Is this an election year?

 

Nothing like a little Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt to grease the wheels of democracy.

 

I oftentimes wonder who is manipulating us more, the terrorists or our own government.

 

Bill, I've been reading reports all day from every source and I am not sure when they knew what they know, but it seems only some of this current info is truly recent. (WOW, maybe I should be a speech writer, what did I say?)

 

I don't know about you but I think Ridge's reputation is impeccable and waaaay above interfering with politics. Why I remember them saying when he was appointed what a good friend he was of Bush.

 

While I think the safety and security of this nation is important and that a threat level designation may, indeed, be a good idea, I find the current implementation laughable.

What is the baseline? What constitutes a threat? What should the level of awareness and response of the authorities be for a given level? When, if ever, has our security warranted a green. If never, why does green exist?

I agree with the GOAL of this alert system - ensuring that we are all alert to the possibility of a threat - but it seems to me that the system is causing more fear than awareness. Worse than that, it is at risk of causing widespread ambivalence as people see less and less tangible results from the alerts.

While I understand that the goal is to prevent terrorist attacks, when people are constantly told to be on high alert and never see anything happen they begin to become complacent and then, regardless of the threat level, our awareness and readiness to respond are far too low.

Seems to me that the threat levels should exist for the agencies responsible for oursafety and security. For them, you can define specific procedures and methods for each level.

For the public, the threat levels should truly only come into play when there is sufficient evidence of a specific, targeted event based on credible intelligence. If no credible intelligence exists, the threat level should be at whatever level is baseline...presumably green.

 

I was on a United Airlines 757 the morning of 9-11-01 sitting on the ground at Dulles Airport in Washington headed for Arizona via Denver. The plane had a mechanical problem with the rudder, that delayed our departure time (note that time on my boarding pass) that prevented us from taking off.

When they "kicked us off the plane", the person that was seated next to me (that I had struck up a conversation with) invited me to be his guest at the Red Carpet Club (as I was not a member). When we walked up to the reception desk. Bob asked the women behind the counter: "Do you know what is going on?" (meaning with our flight). She burst into tears, covered her face and ran! Her co-worker that had been standing next to her stepped over to us and said: "I am sorry, but we just found out that one of the flights was ours." Not knowing what she was referring to he asked: "What do you mean?" Her reply was that the TV's around the corner were on. As we walked around the corner, CNN was showing the replay minutes after the second plane hit the WTC. It was surreal. I will never forget that moment in time!

Of course, I also can not help but wonder: I was on a United Airlines 757 laded with fuel bound for Denver from the airport that the American flight was hi-jacked from. What could have happened if we had taken off on time? Am I living on borrowed time?

I fully expected to fly out the next day to go on my trip! At that point, I would have never imagined (I hope) the only three days in my life time with no air traffic in my lifetime. If you stop living your life then the "BAST*ARDS" have won.

 

Wow, Matt! I can't even make a funny comment about that one. Glad you're here is all I can say, teasing and all. I'm sure I'm not the only one. Got lives?

 

If we're dealing with monsters that we know plan their attacks far in advance (for example WTC 93 and 01) and we find information detailing years of planning with recent updates, wouldn't it be a gross violation of duty not to raise the alert? If the new info was kept quiet and no action taken and then an attack occurred, what would the folks claiming the warning was only political be saying? It's a Catch-22. IMO, not to err on the side of caution would be absurd.

I think part of the problem is the alert system itself. People get immune to it--but I can't come up with anything better.

 

Here's a perspective from today's NY Times:

The Terror Alerts

Published: August 5, 2004


Our lives have changed so much since Sept. 11, 2001. We know that we may never again be free of the threat of terrorism. It's been a tough adjustment for everyone, and the burden on President Bush is especially heavy. Given the unprecedented circumstances and the costs of making a mistake, it's easy to understand why the administration has had so much trouble managing the way it informs the public about potential danger. But after 17 months in which alerts blinked from yellow to orange and back a half-dozen times, the White House should be past its learning curve. It isn't. The events of this week showed starkly that the system is not working.

The administration was obviously right to warn the country that Al Qaeda had apparently studied financial institutions in three cities with the idea of a possible attack. But the delivery of the message was confusing. The color-coded threat chart doesn't serve the purpose for which it was invented, and Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge is hopeless as a public spokesman on this issue. The Bush administration needs to come up with a method of communication that informs the public in a calm, clear way. Perhaps most important, people need to be made totally confident that this critical matter is not being tangled up in the presidential campaign.

The alert system has always rested on a precarious balance. Local officials must have up-to-date information about possible danger. Private citizens need to know, too, so they can make informed choices and be on the lookout for trouble. But it is possible to go overboard. Ratcheting up the warning level creates huge costs for city and state governments. And if Americans are warned too often, and too shrilly, they will become inured to terror alerts.

In the past, Mr. Ridge and others have talked ominously about intelligence that they have routinely described as the most alarming since 9/11, without providing details. This week they were specific: the five financial institutions were in danger of being bombed in the "near term." The terror alert was raised to orange for those sites in New York, Washington and New Jersey. But things quickly lapsed into confusion. For three days, officials at news conferences and background briefings said their concerns were based on new information, then old information, then back to new information. Many people were scared out of their wits on Monday, cynical on Tuesday and befuddled by yesterday.

Mr. Bush should junk the color bars, which are now of use mostly to late-night comedians. Ordinary people have no way of calibrating their lives to the color ladder. It does them no good to be told to be scared, more scared or really scared, especially when they are also being told to act as if nothing's wrong. Unless the government is prepared to tell people to stay home from work, there's no reason to keep lighting the terror lamps. What we need is information that we can use, not another shot of adrenaline.

We would have been happy last weekend if a senior official more adept than Mr. Ridge had called a news conference to say what the government knew and what defensive measures had been taken. Instead, he spoke in apocalyptic terms, then produced an "intelligence official" who offered more detail and more alarming words, anonymously. Later that day, and on the next day and the day after, other officials spoke off the record, providing additional information that made the situation seem much more complicated.

There's a practical aspect to the terror alerts that the administration must address to demonstrate its own commitment. The higher alert levels require local governments to take enormously expensive actions, for which Washington is not paying its share. The Homeland Security Department has made it clear that New York City is the spot that comes up most frequently in terrorism-related intelligence, yet money continues to be doled out in a manner that has much more to do with elections than genuine danger. It's shocking that Washington has not followed through on its own information by underwriting the protections cities need to stay safe.

Finally, there is the matter of politics. The Bush administration expressed outrage at the suggestion that there could be any politics behind any of its warnings, but the president has some history to overcome on this issue. There is nothing more important for Mr. Bush to do every day until Nov. 2 than to make it clear that he would never hype a terror alert to help his re-election chances. It is a challenge complicated by the fact that he is running on his record against terrorism and is using images of 9/11 and the threat of more attacks to promote his candidacy. The president's credibility on national security issues was gravely wounded by the way he misled Americans, intentionally or not, about the reasons for invading Iraq - including the suggestion that the war was part of the campaign against Al Qaeda.

Some of the past terror alerts have seemed aimless and happened when the Bush administration would have benefited from a change in the political conversation. On Sunday, when the administration had grim and specific information to convey, Mr. Ridge did a real disservice to himself, his president and the public by giving what amounted to a campaign pitch for "the president's leadership in the war against terror.''

It's hard to write that off as an offhand comment. If Mr. Ridge is to continue in this role, he must stay out of the election; using him as a campaign surrogate would be disastrous for public confidence. The administration should also stop dropping dark hints about Al Qaeda's having election-related motives to attack, as if a vote against the current president were appeasement.

Americans are stone-cold serious when it comes to potential terror attacks - there is no need to worry about making them pay attention. We have learned since Sept. 11, 2001, to value every day in which nothing terrible happens as a gift and an opportunity. The Bush administration has been given the same blessing. Every morning the president and his deputies are challenged not only to renew their war against potential terrorists, but also to earn the confidence of the people they aim to protect.