...I'm okay with being REALITY-based.




Tuesday, August 03, 2004
      ( 8:02 AM )
 
I Tried Soooooo Hard

...not to be cynical.

I thought, surely, it's just my paranoid mind that thinks these terror alerts were all about timing and happening right after the Dem convention and 9/11 Report. God forbid some calamity occurs, it would be important to have been warned. But still, deep in my heart, I didn't trust this administration was totally above board. Call me crazy, I just have been stabbed by experience too many times with these guys. So this morning, cynicism arrives back on my doorstep. With bells on. Front page NY Times:

WASHINGTON, Aug. 2 -Much of the information that led the authorities to raise the terror alert at several large financial institutions in the New York City and Washington areas was three or four years old, intelligence and law enforcement officials said on Monday. They reported that they had not yet found concrete evidence that a terrorist plot or preparatory surveillance operations were still under way.

[...]

Frances Fragos Townsend, the White House homeland security adviser, said on Monday in an interview on PBS that surveillance reports, apparently collected by Qaeda operatives had been "gathered in 2000 and 2001.'' But she added that information may have been updated as recently as January.

The comments of government officials on Monday seemed softer in tone than the warning issued the day before. On Sunday, officials were circumspect in discussing when the surveillance of the financial institutions had occurred, and Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge cited the quantity of intelligence from "multiple reporting streams'' that he said was "alarming in both the amount and specificity of the information.''

And I'm guessing that quite a few other people don't trust what the administration says either:

Despite the new terror warnings, the stock market gained ground, denting expectations that it would drop with the heightened security alert. The Dow Jones industrial average was up 39 points.

The biggest problem, as I see it (being a mama, I have some insight on this), is that if or when an ACTUAL threat occurs and the administration and HSA tries to warn us, we'll all have become so numb to their political maneuvers that we will no longer be as alert as we should be. That is the real crime of an administration that insists on ruling out of fear and terror.

So after Howard Dean got pilloried all day yesterday for saying what we were all thinking (go, Howard!), we find that he may be right (again). It's a tough pill we have to keep swallowing.

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