The Seriousness of Threats
One of the big complaints early on after 9-11 was that our government didn’t do enough in the months leading up to the attack to prevent it from happening. There was disjointed information about vague threat, planes, flight schools…but our intelligence organizations being as segmented as they were, nothing was shared properly, and those analysts who need the information, didn’t get it all. If the CIA is involved, expect nothing less than…bad. The 9-11 Commission Report covers those shortcomings that our intelligence community had, and the Patriot act tries to remedy them (rabble rabble civil liberties rabble rabble…go drink your cappuccino, access you limitless free speech through the internet, and then complain about how life is so much harder for you now). There’s all sorts of conversations one can have about the wall that was between law enforcement and the federal government (great article by Stewart Baker here).
My concern is we’ve hit the delete button, and some of our representatives, and population for that matter, is choosing to ignore the signs. In only 6 short years, we’ve managed to convince ourselves that terrorism is just a bumper sticker theme, many of the candidates don’t even believe were fighting a war against terror. The new developments today from al Qaeda, involve a vague threat with some vague imagery…but a credible threat nevertheless:
According to the Blotter, the script reads, “Wait for the Big Surprise” and “Soon — God willing.” They’re paying attention to two images from the clip, with good reason: the photo of Bush and Musharraf in flames and the computer graphic of an SUV, which looks to the Blotter to be part of a motorcade. An assassination plot against Musharraf makes a lot of sense given the spate of A-list AQ leaders who have been calling for his head lately as revenge for the Red Mosque assault.
So, is it better for this administration to disseminate this information, and be called liars and fear mongers…or to ignore this information (as we had in the past) because it’s nonspecific, and be called out as failures. Where is the happy medium? Is it possible at all for this President to make a decision regarding the security (Iraq aside) of this country based on threats, and get any credit from the other side of the aisle?
I would say no.
Over at JunkYardBlog, they go over the litany of past threats, some with specificity, some without…and make the point that al Qaeda has a horrible track record for being able to carry out their threats…but as we’ve seen, they only need to be right once.
We’ll see what happens…the dates being floated are August 10 or 11…
As an aside, thoughts are with the victims and survivors of todays accident in Minneapolis.
On the flip-side, it’s pretty damned cool how many times terrorists have made threats don’t pan out. Not sure if their just blustering or if we’re catching them before they commit the acts, but I’m hoping it’s the latter.
right on spot SR..having gone to the WTC Memorial every year its unfathomable how Libs can deny the evil in our midst…sigh
Exactly right. Everyone’s just concerned about blaming Bush. I guarantee you if Bush didn’t go into Iraq, dems would be complaining that he’s not doing enough on the war on terror.
I used to think that Bush should just ask the dems what position he should take on some issue and take it so they can’t complain, but Petraeus’ unanimous confirmation didn’t stop them from claiming they were mislead or to quote Harry, “duped”.
Speaking of the bridge collapse, they’re already blaming Bush for it even though he’s spent more on everything including roads and bridges than anyone else has… It’s really just getting retarded now.