much as I hate to agree with the man...

[waider]

Thomas C. Greene makes a point that had been bouncing around in my head. Which is that, well, since so much secrecy surrounds the source of a lot of the information that the Bush Administration lean on for their terror alerts, should they not also conceal the targets, heck, even the fact that they have the knowledge, the better to pounce on Al Q when the attempts go ahead?

Comments

[waider.livejournal.com]

the age of a planned attack doesn't seem to me indicative of its staleness

Greene draws on that fact - if the data are three to four years old, and the admin acknowledge that plans are shelved for years at a time, why the sudden rush to defend the targets? Or from the other perspective, if you suddenly rush to defend the targets, when do you stop?

My own attitude to the alert also stems from the timing, but the surrounding circumstances aren't helping (i.e. I am more bothered by the timing than by the three-year-old data)

[wisn.livejournal.com]

If there was new information which indicated the old information was still relevant or about to be acted on, the alert would be timely. As it is, with the present administration's arbitrary publicization of data and news, it's impossible to tell from here.

And, as far as I can tell, all elevations in alert levels serve to do is increase the number of random, circumstantial and otherwise unwarranted busts of US residents, few of which appear to be relevant to whatever information was key to the alert.