NEWS: New York Terror Alert Based on 3 or 4 Year Old Information

Sunday...hmmm, isn't that the day before the day when all the polls were taken to see how well Kerry did last week?

Sunday...hmmm, isn't that eleven days before my birthday?

Yet another suspiciously timed terror alert...

first time is happenstance
second time is coincidence
third time is a pattern
and the seventeenth time is just insulting our intelligence

I look forward to the day we can run Tom Ridge outta this town on a goddamn rail!

No kidding. And I guess the announcement last Thursday (the day of Kerry's speech) of the arrest of an HVT Al Qaeda leader in Pakistan -- when the capture had actually taken place five days earlier -- was just a coincidence too. FEAR! DEATH! TERROR! BUSH!


[Edited on Aug 03, 2004 by Keith]

who wants to bet osama gets captured within a month of the election?

that's a very, very scary thought....

that said, there's no amount of money small enough that I'd wager against it though.

they spiked up the terror alert so people would feel safe about having Bush as president... because he's STOPPING the people bombing the financial places.

its bullshit. RIGHT after the democratic convention they jack it up based on old information.

Im just waiting for:

"Today the terror alert has been raised to "Bugs Bunny" due to the fact that we suspect terrorists fleeing to New York after taking a wrong turn and heading to Albercurque. Of course Bugs Bunny is"

or

"Today the terror alert has been raised to Cheesburger from yesterdays Thilk Milkshake alert. This is the 390,361,901 time and these alerts still meen jack shit."

Nah, see, while Bush is more than willing to resort to such tactics, that would mean he'd have to catch the much smarter bin Laden first.

It took us quite a while just to find Saddam holed up about a mile from his house. If bin Laden actually decides not to stay in his hometown, there's a good chance we'll never find him.

But you know, it's kind of sad that I can blindly call bullshit anytime somebody says there's a terror alert and I'm right every time.

[Edited on Aug 03, 2004 6:56AM]

If I were part of a well organized terror group, and wanted to commit an act of terrorism against a US target, one of the first things I'd do would be to start disseminating info about fake attacks that were never planned, just to make everybody like you.
Then it would be easy.

I'm not sure how that would make it easy. It's not like if I believed the terror alerts were credible, I'd go throw on my blue tights and start patrolling the skies on the lookout for al Qaeda, ready at any second to melt the evil terrorists with my heat vision.

In theory, people should always be on the lookout for strange behavior. Just because Tom Ridge's rooster crowed three times instead of twice doesn't mean that suddenly we need to be careful. We always need to be alert — that's just life. I said so before 9/11 and I say so today.

Well no, I was saying that this very well may all be by design, not that YOU need to keep your eyes open to stop terrorists. They may be leaking incorrect information so that people start to ignore the "terror" warnings.

Maybe they're being over-protective...but if I were in their position I don't know if I wouldn't do the same thing.

Think about it. How much Monday Morning quarterbacking is going on now? "The Govt. KNEW about 9/11 before it happened" "The could have stopped it" "they should have done more" "They could have saved more lives"

Is it even remotely possible that they're trying to avoid being burned again? Thought the quote was butchered by our President, "Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me", it's a good piece of advice.

So the initial intel. is 3-4 years old...I'm not an expert in terrorism or even architecture...but how do you know that this isn't standard procedure. Hwo do you knwo that organizations like this DON'T start gathering intel years before they actually strike?

I'm not saying that the government is or isn't right in this situation. What I'm saying is....trust them or not, the Govt. does know more about what's actually going on more than you or me.

George W., at this point, is damned if he does & damned is he doesn't by everyone except his staunchest supporters. I don't think an error on the side of caution is all that bad.

But that's not the point of terrorism. They want people afraid to travel/fly/shop, etc.

who is to say we dont already know exactly where osama bin laden is? considering our resouces, its not THAT hard to find someone like him.

and i dont believe for a second that saddam hussein was actually hiding out in a dirty hole.

But no one is making that argument. The argument they are making is "We're perfectly willing to scare the ever living shit out of everyone in America rather than accept responsibility under the infinitesimal possibility of an actual attack."

The bottom line fact is that what has happened is that we have confirmed what we've known all along: Al Qaeda has done reconnaissance in the US. Thats it. There is utterly no evidence whatsoever to suggest that terrorists are more likely to attack today than last week or next month, and yet we are reacting as though we are under siege. Its also more than a little suspect that the nature of this information was completely omitted for days until everyone was good and panicked.

Tom Ridge = Larry
Dick Cheney = Moe
George Bush = Curly
Donald Rumsfeld = Shemp

But should New York be shut down indefinatly? If we don't know when the attack will occur or even IF it will occur, what good does it do to shut it down? It would only be good if as we speak they are rounding up the conspirators. Other wise the terrorists, if they are going to attack, are just going to wait.

As opposed to using recently discovered but completely stale intelligence to stage a dubious shutdown of NYs financial centers? I see a distinction without a difference.

Except that the kneejerk emotional response appears to be the goal of the alert. They were very clear to note right off the bat that this intelligence was "chilling" and "unprecidented" and "highly specific". "From 2000" could, apparently, wait a couple of days to mention. Pointing out that there is no reason at all to believe that this full auto dog and pony show is remotely called for is the rational response.

Sorry, but that really makes no sense and the only people I see advancing that theory are apologists and armchair spooks. A sleeper cell thats been compromised isn't going to spring into action against a compromised target. They're going to change targets or go to ground. What's more, if they didn't know they'd been compromised, they sure as hell do now.

tom ridge=bush buddy that cries wolf.


i think tom's even getting sick of it himself based on all those rumors of him wanting to quit after the election! (and yes, i know he now denies those rumors)

[Edited on Aug 03, 2004 by whiterabbit]

Ummmm, its August eight month old information is stale. Traffic patterns, pedestrian flow and security protocols really do change quite a bit from the dead of winter to the height of summer.

How could it possibly be totally irrelevant? We have the facts. The facts dictate a very different course of action than the one being undertaken and those facts were fucking withheld for days. Thats not kneejerk, thats not irrelevant, and you've adduced nothing whatsoever to justify any of it. All you're saying is give them the benefit of the doubt. I'm not willing to do that. These people have no fucking credibility. They are proven liars.

Speaking of kneejerk emotional response.

If this is the best intelligence we've ever captured, we are utterly and irredeemably fucked. Fortunately, I don't believe that for a second. This is not the "blueprint" for anything. Its raw surveillance.

Not when you consider what that information is. What that information is, is that they looked at these buildings for the most part, years ago. There is no evidence that this is even a plot, much less a current one. In short, its not very fucking specific at all. Of the five Ws, we've got Where and Why. Thats not even enough for Inside Edition. "Better safe than sorry" is great if its not your hometown under martial law, and thats what's at issue here. New York Fucking City is under Martial Law because Al Qaeda looked at a couple of buildings years ago. Sorry but liberal or no, you can't softsoap that.

Regardless of what we know or don't know about the "intelligence" (It feels so inappropriate to use that word in connection with this administration.) the fact that we are even considering, indeed, arguing, the veracity of a terror alert is the real problem. Bush is suffering the classic "boy who cried wolf" problem, of his own creation.

For the system to work, we have to trust the people working the system.

This is just further proof of the flood of information that the Intellegence Community is under every day.

There is so much stuff coming in that sometimes they don't know what to do with it all.

To bad most of you going after them for "creating a scare" would probably be calling for people's heads if something actually happened.