"Fresh" Intelligence Is Three Years Old. Bush Ignites Fear. Osama Bin Laden Yawns.
By James Boyne
On Sunday, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge announced with all due certainty that "new" intelligence reports showed that no fewer than five important landmark financial buildings were imminent targets for Al Quaeda terrorist attacks.
The Mayor of NYC, the Police Commissioner, the Governor of NY, and all manner of Republican (mainly) officials instructed us NOT to panic. GO TO WORK as usual. Do nothing different. Go about your business. Don't buy duct tape this time around. Just act normal. Have a few drinks. Take a few Valium. And go about your normal business. Don't panic or be fearful or you will be giving into the terrorists.
Oh yes, the color coded terrorist alert system is being raised for NYC, Northern New Jersey and Washington DC would be raised to orange from yellow; or from yellow to orange; depending upon whether you can remember which was which in the first place.
Oh yes, look for suspicious packages. Make is a family outing. Take a trip to NYC and wander around with the wife and kids around the NY Stock Exchange or the Citicorp Building looking for suspicious packages---kind of like an Easter Egg Hunt.
I did my own part as a patriotic American. Not being able to get into NYC because they were diverting traffic all over the place with barricades and SWAT teams with assault rifles at the ready, I went to my local supermarket and stood near the checkout counter looking for people with suspicious packages. And I found some. Some were paper and some were plastic. They all looked suspicious. Packages, packages, packages. Filled with lettuce, bread, milk, cantaloupes, canned goods, and very suspicious looking deli meats. After thirty minutes the manager kicked me out of the store because I myself looked suspicious.
I wonder, just wonder, if I could get a job at my local supermarket looking for suspicious packages being bagged by suspicious looking people in my suspicious little suburban town. I want a job as Director of Suspicious Packages Surveillance. You can't be TOO careful today. Everyone is a potential terrorist.
And now it turns out that the "fresh" intelligence that spawned all this heightened security and this high state of alert is THREE YEARS OLD.
Yes, I know that Al Quaeda thinks long-term; that they plan ahead. But surely Secretary Ridge could have told us that on Sunday so we ourselves could have had a good chuckle at his stupidity. THREE YEARS OLD. Surely our intelligence agencies can do better than stumble across a terrorists laptop computer that has data about buildings in NYC that is three years old. Is this what we call information that is an imminent threat? Surely the Keystone Cops and Inspector Clouseau could do better than this.
We have Saddam Hussein right in our very own hands, right now. We have 500 recently captured Al Quaeda terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, right now. Where is all the "fresh" intelligence from them? What happened to all the "fresh" intelligence that we gleaned from the 23,000 Iraqis that passed through our "dog leash torture system" at Abu Ghraib Prison? None of those sources had information that warranted an Orange Level Alert Warning?
The "fresh" intelligence that we captured in a terrorists laptop computer pre-dated 9/11 itself. One would think that such intelligence was of limited value. Any normal thinking American could easily guess that places like the NY Stock Exchange, the World Bank, or almost any important building or location would be a nice terrorist targets. We have tens of thousands of inviting targets. We don't need Tom Ridge to tell us. And we don't need President Bush and an army of Republican officials to scare the beejeebees out of us on one hand and then tell us THEY WILL PROTECT US on the other hand.
I just don't get it. I must be missing a piece of the puzzle. I don't understand the logic of all this. CNN spends all day long on the new, "fresh" terrorist threat, that is, when Dr. Sonjay Guptha isn't telling us about how to whiten our teeth or lower our blood pressure. And the nightly news programs inform the public with the utmost urgency about the imminent terrorist threat, that is, in between the commercials for Viagra that show hoards of horny, sexually deprived men dancing in the street; or commercials for Leventril (or whatever) showing the sh*t eating grin on the face of a woman who was formerly suffering from the dreaded condition of "sexual lethargy", but has now recovered.
Then I see President Bush hittin' the ol' campaign trail---smiling, and waving on one hand and then in the next breath President Bush is standing in all somberness with the heads of the FBI, the CIA, the State Department, the Defense Department, the National Security Department, etc. telling us about how he and his Cabinet are "on top of things" and are going to implement the 9/11 Commission's recommendations. What happened to "bring 'em on"? What happened to the 140,000 troops in Iraq? I haven't heard a peep about them lately. What happened to all the embedded reporters with the 4th Infantry Division? How come Dan Rather, and Tom Brokaw and Geraldo Rivera aren't over in Baghdad anymore? The 140,000 troops still are. What is the piece of the puzzle that I am missing?
On Sunday Tom Ridge really had me all excited. I was thinking that, finally, we got our intelligence act together. We headed off the terrorists just in the nick of time. Now, on Tuesday, I learn that the "fresh" intelligence that indicated an imminent attack was found in an laptop computer in Pakistan and that the stuff is all about places that are obvious terror targets anyway, and that the information is more than THREE YEARS OLD.
Surely, we can come up with something better than intelligence that is three years old and then proceed to call it "fresh intelligence" of an imminent nature just because we happened to have just found it. That's like finding an old letter in your attic that has been there for twenty years and then calling it "fresh" and new and treating it like a letter that was just delivered by the mailman to you today.
At this point I'm thinking maybe we should step back a little further in our thinking and make a first strike nuclear attack against the former Soviet Union with all our land based nuclear based missiles launched from South Dakota.
I don't know. I must be missing a piece of the puzzle. I don't like how this whole terrorist threat is being handled. We don't even know who, what, when, where, or how we are under threat. What kind of "intelligence" is that?
Even though I am a lifelong Republican I think I will vote Democrat. I don't like any of this.
James Boyne
Other Articles By James Boyne on www.opednews.com:
President Booosh: We Are In A Pickle
Whoops! Billion Dollar Cancer Drug Found to Cause Cancer To Hasten Death
Bush: The Greatest Liberal of the Century
"So Rush Just Wanted A Rush"---the Media Gives Rush Limbaugh a Break
Was I Globalized or Circumcized? (What It's Really Like To Get Laid Off)
Bush's Secret Iraq Exit Strategy
I'm A Stem Cell and I'm Mad As Hell
Father's Day Chat Between George W. Bush and George H. W. Bush
Everything In America to be Renamed After Ronald Reagan
Bush Honors Veterans By Slashing $1 Billion From Veterans Benefits
National Rifle Association Opens Office In Baghdad
