Michael, you're dancing around the elephant in the room.

What possible explanation is there for the way this alert was handled than the one that Howard Dean offered?

Seriously. The government released this information in a very deliberate way, right? I mean, they held a press conference and provided "senior intelligence officials" to brief reporters on background. This was not some leak that a journalist picked up.

Now, presumably, they didn't do what they did in order to "look like an ass", to use your expression.

So, what other explanation makes sense? What could they have possibly intended other than to make people more scared than they needed to be, based on the information they had?

>>>"Well, doesn't that just make the government look like an ass. Maybe, just maybe, they might have told everyone that in the first place."

No, but it makes somebody look like an ass. Mainly all the monday morning quarterbacks who will scream bloody hell once a 3-year old Al-Qaida plot finally hatches and brings down another building in Manhattan.

Michael, how long do you think it takes to plan a major operation, and what makes you think three-year old information is "outdated"?

God I hate the monday morning quarterbacking.

ps. Everybody that thinks the info on that laptop is outdated is a fool, plain and simple. If a bomb goes off in Manhattan Howard Dean is going to look like the RAVING lunatic he is. It will be the last you ever heard of him.

Mork,

From the article:

"You could say that the bulk of this information is old, but we know that Al Qaeda collects, collects, collects until they're comfortable,'' said one senior government official. "Only then do they carry out an operation. And there are signs that some of this may have been updated or may be more recent.''

[...]

The officials said on Monday that they were still analyzing computer records, photos, drawings and other documents, seized last month in Pakistan, which showed that Qaeda operatives had conducted extensive reconnaissance.

"What we've uncovered is a collection operation as opposed to the launching of an attack," a senior American official said.

That's all well and good, Michael -- but why didn't Ridge just say that in his press conference? It wouldn't have stopped anyone from taking reasonable precautions.

Why are we trusted with just enough information to scare us?

As Josh Marshall said some weeks ago, it's like a puzzle on "Wheel of Fortune" with all but a few blocks turned over. We all know what the letters spell, but not everyone has the guts to say it out loud yet.

The difference between Dean and Kerry is that Kerry's cautious enough not to say the obvious truth out loud.

Sure, Michael, so why did they create the impression yesterday that the evidence suggested that they had discovered current planning for an imminent attack?

You can see the dots, Michael - your original post shows that - but you refuse to join them together: the government mislead us about what they had discovered in a way that created more fear than the information justified.

So, why do you think they did that?

Then you have this, from the Washington Post:

More than half a dozen government officials interviewed yesterday, who declined to be identified because classified information is involved, said that most, if not all, of the information about the buildings seized by authorities in a raid in Pakistan last week was about three years old, and possibly older.

"There is nothing right now that we're hearing that is new," said one senior law enforcement official who was briefed on the alert. "Why did we go to this level? . . . I still don't know that."

So what's happening here is that the professionals are disgusted with the way that this information was being used and are going to extraordinary lengths ... at least seven individuals speaking to both national newspapers! ... to set the record straight.

There has got to be something wrong there.

Swopa: That's all well and good, Michael -- but why didn't Ridge just say that in his press conference?

Well, that was part of my point.

The difference between Dean and Kerry is that Kerry's cautious enough not to say the obvious truth out loud.

That was not my point, as you know. Why wouldn't Kerry point out the obvious truth if it is, in fact, the obvious truth?

Just because you guys have figured out the worst possible motive for something, doesn't mean you have figured out the actual motive.

>>>"There has got to be something wrong there."

Nothing wrong here. A major operation ala 9/11-- from casing to planning to execution-- could easily take 3 years or more according to a terror wonk on MSNBC.

But the way you tomfools go on about it makes me think you guys are the experts.

<iJust because you guys have figured out the worst possible motive for something, doesn't mean you have figured out the actual motive.

Well, I'd say it's the only possible motive ... unless someone else can suggest something that fits with the facts as we now know them to be.

Why wouldn't Kerry point out the obvious truth if it is, in fact, the obvious truth?

Maybe because he'd get the same knee-jerk derision from people in denial that you (and many media people) gave to Howard Dean? And that might impair a political campaign that he's involved in right now?

It's safer to let other people state the unpleasant truth, let them take the abuse, then move forward through the path they've opened.

Swopa,

I'm allergic to conspiracy theories. I don't care where they come from or who they target. Sorry it that seems "knee jerk" to you, but I think it prevents me from being an idiot more often than it doesn't. If that makes me wrong 2 percent of the time, I prefer that to the alternative.

I'm allergic to conspiracy theories.

Come on, Michael, that's just wilful self-deception.

You can't come up with an alternative explanation, but you still refuse to believe that what's left could be the truth.

Be serious!

And since when do you need a "conspiracy theory" to explain a politician telling a lie. Believe it or not, Michael, it happens all the time. They're just not usually about such serious subjects, or so comprehensively exposed.

To a certain extent the government is between a rock and a hard place on the terror alerts. If they do it and nothing happens the hard left shrieks with laughter, but if they fail to do it and something happens the left will be chanting, "Why didn't they warn us?"

Dean's point is ridiculous. Why would Rove & Bush be trying to get Kerry out of the news? Kerry's become Bush's best asset--the more he's in the public eye, the more people dislike him.

Mork, don't tell me my allergy to conspiracy theories is self-deception. Of course politicians lie. That's something a bit different from getting the federal government behind a bullshit terrorist warning.

You could be right. But the fact that most of the information leading up to the latest warning is old isn't enough evidence for that by itself.

Read the linked NYT article carefully, slowly, one sentence at a time, Mork. Don't just skim and cherry-pick it.

But the officials continued to regard the information as significant and troubling because the reconnaissance already conducted has provided Al Qaeda with the knowledge necessary to carry out attacks against the sites in Manhattan, Washington and Newark. They said Al Qaeda had often struck years after its operatives began surveillance of an intended target.

Taken together with a separate, more general stream of intelligence, which indicates that Al Qaeda intends to strike in the United States this year, possibly in New York or Washington, the officials said even the dated but highly detailed evidence of surveillance was sufficient to prompt the authorities to undertake a global effort to track down the unidentified suspects involved in the surveillance operations.

By the way, Mork, if/when Kerry gets accused of fabricating threats, any GOPpers who accuse him of "wagging the dog" (or whatever) aren't going to get any defense from me. What will you say to them?

Brainster,

Absolutely correct. Karl Rove wants Kerry front and center. What opponent wouldn't?

BTW - Could be that Kerry is getting briefed on a daily basis now that he's the official candidate. I know he didn't have the time to attend security briefings in Washington but I believe that it is customary for actual candidates to be briefed.

MJT,

I would anticipate the alert level staying high until that hard drive and CD-Rom's are completely analyzed. One might anticipate there being encrypted files and 256 bit encrytion still takes a while to sort out. I agree that Ridge could have noted that some of the info was at least three years old but I'm not sure what purpose it would have served.

At any rate, I hope Kerry stays front and center 24/7, I figure it's worth a 1/4 point per day for Bush.

Rick: I'm not sure what purpose it would have served.

So the government wouldn't look like it's trying to be our Dad who "knows best" and who treats us like little kids who don't need to know any details. The way they went about this clearly didn't work out very well, as the current "speculation" demonstrates. Sure, this is Monday morning quarterbacking, but what quarterback can learn anything without taking part in that exercise?

Michael,

I didn't mean to say that your allergy to conspiracy theories was self-deception. The self-deception is pretending to yourself that this grubbly little piece of political deceit amounts to a "conspiracy", in order that you might dismiss it.

I did read all of the NY Times article. I also read the Washington Post article, which is more specific about whether these "officials" regarded the information as justifying raising a new terror alert.

It is one thing to conclude that the information is "significant and troubling", but it is a completely different question whether or not it suggests that a particular attack is imminent. And only evidence of an actual attack being planned would justify the way the government behaved yesterday.

And it is an extraordinary thing that at least seven different officials would take the trouble and risk their jobs to tell a Washington Post reporter that the government had misled everybody. That alone should give you pause.

But it doesn't, because you've already decided to believe that the Bush Administration does not play politics with national security, and so you're just going to rationalize away any evidence to the contrary, short of a televised confession.

By the way, Mork, if/when Kerry gets accused of fabricating threats, any GOPpers who accuse him of "wagging the dog" (or whatever) aren't going to get any defense from me. What will you say to them?

Easy - if President Kerry is anything less than completely honest about national security issues, I'll dump him in a millisecond and throw my weight behind any Republican who's prepared to call him on it. You can take that to the bank.

MJT,

I got that and agree with the premise. I would note that the quick leak of the age of the information has roughly the same effect as Ridge releasing it immediately, there was less than a 24 hour gap. Ridge has a job that I just wouldn'y care to have. Actually, dumping this much info is fairly surprising. They took the guy on Thursday and springing information concerning his name and alias this quickly is a bit unusual.

So, to recap:

Despite the fact that we know 9/11 took five years to plan;

Despite the fact that we're in an election season, which, per Spain's example, is primetime for terrorist attacks;

Despite the fact that we already have one rather famous example of Al Qaeda hitting a financial target in New York City;

Despite the fact that Bush has already been accused publicly by people like Howard Dean and Michael Moore of fabricating terror threats to frighten the electorate;

Despite the fact that the public doesn't, and can't, have access to every bit of intelligence that informs the government's terror risk assessment;

Despite the fact that Ridge actually went ahead and named specific buildings as potential targets, thereby limiting the scope of the threat to a few people; and

Despite the fact that, as Michael suggests and this article confirms, the public is tired of terror alerts and no longer responds to them with any great alarm;

despite all this, I'm supposed to believe that a warning which incorporates three-year old intelligence can only be a big pile of bullshit cooked up by Bush and co. to scare the sheep into voting Republican. Even though the sheep aren't actually scared. Lovely. Makes perfect sense.

Since we're on the subject of bullshit, this is the second time in as many days that I've heard the "talking about terrorism = political ploy for Republican votes" idea floated. Michele at A Small Victory has been getting it in spades ever since she dared to create that poster asking people if they still remember September 11th. So let me remind you guys of a few things. First: We didn't choose your nominee. You could have picked Lieberman or some other hawk and cut the "strong defense" plank right out from under Bush, but you wanted Johnny Crocodilefeeder. Well and good, but as you go about trying to deflect attention from his shortcomings, is it too much to ask that you not dismiss every terrorism threat out of hand as some evil ruse perpetrated by the Bushitler?

Second point: The argument that terror threats automatically mean votes for Bush is weak, and gets weaker with each threat that passes uneventfully. Andrew Sullivan has made the case that Bush might have succeeded too well in the war on terror. I.e., with no attacks since 9/11, there's an argument to be made that the risk of terrorism has become sufficiently low that we no longer need a "wartime president." If nothing happens between now and Election Day, people will go to vote wondering if 9/11 wasn't just some freak, one-shot thing and, that being so, whether they shouldn't give Kerry a chance. And every terror alert that doesn't result in terrorism lends weight to that argument. So here we are with a fresh alert, which will hopefully prove to be yet another dud and which, if it is, will only redound to Bush's disadvantage, and you guys are killing him over the fact that he went ahead and issued it anyway. No matter what he does, he can't win. Par for the fucking course.

Anyway, sorry to interrupt the screening of Fahrenheit 9/11.

Allah: We didn't choose your nominee. You could have picked Lieberman or some other hawk and cut the "strong defense" plank right out from under Bush

No shit. God, why couldn't the Democrats figure that one out for themselves. So obvious...

So, Allah, what purpose do you think was served by the terror alert?

Who did it help, and how?

Mork, what purpose is served by any terror alert? I'd say they probably all serve the same purpose, but maybe that just makes me a right-wing monster.

Well, Michael, I would guess that it would be worth issuing an alert if the government were aware of an imminent danger that people ought to consider avoiding, or if additional public vigilence would significantly increase the possiblity of thwarting an attack.

At the moment, I wonder if those conditions have been present during any of the previous alerts.

But I'm not the one defending this alert. So you tell me why you think they issued it.

I know, I know - to spoil Lt. McKerry's three day cruise. That's gotta be it.

You're really going to have to try harder Mork, this hamster is beyond mouth to mouth.

Mork: At the moment, I wonder if those conditions have been present during any of the previous alerts.

It's easy to pop off like this when your political party is not in control of the White House. I'm half tempted to vote for John Kerry just to make you and everyone else in the Democratic Party knock this shit off for a few years and take this stuff seriously for a change.

Every day that passes since 9/11 the idea that Bush invented a terrorist "bogeyman" inches closer and closer to the mainstream. I guess that's just human nature, though.

The feds are in a no-win situation on these terror alerts. If they say nothing and an attack occurs, some people will claim that not enough was done to prevent it. If they tell us an attack may be imminent and it does not happen, people will either ignore future alerts, or, the paranoids , mostly on the Left, will say it is just part of the Bush-Cheney-Haliburton conspiracy.

The bottom line is, a free society can NEVER be fully prepared for a terrorist attack. No amount of terror alerting, bomb-sniffing dogs, and barricades can stop a determined terrorist.

There is only one way out of this dilemma. And that is to make an incessant, dogged, savage war on these monsters until their body parts are scattered to every corner of the earth, and the bottoms of the seven seas.

Until then, prepare for more alerts, and more attacks. And vote for GWB in November.

There you go again, Michael, full of glib rationalizations that enable you to avoid, as you have avoided throughout this thread, trying to square away yesterday's alert with the information on which it was based.

Why aren't you able to address this specifically?

You are a fascinating study in the ability of the human mind to avoid processing information that risks calling into question cherished beliefs.

Jesus, Mork, what's my "cherished belief" here? That Al Qaeda wants to kill us and the government is trying to warn us whenever they can? Don't tell me the "infallibility" of the George W. Bush Administration is one of my cherished "beliefs." Don't even go there.

You're being paranoid and you have no real evidence to back up your theory. I already addressed this specific terror alert by quoting extensively from the NYT piece I linked in the first place.

Some information about specific targets that happened to be old was stapled onto fresher, more general information that we're being targetted by Al Qaeda. What's the big effing deal?

I don't have anything else to go on here because I am not an intelligence agent. Neither are you, but I'm not the one saying there is only one POSSIBLE explanation for a warning from the federal government. If you can only think of one POSSIBLE explanation then you're being exceptionally narrow-minded, not to mention presumptuous. You have no idea what you don't know. But John Kerry probably does. As someone mentioned above, he most likely is getting intelligence briefings at this point.

It would seem that a reasonable "conspiracy theory" is that Ridge has been encouraged to err substantially on the side of caution in the months leading up to the election. That would mean that anything significant, including three-year-old intel recently discovered, is reason enough to issue alerts. It's CYA.

I don't agree with that kind of thing. But it's not a conspiracy in the sense that Rove tells Ridge what to do. It's more, in the words of Paul O'Neill, making politics matter more than they should. That's been the style of this administration, and it's not in the best interest of the nation.

Mork,

Who did it help, and how?

Hmmm, let's see. Maybe it helped the people who WORK in the targeted buildings?

And this little good-cop-bad-cop routine by Dean and Kerry is a joke. Dean doesn't talk in his sleep without getting Kerry's approval. This is a manufactured attempt at a Sister Souljah moment.

It would have helped Ridge's case quite a bit had he not spent 80 percent of his podium time offering boilerplate rhetoric about vigilance, and telling us all that the information we had was the result of Bush's super-duper leadership capabilities, instead of just rattling off the facts, Friday-style, taking some questions, and leaving. But no, he had to (was told to?) turn it into a campaign commercial, too. That's why people are suspicious and grumbling.

The problem is that all throughout the past two decades the public was never throughly informed about Islamofascism. Plans to attack and kill Americans, and Western interests as a whole, have been in development for at least this long.

Islamofascists have always proclaimed that they have the luxury of time on their side and are counting on Americans to forget that the enemy is real.

I hope the public, through these terror alerts, will begin to understand Islamofascism is going to be around for at least the next two decades just as they have been around during the last two decades.

I think people who ridicule these warnings are making asses out of themselves. 9/11 was not the beginning of this Islamofascist war and it certainly is not the end.

Michael Totten, by proclaiming you are "tired of terror alerts" appears to me as one who is woefully underestimating our enemies long-standing intentions.

Being tired of hearing about alerts is not going to end Islamofascist terrorism, in fact, it emboldens the terrorists to bide their time until Americas have become so complacent, like we were all throughout the 1990's, that the next attack will make 9/11 look irrelevant.

I remember that twenty years ago Islamofascist used to simply hijack airplanes, now they hijack airplanes and fly them into civilian buildings killing thousands in an instant.

After two decades of Islamofascists war upon America, I now take EVERY ISLAMOFASCIST THREAT seriously!

Allah pointed out one thing that should be obvious: this alert is being issued because of the presidential election, yes. And that is because Al Qaeda is more likely to attempt an attack between now and November.

The other regrettable fact is that there have been countless stories of amazing lapses of sense among airport security, law enforcement, etc. The 9/11 Commission report details numerous cases of the 9/11 hijackers raising security flags at the airports but ultimately being passed through. You'd think this would no longer happen post 9/11, but the fact is that people become jaded, and that's actually healthy. You can't be hypervigilant every day of your life. But during 3 months of obviously heightened risk, especially when it is known that an extensive attack assessment has been in the works, hypervigilance is going to be wise.

There was no millienium bombing simply because a single border guard in Canada had a gut feeling and acted on it. It would be nice to think she is representative of everyone, but in fact most people need to be reminded to keep their eyes open to warning signs.

If you know that someone just slipped into your office tower without going through security, you've got to report it. If you see a suitcase unattended for 2 hours...etc. Between terror alerts, people revert to a mindset where noticing these things, much less reporting them, makes them feel silly. An alert means, "Don't feel silly. You are the people who will give us the information we need in order to know when an attack is in the offing."

Something sinister is indeed afoot. It's far less frightening to think that it's just more of the same-old-same-old Republican shenanigans. Heck, we might even laugh it off in a few years, like we laugh off the bomb shelters of the 1950's. It's not a fun thing to accept, but this stuff is real.

It would have been nice if Tom Ridge had not ended his press conference on Sunday by stating, "We must understand that the kind of information available to us today is the result of the president's leadership in the war against terror."

I think a healthy skepticism about anything coming out of the Bush WH, or any other WH, is certainly in order. It is not like they have any real shreds of credibility left.

The terror alerts come out on a Monday morning - defining the news cycle for the week. It just so happens to be the Monday morning after the Dem convention, driving the Kerry/Edwards road show off the front page. It just so happens that it is timed perfectly to form the backdrop for Bush's announcemnt of his adoption of some of the 9/11 commission report. It just so happens that Cheney is out on the campaign trail pushing the meme of the week - "this administration is protecting us from terrorists".

I'm sorry. I run away from conspiracy theories as quickly as anyone else. But I also know a well coordinated media plan when I see one. And this one stinks to high heaven.

That is not to say that there is no danger. I accept that al-Q was casing those joints, and that hightened security measures are in order. But the response that they provoked was purposely made to look like the terrorists were just over the horizen - armed soldiers patrolling the streets, fortifications being built around buildings etc. This is not a serious, sustatinable level of security - it is a show put on for media dissemination. There seems to be no evidence that the terrorists are closing in on their targets - that there is any specific plan that has been unearthed - just that fact that they cased the joint a few years ago.

The argument that Bush wants Kerry to be in the news is absurd nonsense. You never want your opponent in the news. And the notion that Kerry-exposure hurts Kerry is also brave-talking nonsense. Bush is in deep electoral trouble - even Frank Luntz, GOP polling guru, has let slip that he thinks Kerry will probably win.

These people play for keeps. I wouldnt put much of anything past them, and they are certainly not going to go quitely into that dark night of political defeat. But you neednt be quite as cynical as that in order to take your daily news with a healthy dose of skepticism.

Freeguy made most of my points.

Listening to all the second-guessing, spin, and paranoia here can really screw up a beautiful Tuesday morning.

We are under attack. We have been for years. The planning/training/execution process of the WTC attacks have been studied at length.

Now the government finds itself in possession of a mass of data indicating enemy interest in specific targets across multiple cities. The same mission analyses, site evaluations, and scouting reports used to generate the 9/11 missions are all present. The only question I haven't been able to answer to my own satisfaction is whether or not the data was on a server or merely locked on CD or other backup media.

The groundwork was done. Once you have scouted a physical target all you really need do prior to executing an attack is a hasty recon to look for specific countermeasures that may have been implemented since the initial reconassaince.

We found a mass of data. What was Ridge supposed to do? Issue a general warning? Issue a warning specific to entire cities, but withhold target locations to hedge against political damage?

The data might have been generated before 9/11 but the timeline of al Qaeda attacks is routinely measured in years. The government came into possession of specific target i.d.'s and passed that information to the tenants and law enforcement agencies most directly affected. Now they know what the enemy explored, and can take steps to rectify any weaknesses they can.

I'm listening to CBS hourly radion news as I write this. The announcer just said that DHS published the warning because evidence was found in the data that al Qaeda had updated the reconaissance data within the last calendar year.

Somehow...somehow...I don't think that information will be front page news.

Oh, and how 'bout that Kerry bounce?

Laughing to November...

MJT said, "I'm half tempted to vote for John Kerry just to make you and everyone else in the Democratic Party knock this shit off for a few years and take this stuff seriously for a change."

This is exactly my justification for voting for Kerry. Well, that and the liberal part of being a liberal-hawk.

>>"The feds are in a no-win situation on these terror alerts. If they say nothing and an attack occurs, some people will claim that not enough was done to prevent it..."

Bottom line.

End of discussion

Every day that passes since 9/11 the idea that Bush invented a terrorist "bogeyman" inches closer and closer to the mainstream.

Oh, baloney. I know that a long-standing part of the "hawk" (liberal or otherwise) worldview is that they somehow see the danger more clearly that the rest of us do, but we ALL saw the planes fly into the World Trade Center, okay?

Believe it or not. Really, we did. So we all know there's a real danger.

The question is whether the war on terror is too important to be trusted to someone who endlessly uses it for his political gain.

Well, well, well...

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/07/30/national/main633064.shtml

Read it.

The target data was updated as recently as January of this year. But that's not as juicy as dissecting the story for political angles, is it?

We can expect there to be an alert every time there is any information that suggests an attack. We can expect the government to err on the side of issuing an alert over not issuing an alert. Why? Because Ridge, et al. will be crucified if an attack occurs and there was no alert. Those who are shouting conspiracy theories are not living in the real world.

As for those who contend that a warning should be issued only when a threat is imminent, I suggest that you reconsider your position. What is imminent? How much warning would you want if you were in a targeted building? On top of that, just how are we supposed to know when an attack is imminent? These attacks involve very few people. Unless one of them is already suspected or does something suspicious, the chances are that we will never know when an attack is "imminent" until the target is actually under attack.

MJT said, "I'm half tempted to vote for John Kerry just to make you and everyone else in the Democratic Party knock this shit off for a few years and take this stuff seriously for a change."

DeanT said, "This is exactly my justification for voting for Kerry. Well, that and the liberal part of being a liberal-hawk."

So, you are going to reward the Democrats for the bad behavior of their lunatic fringe? There is something wrong with that.

In Dean's world "imminent" means after the attack.

Two decades of Islamofascist attacks yet some in our midst cannnot comprehended our enemy's existance.

What worries me so much about both Michael's post and the comments thread is the whole idea that the President cannot both run a war and campaign for re-election. Since he is running for re-election, clearly President Bush and his administration must stop:

- issuing terror alerts as threats come up
- attacking states which sponsor terrorism or are developing nuclear weapons
- planning for any operations whatsoever
- capturing or killing important terrorists
- negotiating with allied states
- threatening enemy states

Come off of it and grow up! We are in fact at war, and that war will continue whether or not we stop our prosecution of it - but it will go worse for us if we stop our prosecution of it.

I accept that it is possible that President Bush - or any president - would manipulate the timing of this information - or any information - to help his re-election chances. But the reality is, we cannot stop prosecution of the war just because it's an election season, and that means that it is also quite possible (which Mork for one seems unprepared to accept) that in prosecuting the war we will actually unravel terrorist intentions, and desire to announce them so that the affected targets can take measures to secure themselves.

In the world, there are hundreds of thousands - possibly millions - of people who want every American dead. Of these, tens to the low hundreds of thousands are prepared to take action - even at the risk of their own life - to kill Americans. They don't differentiate by political party, by whom you vote for, by your religion or ethnicity, by your home state or by your opinions: if you are American, they want to kill you.

Grow up or die. Your call.

Several (especially Allah in an excellent post) have explained "why" and "why now" (why release this -- "old but relevant" --information and establish a heightened alert).

There is, in my opinion, another "why" and "why now". It relates to the politics of it all; I will accept/stipulate that releasing the information now, in a press conference, and making a campaign speech around the release of it IS political.

Let's consider the possibility that those now in authority in terms of containing/eradicating Islamic terror actually believe they are the best at doing that. They WANT to stay the course, not turn over that awesome responsibility to someone else. They DON'T like the idea of Kerry having that on his plate, fearing it will not get the attention they are prepared to give. So, they work the issue in such a way that it helps their chances of reelection.

And... is there something wrong with that?

And... is there something wrong with that?

In a word, yes.

If you like, we can set aside the question of whether or not you think it's ethical, appropriate, or proper--pick your adjective of choice--to use a public service announcement about a potential terror attack as a vehicle for a re-election campaign message. I think it is, at minimum, an abuse of my tax dollars (which pay Mr. Ridge's for his time) to give Bush advertising time at my expense. That's my opinion. You probably disagree.

A better question for all of us is: is mixing politics with terror alerts /wise/? If it serves to dilute the message and make people less inclined to take it seriously because they hear Bush propaganda mixed in, doesn't it strike you as a manifestly bad idea to cross that line?

No matter what secret purpose may be behind the terror alert (real or imagined), I find a couple troubling issues.

1. "There once was a boy who cried wolf...." and we all know what happened to him. The government needs to be proactive, based on what threats they know... but this is the second press conference by Ridge in three or four weeks. If there is a terror attack, then thats one thing, but if there's not... the American people, as they are wont to do, will begin to minimize the Threat Level. If I were leading a terrorist organization, I'd do what we hackers call a 'stick' attack.

In a 'stick' attack, you send thousands and thousands of fake attacks at the target network. While the network is bravely expending all of its resources to stop these false attacks, you slip inside, run your attack and slip back out unnoticed. A slight variation is to send a number of attacks regularly, intending to set off their Intrusion Detection Systems. Once you've set the IDS off every night at 3:00AM for 3 weeks, the Administrator will eventually ignore it, and the real attack commences.

Is that what's happening, I dunno but I thought it as good a conspiracy theory as Bush using it for PR ;-)

The spin from the CBS story linked to by tmjUtah above:

. . . top Bush administration officials said some of the surveillance was apparently updated as recently as January of this year.

A little more detail from the Washington Post:

One piece of information on one building, which intelligence officials would not name, appears to have been updated in a computer file as late as January 2004, according to a senior intelligence official.

Makes it a little less ominous when you get more facts, doesn't it? (We don't even know how important that "one piece of information" was, or how certain officials are of what was changed.)

Contrary to the "do you want warnings, or don't you" straw man being flogged up above, the point is to give us ACCURATE warnings. If Tom Ridge gets up yesterday and says, "This is data we found in Pakistan last month -- it's two or three years old, and we don't know that they're currently pursuing it, but it is specific, and their plans develop over long time frames," then people can take reasonable precautions without unduly freaking out.

Unfortunately, unduly freaking people out seems to have been a key part of Ridge's intent.

And I forgot the second troubling issue...

It is precisely BECAUSE of all the LLL running amok lately that these 'terror warnings'are released.No-one can afford to NOT warn and POSSIBLY have something happen.I personally think they are a massive waste of time and resources and should be eliminated completely,but MORK and his ilk would be the first in line to scream about how incompetent the administration was if terrorists struck.
Frankly as MJT relates,the more something is brought up and NOTHING happens,the less attention is paid to it in the future.If there really were a conspiracy(Mork you are CLEARLY unable to differentiate reality from 'other'),it would NOT be useful to keep repeating these threats without something happening.I guess GWB and the 'fascists'will next be compelled to actually start blowing things up just to keep everyone suitably scared and susceptible.Oh well, I always wanted to see a variant of the Reichstag Fire scenario.
Conspiracy theories are US !!

On a non-related note thanks to Ben's previous comment,namely:
"MJT said, "I'm half tempted to vote for John Kerry just to make you and everyone else in the Democratic Party knock this shit off for a few years and take this stuff seriously for a change."

DeanT said, "This is exactly my justification for voting for Kerry. Well, that and the liberal part of being a liberal-hawk."

So, you are going to reward the Democrats for the bad behavior of their lunatic fringe? There is something wrong with that.---
-------------------------------------------------
ABSOLUTELY RIGHT !!!! I have ranted on about this issue before but once more into the breech.
MJT this is a GREAT site and you are almost always a GREAT anaylst,BUT this line of anti-logic is really difficult to hear on a more or less daily basis.Can you not see how profoundly WRONG this reasoning is and how it basically represents an intellectual surrender to the forces of irrationalism?
If I demand something of you and do so by stampimg my feet and screaming at you,what do I care if you give me what I want just because you want me to SFTU.I STILL GET WHAT I WANT and you have rewarded poor behaviour.Why would you believe that I then would grow up and stop doing what got me what I wanted in the first place?

Wow doug, maybe you should drink less coffee ;)

Mork - you're so well informed about this most recent republican conspiracy. Therefore, I'm sure you can tell us what al Qaeda's reaction to the capture of Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani was.

Did they:

A) appear on al Jazeera claiming that the capture of Ghailani was just a Rove-inspired plot by the Bush administration to take attention away from Kerry's campaign?

B) appear on al Jazeera stating that the Bush adminstration is playing his terrorism trump card again.

or did they respond by C) making repeated attempts to assasinate Pakistani leaders this weekend, killing and wounding scores of Pakistanis in the process?

If you picked c, you're absolutely right! According to the inept assasins,

One of our blessed battalions tried to hunt a head of one of the American infidels in Pakistan while he was returning from Fateh Jang, but God wanted him to live.

It said the attack "will be followed by a series of painful strikes if you don't stop complying to the wicked (President) Bush's orders.

We will give you the chance to stop these actions. Otherwise, we will behave in a different way in Pakistan and turn it into a bloody war against you and whoever supports your policies.

Maybe all of those dead Pakistanis inspired the current concern about attacks here.

So, why are these Islamists making such a big deal about Bush's silly August surprise, anyway? I mean, these crazy people are acting like they're fighing a genuine war or something.

You could set them straight, Mork. Just wander over to the tribal areas of Pakistan and tell them that they're just part of a Bush conspiracy to defeat Kerry in November.

The truth is out there.

Catsy thinks it an abuse of tax dollars (which pay Mr. Ridge's for his time) to give Bush advertising time at our expense. Every time an incumbent is on the air, they tout what they are doing, and preen for reelection. Not to mention filling the mailbox with self serving crappola. And, in so doing, they are running the risk of turning as many people off as they are in getting support. In my perfect world, it would not happen. But, I give this a big "so what" shrug of the shoulders and arching of the eyebrows.

Indeed, as Catsy says, "A better question for all of us is: is mixing politics with terror alerts /wise/? If it serves to dilute the message and make people less inclined to take it seriously because they hear Bush propaganda mixed in, doesn't it strike you as a manifestly bad idea to cross that line?"

To which I say, "no" (it is not wise)", and "no" (I don't think people will be less inclined to take it seriously). Some don't take this stuff seriously, period, for a variety of reasons --- not the least of which is "I'm livin' my life anyway"--- and most will always take it seriously if it seems likely they could be in harm's way. The motive is immaterial if the messenger is even borderline informed and qualified to speak on the subject.

And, I don't like the "crossing of the line" Catsy mentions in closing, but I have a whole lot more candidates for "manifestly bad idea" than this particular one. Look, my posts are usually pretty vanilla (rather than raw meat or hot'n spicy). That's because at my age/stage of life it takes a fair amount of fuel to get the "outrage" reading on my oven. This is just, well, no big deal to me. Business as usual.

Swopa -

So....if the material in question was only updated once back in January then the identified targets are better off not being informed?

Let me just step out of the way while you shove those goalposts out into the parking lot.

Intelligence rarely comes in the form of "The attack will be executed by the teams (roster attached, see Annex B) using the stolen and repainted utility trucks (photos,license numbers, and registration records attached, see Annex C) at 0932 EDT September 11, 2004."

You propose that releasing this data was primarily a political decision on the part of the Bush administration. I'll go you one better - the Kerry campaign is betting that any attack that was planned has been thwarted by this warning and has elected to attack timing, sourcing, and credibility of the threat for their own ends.

It's no more unreasonable than what you propose, and we'll probably never know one way or the other anyway.

Unless of course the attacks are attempted...which I don't see happening since now Kerry stands to benefit if the administration can be made to look underhanded.

We live in interesting times.

The intel for 9-11 would have 3 or 4 years old too...

Those of you that want to believe this is some kind of political ploy need to admit that if the targets were struck, the pursuant investigation would castigate Ridge for not releasing the info.

Damned if he does, damned if he doesn't.

And of course, there is always the possibility thatAl-Queda will continue to leak information about impending attacks, so that Bush will look like an idiot. If we stay on Orange Alert through October and no Terror threat has materialized, Bush may be seriously damaged in the election.

Aren't conspiracies fun?

Why was this alert issued at this time? Because it is based in part on intelligence acquired in a raid in Pakistan on July 26, according to the Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A32993-2004Aug1.html)

On what date since then should Secretary Ridge have made the announcement to avoid charges that its timing was politically-motivated?

As for stating that "much" (whatever that means) of the information was several years old, that could certainly have been stated more clearly, but Monday's Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A31951-2004Aug1.html)

states in the first paragraph of the article that "al Qaeda operatives have been plotting for years to blow up specific buildings with car or truck bombs". It seems reasonable that evidence that shows that they have been plotting for years might be years old.

Perhaps the problem here is with the New York Times, and not with the Bush administration.

I'm late to this thread, but I just have to address Mork.

Your entire support for the argument that this alert was politically motivated, if I read you right, is: What other explanation can there possibly be?

The proper answer to that question in any context (can't remember whose line I'm stealing) is, It could be anything else in the world that you don't understand.

Look, if your default position is to assume that this had to be a political trick, fine; but don't expect anyone to accept that as dispositive because we can't disprove it. The burden's on you, not us.

>>>"The burden's on you, not us."

Exactly. The conspiracy nut present his unfounded case as fact and then expects the rest of us to disprove him with solid unrefutable facts. If we fail to do so, the conspiracy nut is confirmed in his lunacy, and he thinks himself that much more enligthened. I consider such thinking a mild form of mental illness personally.

I rather enjoy seeing the rabid nutjobs come out of the woodwork, ranting and raving their F911esque conspiracy theories.

The foam spittle trail they leave behind them when they walk helps the moderate swing voters decide who NOT to vote for in November. Keep up the good work, Mooreons!

Matthew,

Because everyone who is critical of the administration, must all agree with the nutjobs... right?

Tosk,

I don't see any foam flecks in your general direction. Nuff said!

Doug: Can you not see how profoundly WRONG this reasoning is and how it basically represents an intellectual surrender to the forces of irrationalism?

Not if it actually cures the irrationalism. If the irrationalism were to continue unabated then you would be absolutely correct, I would be surrendering to it.

This war will outlast Bush. Do you want one half of the country to spend four more years digging itself even deeper into a hole? They Democrats need to catch up so we're all on the same page.

That's not an endorsement of Kerry. I'm just considering the positives and negatives of electing either one of these mooks.

Matthew,

No foam here... just commenting on your statement. Do you really think that people who disagree with Bush's policies, or support the Kerry campaign, are all "rabid nutjobs"?

If so, thats an interesting theory... if not, then perhaps the swing voters will recognize the "rabid nutjobs" as being a loud and annoying minority, leaving plenty of room to vote for Kerry and the more centerist Democrats.

I'm not a Democrat, I don't agree with the "rabid nutjobs", but I seriously disagree with the current administraion. Does my support of Kerry align me with the "rabid nutjobs"?

Just askin'...

This thread contains some of the richest, most stunning and pungent jackassery I've seen in quite some f!!king time!!

Point one - several sources of information come together, tied primarily to the capture of the AQ bigwig in Pakistan and the subsequent examination of his laptop.

Point two - the captured Al Qaeda guy starts singing like a bird - leading to, among other things the capture this morining of several senior al Qaeda folks trying to leave Pakistan.

Point three - these first two elements seem to indicate that we've breached a portion of their network. Along with this we discover that they've been conducting very long-term surveillance of their targets.

Point four - once a network has been breached, it won't stay breached forever, so you've got to act quickly while you can.

Point five - from a aQ perspective, if you know the network's been breached, but you don't know the extent of the breach, you're very likely to pull back.

Point six - in making this public and spooking al Qaeda, you can get the opportunity to flush them out, and hopefully nab a few more.

Finally, (I said it above, but it bears repeating) the SENIOR AL QAEDA GUY WAS CAPTURED THURSDAY ALONG WITH HIS LAPTOP - this is the new source of information that has prompted recent actions. See, nice cause and effect, captured on Thursday, release on Monday.

Right now, our leftist friends are so rabid, we seem to not be able to have a rational conversation. Yes, the Bush administration makes mistakes. Yes, criticizing those missteps doesn't by itself cause you to be counted among those who go from one Bush conspiracy theory to another.

The tone of the dialog seems very like that from 1995 to 1996, when Clinton conspiracy theories abounded. My natural inclination was to buy into them. I reached a point when I realized that it was hazardous to my mental health to continue following that thread.

There is nothing wrong with having a loyal opposition that watches over what those in power do. The problem for the left right now is that they could easily be construed as the disloyal opposition. They hope that bad things happen to our country, because that will be to their political advantage. There is something wrong with that stance. It forces them to try to put a negative spin on every bit of positive news and every erstwhile protective act and utterance. Do they think that the American public is composed of ignorant boobs?

Until their tone changes, I would hesitate to take seriously anything the left, and their designated candidate have to say.

"Do they think that the American public is composed of ignorant boobs?"

Yes, for the most part, I do. Americans tend to slack off on educating themselves on issues, examining the cause of problems, and prefer much more to simply go with their gut feeling (which is usually heavily influenced by whatever social group they belong to).

I remember having a conversation with someone about a month after the occupation of Baghdad commenced. He was dead sure that we had found a whole stockpile of WMD's. Why? I have no idea, but in having conversations with other random strangers, I found that this was the prevading opinion of about 30% of those I spoke with.

There are still a surprisingly large number of people who think that Saddam was involved in the 9/11 attacks. Why? Who knows.

Many Americans, I think, vote by what they see on TV. If there truly is a Left-Wing Media Bias, then then Right might as well hang it up, because people won't be bothered to find out information on their own.

These logs are a great place for frank discussion, but what percentage of the American People do you actually think are on Blogs? I would guess that its probably a comparatively small number, and those people tend to be the ones that would go find out info on their own anyway.

Tosk

"You know how dumb the average guy is? Well, mathematically, by defination, half of them are even dumber than that." - J.R. "Bob" Dobbs

How I hate to arrive late to one of these discussions.

A few possibilities about this announcement occur to me:

(1) Publicly announcing that potential targets are being considered by al-Qaeda is a practical guarantee that those targets will be left alone.

(2) Publicly announcing that potential targets are being considered based on captured information (even if it wasn't) is almost certain to cause a bit of scrambling amoung al-Qaeda or related cells, as they don't know what is and isn't known.

(3) I don't give the Bush administration much credit for being successfully or intelligently sneaky, and I suspect that announcements like this one don't necessarily originate from the Whitehouse. Perhaps the intelligence community is involved.

(4) Yes, announcements like this help the Bush admin's credibility, as it should if the info is accurate or is part of a standard disinformation campaign. If, on the other hand, it's simply political boobery, or over-eager Pakistani intelligence agents making shit up, then it's really contemptable. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt until anything is proven.

" Many Americans, I think, vote by what they see on TV. If there truly is a Left-Wing Media Bias, then then Right might as well hang it up, because people won't be bothered to find out information on their own"-- Tosk

Well the upside is that, although the media IS BIASED beyond all reasonable measure and is also intellectually dishonest enough not even to accept that fact,most people don't even watch the news or read the papers,so all that 'liberal'propaganda goes wasted.
See there IS a viable argument is favour of being an 'ignorant boob'. Isn't democracy wonderful !! Ignorant boobs may be the salvation of us all.

dougf,

They always say that God protects the Saracens and Fools ;-)

To suggest that an alert is not appropriate because the terrorist information is a couple of years old is the comment by the uninformed.

How long was 9/11 in the planning stages? Somewhere around 4 - 6 years if you don't count the bombing. Clearly that was just a botched attempt. If you included it, they were planning for closer to 8 years. And you can bet your sweet bippy that they had gathered information all during those years.

That is the case here, old information mixed with current information.

There couldn't be a more difficult position for the government to be in, especially during an election. No matter what they do, they can't win.

Send up an alert during 2004, it's politics. Shall we hope an attack happens so people like Dean will shut up? Of course, not. But his kind is no help.

Don't send out an alert and something happens, they didn't do their job to protect America.

Send up an alert and nothing happens, people get apethetic.

Maybe I'm nieve, but I believe there are just certain things that require trust in your government and those we elected. It's faith in your government.

We elected them to do the right thing and there isn't anyone in any administration that would want to have an attack on the country during their watch (or anybody's watch).

Pete,

I agree that the administration is in a tight spot. I think that spot could have been a bit easier for them, especially by dumping Tom Ridges pro-Bush speech mixed in with the report. Of course, the White House may have had nothing to do with it and Mr. Ridge could have been speaking from his deep love and respect for the president. I don't know, but its good ammo for the opposition.

I fear that this is yet another instance where the Public relations arm of our govenrment seems to have faltered. Maybe I'm spoiled after the premo PR work of the Clinton's (Whatever they were... they were good at PR)....

It's not always the information thats important... sometimes the presentation is equally key.

I wonder how many on here would feel like total asses if, God forbid, another building falls to the ground? You are probably the same ones that did more than your fair share of the complaining when 9/11 happened and we "weren't" warned.

If that were to happen Howard Dean will be toast and I doubt we would hear anything from the rest of you who thinks like he does.

The reason Kerry doesn't agree with Dean is because he received the "intelligence" on this matter..

Damn. I’m always late to the party.

“This war will outlast Bush. Do you want one half of the country to spend four more years digging itself even deeper into a hole? They Democrats need to catch up so we're all on the same page.”

I don’t see the “Democratic wing of the Democratic Party” ever catching up so we are all on the same page. Barring a full-fledged WMD attack on an American city, these folks will want to live in a 9/10 world. They are children in denial and a permanent part of our political demographics. They are the same folks who would have listened to Father Coughlin and the America First crowd in 1939. The best that we can hope for is that they are marginalized and appeased by enough “feel-good” rhetoric and domestic spending programs so they can zone out, smoke a bone, and spend most of their idle time getting news feeds from The Onion.

In essence John Kerry will be tucking them in bed each night, leaving the grown-ups to discuss foreign policy after the children are asleep. With some luck this might include more than just Joe Lieberman.

With respect to whether the intelligence recently captured was dated or not is secondary to the nature of the information on the disks. It speaks volumes about the methodology being used by terrorists and the level of detail that goes into their planning. It also raises big questions about corporate security. How the hell did these people get blueprints of buildings and details about what goes on behind corporate walls? Is this coming from third shift folks who are doing maintenance, or are some white-collar workers getting paid under-the-table to sell out their own country.

Shouldn’t these be the questions that I think we should be talking about? Naw. Let’s just indulge and speculate about the political timing of such disclosures. That's so much more productive.

Michael,

Just one short comment. You properly notice that, unprecedented in the twentieth century, the two parties are at odds, not over tactics of a long term war ala the Cold War, but on whether the war is to be fought at all. You properly note that the Democrats and Republicans are on completely opposite pages and reluctanctly concede that you are with the Republicans on this issue. You clearly are aware of the danger of dropping the ball and YET you still seem to be considering voting for the party which does not believe we are at war in the VERY election that will likely determine whether and how well we fight the war going forward. You must realize that this makes no sense. I too have never voted Republican before but I cannot conceive of placing this country in the hands of John Kerry the callow and his moonbat party. My feeling is that a solid Bush victory and another term and (hopefully) a purge of the leftist moonbats will bring the parties together on the need to fight this decades long war.

I notice that there are some people in this thread who think that "Islamofascists" are the enemy.

Well, they aren't. They're one enemy. They're the one that showed everybody how open we are to big terror attacks.

In coming years every single enemy that has the money and the training and the motivation to do al qaeda style attacks will do so.

We might get neonazi attacks. We might get gun-nut attacks. We might get gun-control-nut attacks or ecoterrorist attacks. We could get race-relations attacks or abortion-related attacks or extremist-libertarian attacks. Anybody who's crazy enough to do al qaeda style attacks who can figure out how, is going to be getting into the action.

There's no possibility we can handle this by taking out al qaeda. That's like handling nuclear nonproliferation by taking out russia.

Some ways 9/11 was like hiroshima. It told the world there was a new weapon out there. After the world saw it worked it didn't take real long before various of them figured out how it was done. The enemy isn't al qaeda, or arabs, or moslems. The enemy is everybody in the world -- US citizen or not -- who feels like they're our enemy, who's willing and able to use these techniques.

Our only possible defense is to become less vulnerable.

In the battle between warhead and armor, the warhead always wins.

You end the war by killing the guy behind the weapon. Not by building bigger walls.

TmiUtah, there's no possible way for us to kill all the potential terrorists. I guess we could start by killing all the arabs and then kill everybody in idaho, but....

The problem is not al qaeda. They're only an example.

The problem is not McVeigh. He got caught. He worked alone. He didn't do much planning.

The problem is every competent nutcase in the USA, plus every competent nutcase in the world who thinks they have a grievance against the USA.

Do you think we can kill all of them before they act? Some of them will get through.

So we have to accept that we'll have losses to terrorists. And we have to improve our security against all terrorists, not just al qaeda. If we catch 2/3 of them instead of 1/3 that cuts our losses in half. Catch 90% and it's even better. At some point the losses are tolerable.

I think once we get used to the idea, we'll find it tolerable to accept something on the order of 20,000 casualties a year to terrorists. Much above that and we'll have too much grief. At that rate most people will have somebody they know die every year or two, but it won't be that bad. At 100,000 a year too many people would lose friends.

J Thomas,

This war will end like all wars end. When one side has suffered enough to abandon its goal. WWII ended because we killed enough Germans and Japanese, and destroyed enough of their property that they gave up. In fact, the suffering was so extreme that they even abandoned their militant cultures.

The same will happen in this Islamist War. Either we suffer enough to abandon our civilization, or they will suffer enough to abandond theirs.

The only way for this outcome to be avoided is for Islamic civilization to volunarily liberalize. If they fail to do so, this conflict will continue on its path of gradual escalation. At some point, we will get over our aversion to civilian casualties and collective punishment. I don't see any evidence of liberalization in Islamic society. On the contrary, they only seem to be getting worse.

HA,

What happens when the next terror attack comes from a group not aligned with Islam? The Islamic people aren't the only ones who hate America.

Tosk

Tosk,

This is one of the relevant items in the GWOT, is that we have never had Argentines or Koreans get such a boner for killing off thousands of Americans. I am not willing to look for additional bogeymen when I've got such a wonderful array of bogeymen right here in front of my eyes.

BRD,

True enough. I think that the initial brunt of attacks will still come from the pro-Muslim/Anti-American groups. I think Al-Q will fade into the background (way to much press and pressure), but there are plenty of others who will replace them. I don't think that were fighting 'all of the terrorists', I think it's more akin to fighting only Germany during WWII.

I think terrorism will be the attack de jour of the next several years, perhaps decades.

I think once we get used to the idea, we'll find it tolerable to accept something on the order of 20,000 casualties a year to terrorists. Much above that and we'll have too much grief. At that rate most people will have somebody they know die every year or two, but it won't be that bad. At 100,000 a year too many people would lose friends

Say what? We would ‘get used’ to 20,000 casualties a year?

That hasn’t happened in Iraq, and they’ve had far less casualties. In response, people are working with the police to capture the terrorists who threaten them. And if the government can’t provide protection from crime/terrorism, ‘vigilante’ groups will inevitably surface, as they have in Iraq. In recent months, the independent Thulfiqar Army has killed a number of al Sadr's men.

The general human (excluding pacifists and misanthropes) response to slaughter isn’t some bovine, brainless acceptance of random death. The general human response is self defense. If the government can’t provide it, then people wind up having to do it themselves.

Terrorism has rarely created a successful revolution, but it is very effective in creating right wing political movements, vigilantism and death squads. That will probably be terrorism’s legacy.

true, we sent our CIA to train the argentinian how to terrorise dissidents instead. ditto south korean generals from the 50's to the 80's...

It's looking more and more like Dean was probably right on this one. 3 year old information.. ha ha ha

HA has the answer. Truly, 'this war will end like all wars end.' That's an appreciation of historical fact.

There is the potential for us to have to kill millions of opponents. That's the cost of doing business when the opposition is clearly bent on ultimately erasing us. Does that offend some folks' sensibilities? Absolutely. It's never a good thing to have to kill. That has nothing to do with the necessity of being willing and prepared to do it, especially when the responsibility of the state is the defense of the citizenry.

I demand that my representative government do its duty. I am not interested in how tough the job is or how long it will take or God forbid calls for restraint based on any whiff of moral relativism between us and the Islamists.

We didn't kill all the Nazis, Imperial Japanese, or Soviets, but those opponents no longer threaten us. But we did kill millions of them to make that happen.

Trying to put the ELF/PETA/McVeigh subsets of anarchists on the same shelf as the Islamist threat is dishonest at best. Leaving the Islamists unopposed is the simplest way to guarantee that all the other flavors of crazy will escalate. But on their worst days our domestic crazies' potential for widespread death and destruction fade to insignificance when the Islamic threat is acknowledged for what it is.

The Bush Doctrine is a principled attempt to do what must be done to END the threat. It uses every single tool at our disposal to minimize the deaths of innocents. It is specifically geared to punishing acts, not creeds or beliefs, which is a bedrock concept of both our justice and just war philosophical traditions.

This is not a war of annihilation. Yet. On our part. It is on the part of our enemy. They are limited in their ambitions only by logistics. We do that based on the contention that by changing the political environment that breeds the footsoldiers of terror we will eventually end the threat. We do this because we can afford to. We do this out of a conscious, compassionate judgement that people with no voice in their governance should not be arbitrarily held responsible for the acts of the despots or extremists who feed off the products of absence of individual freedom.

Take that or leave it as you will. The first time we lose a city...the first eruption of smallpox or anthrax or radiological attacks across our country...will signal the need to balance compassion against the responsibility we grant to the state to defend us.

The Religion of Peace has done a shitty job of justifying any grant of innocence or benefit to it on our part. The window they have for escaping being identified as The Problem is contracting. Weak horse, strong horse...it doesn't matter at all.

When Bush published 'you are with us or against us' there was nothing rhetorical about it. He's an historian, and he understands the scale of the conflict that fell to him to resolve.

It will take at least a decade to begin to measure whether or not democratization will work to make Islamic cultures compatible with western civilization. We will have to weigh costs against the benefits as the conflict continues and hope that there never comes a day when the burden of compassion becomes impossible to sustain. Then we'll see regions laid waste, populations slaughtered, whole countries shattered.

Just like the way the issue has been decided the last three times Islam was knocked back. History.

I don't think they should issue a terror alert until the terrorists have painted a big red X on a building with "BOMB GOES HERE" underneath it. And even then, those rotten Bushies better make sure Kerry hasn't given a speech that week.

The Man from Ork:

"And only evidence of an actual attack being planned would justify the way the government behaved yesterday."

What was on that laptop, cake recipes? Maybe you have a different definition of the word "actual" than the rest of us. Or are you saying that Al Qaeda is trying to hoax us? That might be an interesting theory, that they're planting phony evidence to rattle us. Why don't you write a TNT original miniseries about that.

"I would guess that it would be worth issuing an alert if the government were aware of an imminent danger that people ought to consider avoiding, or if additional public vigilence would significantly increase the possiblity of thwarting an attack."

Do you think there's any additional public "vigilence" at those sites now? In other words, can you prove this alert didn't prevent an attack? If so, please cite your sources.

Tano:

"The argument that Bush wants Kerry to be in the news is absurd nonsense. You never want your opponent in the news."

When your opponent is at least as much of a bumbler as you are? Never say never.

Oh, and the concept of "acceptable losses" of citizens to attack has no place in the thought process of any leader who has any business serving in a representative government. None.

The compact between citizens and a representative government is based on the trust that the government is granted power in exchange for the security to pursue our lives without undue restraint or interference.

A government that refuses to fulfill its responsibilities is invalid.

Based on that thought process (it's o.k. for the Islamokazis to kill a set number of random infidels) I should reasonably expect to be immune from prosecution if I show up outside the local mosque every Friday and pop a couple of muslims as they leave after prayers, right? Of course not.

You can't do a thing about what lives behind somebody's forehead. The imperative to punish ACTS is undeniable in a world where justice is practiced.

TmjUtah,

Killing the enemy doesn't always work, especially on the enemies home truf. See The American Revolution year 4 and 5 in the Deep South or Vietnam in the 60's for examples of this.

Another issue is centralization versus decentralization. The Nazis and the Japaneese had a central command based out of a central physical location. They had centralized command structures which sent out orders, through a heirarchy. Interrupting the communications channel impared the troops, tapping the communications channel gave us much needed intel. Direct attacks on troops, key positions and the native countries themselves (where Central command rested) were how we won the war.

In a decentralized system, interrupting the communications channel does nothing, because the cells are designed to think on their own, plan on their own and execute. Tapping the communications channel (incredibly difficult since there is probably not a single channel or even a single group of channels) may give us some intel, but not nearly as much as we had after breaking Enigma.

There are lots of theories about Centralized versus Decentralized. In the software world, its the argument between Open Source and Closed Source systems. Eric Raymond wrote a great set of essays about this called "The Cathedral and The Bazzar". His essay points out that a cathedral takes decades to complete and modifying or changing things halfway through is difficult if not impossible. Whereas a Bazzar, is set up ad hoc, its fluid and mobile and can completely change within days, if not hours.

We must fight Terror, we have to go after AQ and whomever is leading it now. We have to stay tough on all Terrorist groups, particularly those currently embroiled in conflict with us. However, I do not dismiss them as easily as "If we kill enough of them, they'll quit."

Just my thoughts, they might be wrong.

Ratatosk

Slightly off topic -

I sure seem to see the "both candidates are horrible" trope a lot these days.

Bush ran on tax cuts, education reform, and a sigh prescription drug benefit.

Seems he covered all those bases.

In the aftermath of 9/11 he published a doctrine intended to defend the citizens of the country (by extension the free world) and to end the threat of Islamic terrorism.

He gave the U.N. a fair chance to justify its existence by enforcing its own resolutions. They failed. Operating under the intelligence available and in accordance with existing U.S. policy (regime change in Iraq) he sought and was given congressional authorization to remove Sadddam Hussein from power. He proceeded to do so in a three week military campaign.

He has proclaimed democracy as the best cure to what ails that societal armpit we call the mideast, and worked hard to make it happen.

All of that in the face of incessant media sniping, coordinated efforts to label him as dishonest (which have overwhelmingly collapsed under the weight of evidence of reports or the exposure of people like Wilson as liars) or incompetent based on the contention that conflict = failure.

I don't like some of Bush's domestic policies. I don't think he's near perfect. But he has established that he knows how to set goals and then accomplish them and that he's not overly concerned about how the PR people paint him on any given day.

Just an opinion, of course. It just seems that in the days following the close of the "Don't Anyone Act Like Democrats" convention the incidence on blogs and media sources I follow of new faces repeating the same "they are both bumbling/poor choices/have problems" went right through the roof. Go figger.

Killing the people who have killed your people, or intend to kill you, works EVERY time.

The complexity of addressing the threat is not the determinant factor. What matters is what happens if you don't deal with it.

You said -

"We must fight Terror, we have to go after AQ and whomever is leading it now. We have to stay tough on all Terrorist groups, particularly those currently embroiled in conflict with us. However, I do not dismiss them as easily as "If we kill enough of them, they'll quit."

I agree (and applaud) your first two sentences. The third I don't think applies to me at all.

Without we provide an alternative to the swamp we will never be without Islamic supported terror. Clearly, the deaths of individual terrorists don't have much benefit to us beyond the removal of them from active combat. They embrace death as a personal goal. So we kill them where we find them but I never pretended that body counts would be the measure of victory. It will measurably contribute to reducing their ability to attack...but not necessarily their motivation.

It's a race. Can we restrain them enough through surveillance, preemption, arrest, interdiction, diplomacy, and relentless pursuit to prevent them from hurting us catastrophically? Not all the time I think. Killing is only one tool here but it is undeniably a belt tool, not one to bury in the bottom of the rollaway back in the garage. The tool that will eventually win this fight is the one that will convince the living that their minds must change, and I think that freedom beats the snot out of despotism if people are given a choice. Free men gravitate to debate to decide issues if given any chance at all. We are not engaged in a debate. We better embrace that concept, suck it up, and do what is necessary to end the killing.

Where's the big public outcry about how impossible it is for terror to win? That's the glaring void I contemplate.

The core of leadership is refusing to turn away from a job that must be done. I'll take Bush, on his record, in a heartbeat.

TmjUtah,

Well, I think we're on the same page, your earlier comments seemed to indicate that killing enough of them was the answer... thats what I disagreed with.

As for Bush, I really doubt that Kerry will be noticably different on the offensive, if he is soft on terror and we suffer another 9/11, its political suicide for him, and likely the entire democratic party. He can't afford that. I fully expect that within the next four years there will be another attack, no matter who the President is. I think that both canidates know this.

Terror could easily win, I think the Islamofacists don't need to kill all of us to be happy, they only need to kill enough of us to scare us back into being isolationists. If we pull out of the Middle east, they win. (Which is why usable energy resources must be found, once we don't need their oil, the entire reigon will fall back into third world status and they can kill each other all day long.)

The only reason I'm probably voting Kerry is because of the domestic policies of Bush.

`The War on Terror is a Genie out of its bottle. It won't be going back in anytime soon.

We will have more 9/11's. There's no avoiding that. I hope that understanding that reality happens at a street level more than I wonder about what presidents or candidates think. And being struck by a recognised enemy isn't being 'soft'...but it all depends on how Frank Rich writes his column, doens't it?

Kerry/Bush...no different? I cannot disagree strongly enough. Start with philosophy and end with the competence vacuum that defines the Dem Foreign Policy establishment. You are copping out.

And you are presuming to define what 'win' means for the Islamists. "U.S. out of (insert country here)" is not a victory condition. The eradication of western civilization is. They don't have to accomplish anything - just destroy. And as long as they are given slack to do so, they will do what they want when they want.

A pleasure to disagree, as always.

TmjUtah,

The Islamic jihad that is currently enacted, is specifically because of our involvement in Mid-East affairs. Do some research. If we were completely out of the picture in the Mid east, no soliders, bases, serious political influence etc. they would consider that a huge victory. Remember, Osama used to be our boy... they hate the west, but seem to be violent, only when it affects their ideas of the Right way to live. If they could flush the western influence out of the Muslim world, they'd be much happier.

Of course, the other advantage of getting off oil, is the complete and utter collapse of their money making machine. No Oil means no income for most of the Mid-East (unless they find a market for sand). No income for most of the mid-east will plunge them into a state of useless third-world "I'm looking for food, so I'm too busy to kill people" type status. If Bin Laden had no support from the Oil being sold in Saudi, Jordan, Iran, etc, he wouldn't have nearly enough funds to run any campaign. Maybe.

As for forign policy, how could Kerry even think about not pressing the war? Any, even momentary, lax on Terrorism and the right wing would have his hide. Top that off with another attack within the next four years and he would lose the next election by a landslide, giving the right wing enough scare ammo to keep Democrats out of the Whitehouse for terms to come.

"The last time a democrat was president, his policies led to the death of 3000 American citizens" <--- That would end the democratic party for good.

I think Kerry has no choice but to be Hawkish. The only substantial difference I forsee is that he'll try to appeal for more international help. However, with or without it, he will have to spend his time as President, showing himself to be as tough, if not tougher than Bush.

But, You're right... always a pleasure to disagree with sensible people ;-).

Hawkish is not a choice. It's an attribute. All the data that I have been able to study on Mr. Kerry has generated a picture of a man who is motivated to action based on his personal benefit as he defines it, exclusive of costs to others.

There is no 'duty' button on the Kerry control panel.

I've NEVER said - and I have had occassion to hammer the point home - that 9/11 happened solely because of "a democratic administration".

Bill Clinton's policies, cabinet, and conduct could reasonably be entered into a debate on what could have been done better - but what happened before pales compared to what happens next.

There is no 'muslim world' that could be depended on to contain the barbarism inherent in any system that denies individual pursuit of thought, success, or happiness. The wording of OBL's fatwah provides an out for relativists eager to grasp an out. It does not change the imperative of jihad as it is shouted across the sea of Islamic politics, activism, theocratic debate, and is defined by the Koran as the duty of the faithful when confronted with the infidel. It's not that our unveiled women walk the sands of Saudi. It's that Islam is not the state religion of the world. Calling OBL "our man" based on our common involvement during the Sov Afghan adventure makes as much sense as calling Josef Stalin "our man" because we had common cause against the Nazis.

All those one-worlders are reaping the fruits of their dreams. What do borders mean any more? When populations shifted in the past, the limits imposed by time, speed, and distance versus the available technologies forced assimiliation between cultures. The speed of communication and travel today does not give a chance for what works to work.

Assimilation is not a dirty word. It is not a zero sum process of winners and losers. It is the process by which two or more groups with conflicting cultural, political, or religious dogmas evolve into a workable society.

Why is it that literally millions of Arab muslims outmigrate? Is it because they are on fire to bring the gifts of Islam to our backward and deficient cultures? NO. They flee the failure that is the product of their inability to accept responsibility for their own behaviour toward others...and never escape why that inability exists. Their earthly masters keep tabs across the waters by funding religious institutions designed to keep the conformity alive, fan the hate of hopelessness, and control offensive operations whereever concentrated, non-assimilated muslims congregate.

We aren't going to 'get off' oil until we are forced to find an alternative. Even if our technological innovation here in America made it possible for us to turn off the tap, the rest of the world will still go for the energy source that they can most efficiently exploit. We BUY their oil. We have ALWAYS bought their oil. We in the United States have never pursued a doctrine of genocide against Islam because we aren't wired to entertain such an idea.

TMJ, what is your evidence that many islamists intend to destroy western civilisation?

What is your evidence that any islamists intend to destroy western civilisation?

I can understand zionists saying it's a war to the death. They are in a war to the death with palestinians for the west bank and maybe israel. But I see no credible evidence that we are in a war to the death with islamists for the western hemisphere.

9/11 was not an attempt at genocide. It apparently succeeded far beyond bin Laden's expectations, just as it was also far beyond our own engineers' expectations. They were looking for a dramatic symbol. The other finance buildings likewise.

Al qaeda has not attempted biological warfare here, and they could have done that easily. We have no defense. They are not trying to kill large numbers of us, nobody is. Because anybody who wanted to could do that and we couldn't begin to stop them. Unless we infiltrated them we likely couldn't even tell who did it.

So where do these Final War whoops come from? Al qaeda appears to me to attempt spectacular exploits here intending to get approval among their own people. The Pentagon and Wall Street etc are symbols for them. They have made no serious attempt to cause us any major damage.

When americans talk like there is a serious islamist movement to destroy western civilisation, we provide things they can use to persuade islamists to join them -- in perceived self-defense. This is stupid unless you're desperate for an implacable enemy.

We had the russians for an implacable enemy for 40 years. Are you so nostalgic for the cold war that you need a new enemy? Why do you try to construct one?

About the recent terror alerts, timing is important. If they had secret information that an attack was coming immediately, they could monitor the tunnels and bridges and possibly catch the guys, or if nothing else they could scare them off and maybe catch them pretty soon.

But otherwise they're pretty much committing to keep monitoring the tunnels and bridges for the indefinite future. That is ridiculous. Unless it was a publicity thing, or they were being stupid. Similarly with dramatic protection for the known targets. We are disrupting our own infrastructure over an extremely hypothetical attack.

If some building on stilts is particularly vulnerable, and might require traffic to be redirected over four square blocks. they should send the bill for the protection directly to the owners of the building. See if they think it's worth it. If not, they can evict their tenants, deconstruct the building, and put up something more defensible on the site.

We accept a rather high automobile death rate and we've accepted close to double that rate in the past, because we just don't want to be bothered to do better. Now we're setting up idiotic expensive defenses against terrorist actions which have never yet been a tenth the rate. And we aren't doing the things that could actually cut down the damage from attacks.

It only makes political sense. In terms of economics or security it's ridiculous.

Tosk,

What happens when the next terror attack comes from a group not aligned with Islam? The Islamic people aren't the only ones who hate America.

Granted there are many groups that hate America. But what difference does it make if some other groups attack us? Islamic terrorists are the only ones that pose an existential threat our civilization. In the grand scheme of things, all the other groups and wackos are just a nuisance.

Tosk,

In a decentralized system, interrupting the communications channel does nothing, because the cells are designed to think on their own, plan on their own and execute.

How do you counter a decentalized enemy? With a decentralized response. But how can we do that? There aren't enough Americans to defend every bridge, tunnel, power plant, skyscraper, stock exchange, government building, train, airport, shopping mall, etc. The Islamists are scattered thoughout the world and are currently colonizing the West. They get government support from dozens of natons. They are decentralized and they are global. How do we counter this threat?

There isn't a single terrorist that doesn't reside in a nation-state. Some of those nation-states support them, some look the other way, and some oppose them. The only way we can win this war is to support the nation-states that oppose terrorism and force the rest to do so well. Right now, the nation-states that either support the terrorists or look the other way do so because the POPULATIONS of these nations support the terrorists. This war will end when the POPULATIONS of these countries turn against the terrorists. This is the ONLY way to counter the decentralized threat.

This can happen two ways. They can volutarily liberalize and modernize. Or they can reach a point of suffering such that they turn against the terrorists in order to end their own suffering.

The nation-state system is the foundation of global security. Being a nation-state comes provides many privileges, but comes with many responsibilities. One responsibility of a nation-state is to prevent its population from threatening other nation-state - REGARDLESS of whether it is the POLICY of that nation-state to threaten another nation-state. If the POPULATION of one-nation state threatens another nation-state even outside of policy of that nation-state, it is the DUTY of the threatened nation-state to defend its own population.

This is why the UN is such a disaster. It is actively working to break down the nation-state system:

http://www.techcentralstation.com/073004B.html

The Islamic jihad that is currently enacted, is specifically because of our involvement in Mid-East affairs.

That is absolutely false. The global jihad predates even the CONCEPTION of America by a thousand years. If America withdrew from the world and returned to the pre-WWII policy of isolationism, the Jihad would continue. Just ask the Al Andalusians (aka Spanish):

http://www.newyorker.com/printable/?fact/040802fa_fact

HA,

1. You cannot stop a decentralized system with another decentralized system. Decentralization works well in offensive strategies, but poorly in defensive strategies. For example, at Pennsic War (an SCA event which recreates a War styled on the Middle ages), we will use flankers and single Knights/Masters of Arms. These groups do not take their cue from the central command, their entire purpose is to act as they see fit during the battle, with the express intent of harrasing the enemy lines, causing defensive groups to break off and fight them, instead of defending with the main units etc. This is a decentralized attack.

The only way to defend against this attack, is for the defender to maintain order in their troops, no matter how tempting the target to the left or right is... no matter how easily a unit thinks it may be able to wipe out a single agressor, they must hold their position. This works, because the centralized and decentralized forces have a known goal (take the fort, capture the flag, kill the other guys). Once you know the goal/target you can defend against a decentralized threat. In our situation we do not know the target, we do not know the timing and we do not even know who the skirmishers are. They could be reading this blog right now.

2. While the animosity between the West and the Arab states has been fomenting since 1000 AD, the current situation, Bin Laden's specific fatwah, the basis for the current state of threat has directly to do with our own policies and actions. I'm not saying its our fault, I'm saying that if they suceed in removing us from the MidEast (or if we're smart enough to remove ourselves and our money/need for Oil) then the threat to us will be drasticaly lower.

We could never satisfy the Islamists by pulling out of the ME. Our troops and bases in Saudi are not the main issue, but the tip of the iceberg to them. By withdrawl, they mean no contact of any kind. No business contacts, no personal contacts, no cultural contacts, no US TV or radio programs broadcast into the ME, no blue jeans sold in the ME, etc. Thinking this can be done is a dream.

Ratatosk -

"The only way to defend against this attack, is for the defender to maintain order in their troops, no matter how tempting the target to the left or right is... no matter how easily a unit thinks it may be able to wipe out a single agressor, they must hold their position. This works, because the centralized and decentralized forces have a known goal (take the fort, capture the flag, kill the other guys). Once you know the goal/target you can defend against a decentralized threat. In our situation we do not know the target, we do not know the timing and we do not even know who the skirmishers are. They could be reading this blog right now."

No. You've just described the Johnson/Westmoreland warfighting strategy. Fighing a defensive campaign ensures that the enemy establishes not only the pace of conflict but is also guaranteed to destroy the will of your own population to resist, to boot.

J Thomas -

Zionists? All I have to go on is the Koran.

The only difference between Israel and us in the eyes of the enemy is geography.There's not a single car in any garage in America that is conspiring with the Buick across town to kill its owner.

"So where do these Final War whoops come from? Al qaeda appears to me to attempt spectacular exploits here intending to get approval among their own people. The Pentagon and Wall Street etc are symbols for them. They have made no serious attempt to cause us any major damage."

I guess it depends on what flight you reserve to get to grandma's house, or where you have the termity to work, right?

Iranian Embassy. Beirut. WTC93. Khobar Towers. Somalia. African Embassies. USS Cole. 9/11. Various random murders of U.S. citizens throughout. The common thread is Islamic fundamentalism. What level of attack constitutes serious?

Septenthians. That's a term I heard over on Roge L. Simon's blog. I think it applies here.

We agree to disagree.

See HA's post concerning the global strategic threat. I agree with him.

TmjUtah,

I understand that a defensive only strategy won't work. I was talking specifically about countering decentralized attacks. The only sucessful way to counter flanker/lone warrior attacks to to maintain ranks. If you break ranks, you create a hole which is quickly filled by the centralized troops.

In our situation it's quite different. We can't see the flankers/lone warriors even coming close to us. Taking out as many as possible via intel is our best bet (as we saw with the communications guy captured recently). But a direct offensive is usually full of holes when trying to face a completely decentralized enemy.

This, I think, is the main difference between WWII gernamy/Japan and the Al-Q threat today.

Maybe that's why we have SpecOps, CIA, FBI, and State missions running across North Africa, the middle east, and the -stans. Not to mention DHS/TSA/FBI actions underway here.

We cannot 'stay in ranks'. There are no ranks. There is a continenant spanning free society that depends on the majority of its members to voluntarily conform to the customs and laws we live under. We have cops on infrequent corners as a defense against those who don't. If we changed our society to the extremes necessary to make terrorist attacks impossible we wouldn't have a society worth living in.

Off for most of the rest of the day...chores and such.

TmjUtah,

I agree completely.

We haven't yet had a serious terrorist attack in america or against americans. Our total yearly death rate to terrorists is lower than our death rate to armed robbers, it's far lower than our death rate to automobile accidents. It's much lower than our death rate to auto accidents that involve alcohol.

The israelis lose way more than we do to terrorists as a percentage of population, and it doesn't phase them. They just continue with their lives, they accept it as a fact of life. They have tried infiltrating terrorist groups, and had some success -- maybe they've kept the attacks from being 10 times worse that way. They have tried killing potential terrorists before they can do anything, they've killed 3 or 4 times as many potential terrorists as they've lost themselves, and it might have reduced attacks a little. Hard to tell whether they get more attempts because of it. They've tried building a wall to keep terrorists out. That helps a lot. And by herding palestinians into tiny enclaves where they don't et enough water to wash, they make it easier to spot terrorists. Palestinians who sneak into israel tend to be stinky and obviously dirty, and so they're obvious terrorist suspects.

By comparison the USA gets hardly any terrorist pinpricks. We have never suffered a really serious attack, and we may never get one. Our horror is entirely our own overreaction, because we thought there shouldn't be any terrorist attacks here at all.

And our media was incredibly irresponsible about it. I talked to a grocery clerk in texas a couple of years ago. I was standing in line and she pointed out the picture of WTC on the cover of the TV Guide. She explained that you couldn't see it on that picture, but with a better picture you could see little dots which were people falling off the building. They jumped. She got a 9/11 commemorative book that explained everything, it cost $45. It had really good pictures of the people falling, in some of them she thought she could almost make out some of the people's expressions. She went on and on about how important it all was, how it changed everything and we could never ever go back to the old ways. She seemed to gloat over it. I get the strong impression a lot of americans are glad to have any excuse to go crazy....

So far we have no possible way to defeat terrorists. To minimise their attacks we must either reduce our vulnerability, or become less offensive to them, or both. We can pre-emptively kill potential terrorists provided that doesn't offend too many people -- otherwise it's likely to create more terrorists than we kill off.