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« "A Self-Correcting Mechanism at Work" | Main | Good Judgment Versus Politics » August 1, 2004A WarningThe Bush administration is warning of specific AL Qaeda terror threats against specific targets in New York - and some on the Left are claiming the warning is just political theater. The USA Today/Gallup/CNN poll shows Bush actually picking up ground during the Democrats' big week, and I think the reason is that even though the Dems tried to put a game face on the national security issue, if the public is thinking about the war, they are also thinking about how ill-equipped the Dems are to wage it. Told of the news that the terror alert was about to be raised, Howard Dean on CNN immediately spreculated that politics had motivated the call - underlining why the party which gave him a key speaking role is not to be trusted on life and death issues. That level of paranoia about the GOP as opposed to the terrorists shows Moore's Disease has spread far and wide within the Democratic Party.Well said. Read the whole thing. Comments
Dear Bill: I live in NYC, and I have to say that I was scared by the original warning on Sunday, and then confused and frustrated when it was revealed on Monday that most of the plans etc found in Pakistan were 3-4 years old. Lots of ink has been spilled about whether the administration should warn us or not (I think they should, and routinely), but I think not enough has been said about HOW they should warn us. We've already been told to expect an attack this summer, what with the conventions and the elections and parallels to Madrid. So I have been expecting that at some point soon, security here in NYC would be strongly upgraded. We already know that al Qaida carefully and methodically does surveillance. So why the big fuss about this new information? Why the mystery about the dates? The more I think about it, the more angry I get and the more I feel that the administration was being manipulative. There are probably many more troves of al Qaida research out there that our spies have not found yet, with literally hundreds of targets carefully cased and described. Just because we found one of them doesn't mean that we are in any less danger, or that we found a target that they really intend to act on. People are able to be more rational when they have more information. When the administration makes such announcements they should give all the info that they can, and put it in context. They should be careful to frame things in such a way that it is difficult for stupid big media to make a sensational story out of it and raise their ratings by scaring people. This announcement was handled really badly. I don't know why, and I don't care to speculate. But it was handled badly. Posted by: bruce at August 4, 2004 11:35 AMPost a comment
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