 2004 07:08 AMBush understands that there are things more important than a presidential election in America—it’s others who have either forgotten or lacked the big picture to begin with.
You and Joe seemed to be (willfully) overlooking the possibility that so-called Bush haters have reached the rational conclusion that Bush is a lousy president, and that voting him out will be an important first step toward engaging the world in a more productive manner.
Personally, I can’t say that I’ve ever been neutral about Bush, but I used to think that he was a basically decent person who was in over his head. When a learned a couple of weeks ago about his repeated refusal to attack a terrorist camp because he wanted evidence against Saddam, I started to wonder whether my original assessment was generous.
Posted by: Woody Mena at June 2, 2004 09:49 AMwhat happens daily to innocent people in Israel and the innocent Iraqis that Baathist and the Fedayeen have killed and oppressed is the reason we fight.
Martin, I think you’re forgetting that Bush & Cheney told us Iraqi WMDs are the reason we fight. What ever happened to those, anyhow? You don’t hear Bush talking about WMD so much anymore. Did he forget, too?
Woody:
Allow me to clarify. The media has certainly focuses more on the Abu Ghraib story than on the Nick Berg story—that’s very obvious. So part of the question becomes….why?
In some way, some Americans, and the media included, view OUR sins as somehow worse than the sins of others. We know that the US doesn’t always play by the rules (Geneva Convention etc), but we also know that our military goes out of its way to avoid civilian casualties. We do not hide among civilians, we do not target civilians, we do not randomly set off bombs with no regard as to the target.
Yet to hear the media talk about it, we are on the same level as our adversaries, who do all the above things.
This is the context that I referred to Nick Berg in. The US military has not brutally murdered innocent Iraqi’s on videotape, with the express intent being to horrify our opponents. That our media has downplayed this, and highlighted our own indiscretions is sad. Ifffff the media is truly objective, then both stories should receive similar play. But they don’t!
I’m not condoning bad actions on behalf of the US and our forces—-in fact, I support holding those found responsible for these actions accountable. But to compare our actions with those of our opponent is like comparing a touch of a woman’s butt (unacceptable if not wanted) to the brutal rape of a woman. In this kind of a viscerally repugnant example, we can see that two things can be unacceptable, yet radically different in nature and degree. I wish our media could see that.
Posted by: joebagodonuts at June 2, 2004 01:29 PMHow do you tell if a liar is telling a lie?
His lips are moving.
I have known someone who worked in my business who developed this reputation. He lied to everyone, lied about lying, and then lied some more. To anyone who was associated with him for more than a few days, this was their evaluation.
Perhaps the population isn’t as dumb as Goering stated. Perhaps the press isn’t. Bush created his administrations lack of credibility.
What coorelates to the Attorney Generals annoucement?
New credible terror threats?…..noooooo.
Recent increases in “chatter”?……nooooo.
A drop in the polls of Bush and Ashcroft?….Ding, Ding Ding!
It doesn’t take a village…. idiot…. to figure this one out.
Oh Yeah and DHS was unaware of any new threats…..oops!!!! Caught being phoney again!!!
This is your brain on Bush. C’mon guys, ya gotta do better than this.
Posted by: Greg at June 2, 2004 02:50 PM> Ifffff the media is truly objective, then both
> stories should receive similar play.
That’s a misunderstanding of the media’s real motivations ($), not to mention the fact that you are comparing apples to oranges.
Regarding the media’s sensationalization of the story, well, the Nick Berg story had exactly one image/video that would grab people’s attention, and it was too gruesome to show in detail. The Abu Graib story, on the other hand, has *tons* of images, and they apparently keep coming. The media’s motivation to scoop each other and to show scandalous photos whenever possible naturally gives the Abu Graib story more “legs” than the Berg story. This has nothing to do with politics or bias.
Also, there’s simply a lot more information regarding the Abu Graib story. The story itself is quite simply many magnitudes bigger than the Nick Berg story. The Pentagon is, in fact, investing a lot of time, money, and personnel towards uncovering the facts of the case… in fact, they were actively investigating it even before it broke as a news story - which kind of undermines your argument that the magnitude of the story is solely the result of the media’s biased coverage, or even the result of media coverage at all.
On top of that, I just saw a picture of the Abu Graib photographs painted on a wall as a mural in Tehran. That’s news! The Abu Graib abuses are Topic A around the world. It would be not only wrong but downright foolish of the American media to downplay the story just to make conservatives like you think that they are presenting a balanced view of the Administration’s policies.
The facts are facts, and I frankly want to know them.
-Cf
Posted by: Christopher Fahey at June 2, 2004 03:44 PMConveniently, you forgot to mention all of the Republicans who loudly criticized Ashcroft’s surprise press conference.
The Washington Post quoted Republican Congressman Chris Cox, arguing: “Dissemination by our government of sensitive terrorism warnings must be closely coordinated across our intelligence and law enforcement communities,” Cox said. “In the Homeland Security Act, DHS was assigned the central coordinating role in this process. The absence of Secretary Ridge from yesterday’s news conference held by the attorney general and the FBI director, and the conflicting public messages their separate public appearances delivered to the nation, suggests that the broad and close interagency consultation we expect, and which the law requires, did not take place in this case. The American public, state and local law enforcement, governors and mayors, and private sector officials with responsibility for critical infrastructure all deserve crystal clarity when it comes to terrorism threat advisories,” Cox said.
Perhaps Cox was just ticked off at the embarrassing fact that Tom Ridge, apparently unaware of the DoJ/FBI news conference, had been on a number of talk shows earlier in the day telling Americans there was no reason to change their daily living habit.
Posted by: chsa at June 2, 2004 06:05 PMToo much talking, not enough working, that’s my opinion. Bush’s administration administers one terrorist warning after another, most of them these content-free threat-level raisings, but when it comes time to arrest, interdict, or kill these people an foil their plots, we haven’t heard much at all.
The new information about Padilla certainly paints a more frightening picture of the man, but it’s still old news about a long captured terror suspect. We have yet to see any substantial Al Quaeda round ups. Are they just keeping it secret, or is there nothing to report?
I think the question, rather than being “Are we better than we were four years ago, is “are we better than we were three years ago. That is, has our homeland security improved since 9/11?
With few yardsticks to measure progress by, it is unfortunately very difficult to take seriously the continued protests by the administration that they are fighting the war on terror right, and it’s also difficult to see the warnings in a nonpolitical light.
Ironically enough, I think this administration would be more popular if it weren’t so uptight about leaks.
Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at June 2, 2004 07:41 PMTo be honest it’s late for me so I could only skim the MSNBC article and want to point out that warnings were given because of all the hub-bub over not warning the American public to “watch out for something somewhere, sometime, somehow… back in 2001” Might as well react to prank calls and what-not, which would be terrorism at it’s finest: fear. What is happening is the govt. is trying to appease the nervous nellies that look over their shoulders more than try to focus on horizon, especially since we should be wiser now that we know these terrorist animals are just that after 9/11.
Sorry if I didn’t read the article fully, so ignore if applicable.
Thanks,
Villain
Woody wrote:
When a learned a couple of weeks ago about his repeated refusal to attack a terrorist camp because he wanted evidence against Saddam, I started to wonder whether my original assessment was generous.
Could you provide links to that material? I’d already reached the conclusion that Bush was a moron, but I honestly did not think that he would in essence actively protect a terrorist camp’s continued existence in order to strike at Iraq. I would be very interested in reading your sources on this.
Posted by: Jarin at June 2, 2004 09:27 PMHere:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4431601/
warnings were given because of all the hub-bub over not warning the American public to “watch out for something somewhere, sometime, somehow… back in 2001”
Who cares about warning the public. Does anyone seriously think you’re going to stumble onto an al Qaeda cell while pouring a Slurpee at the local 7-11?
If these guys want to cover their asses, that’s fine. I’d just like to know that a real, coordinated counter-terrorism program is in place. If there wasn’t a real threat, the administration’s Keystone Cops routine would be amusing. But there is, and it’s not.
