Tuning out the boys who cry wolf

July 15, 2007

The New York Daily News reports today that the possibility of a domestic terrorist attack this summer appears high, but Americans are skeptical about the warnings.

To American who have grown skeptical of terrorism warnings, the professionals in the intelligence community say they understand. They also say this time, it could be for real.

That’s because the level of worldwide jihadist activity this year appears disturbingly familiar to those who hunted Al Qaeda even before the 9/11 attacks.

“What you’ve been seeing has had a feeling, to me, a lot like the summer of 2001, where you’ve got a lot of things happening,” a senior U.S. intelligence official said on Friday.

“It would not surprise me at all to see another terrorist event this summer in the United States,” the official told the Daily News.

Yet many Americans have grown deeply distrustful of such doomsday scenarios which rarely materialize.

This skepticism didn’t just materialize as a result of wishful thinking. Americans have grown to be suspicious of Bush administration’s warnings because so many of them have been bogus.

The “Seas of David” cult’s planned attack on the Sears Tower, the plot to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge, the British hijacking plot, the plot to attack Los Angeles’ Library Tower, the plans at Fort Dix, and the JFK Airport plot all turned out to be less serious than advertised. And yet, in each instance, the White House touted these thwarted attacks as dodged bullets. This contributes the public perception that the administration is less than reliable when it comes to domestic security.

For that matter, Americans have also seen the administration fiddle with the terror alert system in irresponsible ways. Two years ago, former Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge acknowledged that the Bush administration periodically put the USA on high alert for terrorist attacks based on flimsy evidence. “There were times when some people were really aggressive about raising it, and we said, ‘For that?'” Ridge told reporters.

And it certainly doesn’t help when the administration’s top official on homeland security explains that his concerns about a possible attack this summer are based on a “gut feeling.”

Yes, the Daily News report raises an important point; Americans shouldn’t take a lackadaisical attitude about a possible threat. But let’s not forget how and why the public has come to be so cynical.

Let’s also not forget how badly the Republicans NEED a terrorist attack, or anything that could be passed off as one, this summer. Even though nobody could be blind to its timing’s influence on the election, by the same measure nobody could stop it from doing just that. A little bit of tough talk by the Republican conga line, Joe Lieberman rising in the Senate, perhaps in tears, and blubbering that the enemy is desperate and on the run, and victory at America’s fingertips, and presto! another Republican president.

  • The Republicans have managed to give us the worst from all sides of this. On the one hand thanks to a completely unnecessary and totally bungled war in Iraq, our enemies have excellent recruiting and extensive on-the-job training for their terrorist cadres, so the threat probably is high. Yet the administration has shown again and again that their terrorism warnings are dishonest and politically motivated, and their actual execution of basic security is corrupt, incompetent, and a massive waste of money. Their less discreet members have been openly wishing for another terror attack because they think it’ll help them politically.

    If we make it through to the end of Republican rule without another catastrophic attack, it’ll be a miracle.

  • Doesn’t this seem like it’s becoming a way to spin the result of the Iraq war- more terrorists bleeding out of Iraq = more terrorist attacks?

    Instead of reporting that story, the whole story is just, “We feel like there is going to be an attack in America. . . oh yeah, and the reason why we feel that is because there is a lot of jihadist activisty going on in the world.”

    Gets people to focus on the fear, and not the reason why.

    That said, I think Chertoff’s remark was just stupid blubbering. Maybe then this stuff is just an attempt to make him look more legitimate after that.

  • Another thought that comes to mind is how strong the notion is among not a few people that the US government was responsible for 911. There is a deep root of basic distrust of the government in some of the US population. This distrust is certainly not alleviated by the Bush administration’s refusals to supply pertinent information about the attacks of 911 (or any of its important actions since then). Now these “predictions” of another terrorist attack in the US just add fuel to the fire.

    Conspiracies aside, as Mark noted above, the Republicans would grab hold of such an attack to support their world view and blame the attack on Americans who have steadfastly refused to agree with Bush’s attempts to to strangle their constitutional freedoms in the name of “national security”, not on their own invitation of terrorist attacks, couched in “predictions”…

    Conspiracies are quite often seen when there is a determination to hide the truth, though I’m convinced that the Bush administration secrecy results in far more banality, bungling and ineptitude than accomplished actions.

    George Sr. didn’t take Junior out behind the woodshed when he was young enough to have learned something about the consequences of lying, and now Junior’s collected the worst of the worst Republicans around him and is running the country like the idiot he is.

  • No one is lackadasical about a potential terrorists attack. Everyone has their eyes open but we are not screaming “run for your lives” or living in fear.
    Many of us are suspicious of where such an attack would originate from. We never have gotten questions answered from 9/11 or why our president just sat there while the country was under attack as if he weren’t surprised or threatened by the attack. 9/11 will always be suspicious due to a halt in the investigation.
    How does the government expect us to act? We’ve got our eyes open alright and we also have our eyes on our own government.

    I live in more fear of my president than I do the ‘terrorists’. That’s sad. To have a completely untrustworthy executive branch calling the shots.

  • Not to alarm anyone, but just to state a fact, the Sears Tower is now owned by the same group of investors which held the lease on the World Trade Center on 9/11.

    Personally, living in Chicagoland, I won’t be making any trips anytime soon to one of my favorite places, the Sears Tower.

    Re-investigate 9/11.

  • The first question I have is, how will America react when the next attack comes? Will we once again allow fear to overcome reason? Will we see it as proof that Bush/Cheney was right all along about the severity of the threat and grant him the power he needs to finish destroying America and the Middle East , or will we see it as a failure by Bush to reduce the threat? We already know which way Bush will go — will we retain enough of our senses to resist? I don’t think the public’s cynicism about recent and current threats gives us any real clues either way.

    The second question I have is, will it matter how the public reacts? Will Bush/Cheney use the next attack as justification to suspend the Constitution and complete the coup that began in November 2000? Somehow, I can’t imagine Cheney turning over the WH to Clinton if she has a chance of winning the general and Rove is still doing the math.

  • I live in more fear of my president than I do the ‘terrorists’. — bjobotts #6.

    Yeah, that’s right. The biggest threat America faces at the present time is from its own government. No joke.

  • So? Terrorists killed 1000 Americans in auto accidents last week. 9/11 was a catastrophic terror attack. Now it’s a bad memory. We can’t really lose the Iraq war in the sense of another country taking over this country. And terrorists cannot destroy this country. Like beep52 said, the biggest danger is political.

  • You know, I was as skeptical as anyone during the run-up to the ’04 elections of Tom Ridge and his rainbow of fear. Now, however, I have an uneasy feeling about all this. Why now? Why now are we hearing these dire “predictions” from Chertoff, Santorum et al. Wishful thinking?

    Like beep52, I’m concerned about the aftermath if an attack occurs. I remember people lining up up for blocks to pay gouging prices for gas on the morning of 9/11/01. Will we be more British-like in our reaction next time. I doubt it because we don’t have British-like leaders. We have fear mongers. Like I said, I’m a little uneasy because it will happen eventually. I’m just hoping it’s later (post 2009) and not sooner.

  • Another major terrorist attack in this country will be a Republican death blow (no matter what the MSM says).

    Americans are not dumb, we may be real slow, but we are not dumb.

    How would you answer this question?

    “President Bush, we have just suffered ANOTHER MAJOR TERRORIST ATTACK FROM OSAMA BIN LADEN. Where is Osama Bin Laden, and why have you not captured him YET?”

    Republicans live in complete and absolute fear of another terrorist attack.

  • These clowns need to be impeached NOW. During July of 2004, Ashcroft issued a statement saying the elections may have to be postphoned in event of a terrorist attack. 66 lawmakers went to the UN and requested UN oversight of the polling places for the first time in American history. Nothing more about putting elections off came from the Bush administration.
    In 2004, we were sold out. The machines were rigged, and John Kerry disappeared the day after the election results, nothing was said. People stood in line until 1am to vote that year, the exit polls were pro-democratic by a huge margin. People don’t wait for hours to vote for the status quo.

    The destruction of the Bush/Cheney machine continued. In 2006, so many private citizens like you and me took our cameras to the polling places and…the Repubs lost. However, they still have the election postponement idea. Don’t be surprised to see an attack staged as an excuse to keep power. This is one other reason we must ALL push for impeachment NOW.

    Balance of power, future of our republic, I can list the reasons ad infinitum. We must DEMAND impeachment now. A new poll puts impeachment at 46% of registered voters. A month ago, it was about 30%. Call your representatives on the phone, or send a hard copy letter and demand they do their job. Emails are too easily erased or ignored. I lived through Watergate, the congress dragged their feet until we, the people used phones, letters and telegrams to break them down. Now, we must do the same once more.

  • It’s clear to me that the Bush administration is getting nervous about the fact the time since 9/11 is nearing the time between the first WTC attack and the second – 8 years.

    And then there would be the demise of the long-standing argument that we went to war in Iraq so thesekinds of things would not happen here again; we’ll be able to bury that argument in the same graveyard that all the other reasons for going to war have been buried as they have proved to be wrong.

    During the last 6 1/2 years there has been more talk than action on all the things that were identified as our vulnerabilities, and I think they know that an attack at any time while they are still in office will be laid at their feet – and this time, there will be no casting blame at Clinton or Democrats for the failures.

    Now, maybe I’m giving them too much credit for knowing they have failed to keep the promises of lessons learned after 9/11, and they actually believe that an attack will boost their credibility, but I just keep thinking that they are increasing the volume now as a way to be able to point to their warnings as proof they were onto something.

    What’s laughable – or enough to make one weep in frustration – is that it will never be enough to have issued warnings. This time, the anger at being attacked is more likely to be focused on the administration, and I can’t find even one argument this administration can make that they did all they could to protect us.

    The Dems need to be hammering at all the ways in which this administration, with the help of a Republican Congress for 6 years, has failed to do the hard work necessary to shore up our weak areas. The GOP response will be, of course, that we are cheerleading for an attack because we so fervently hate America – but that argument has, in the minds of too many Americans who consider themselves loyal and patriotic citizens, also been buried.

  • I totally agree that the terror within (tyranny & loss of democracy) has the potential to be more damaging to our country than any explosive device that any individual can devise.

    There will probably always be potential for outside terrorists to attack us somewhere, sometime. Afterall we do not live in a mattress room. But provoking fear of terrorists is not the same as defense and is a tool this administration has wieded long and hard, to steal our rights, and to sell our country to corporations for the sake of a quick buck now.

    Another concern is what the corporate takeover is doing to our Earth and our children’s future.

  • … because so many of them have been bogus.

    They’re not only bogus, they’re particularly designed to deceive, to distract, to inspire needless fear. If we had a healthy society we could count on reliable sources in the media (or the Administration itself … FDR’s “fear itself” speech) to debunk the administrative alarms. Unfortunately, this is 21st century corporate America.

  • What happen to we fight them over there so we will not have to fight them here. We might as well bring the Troops home so that we can now fight them here.

  • I missed the news in early May that Bush Makes a Power Grab by issuing NSPD 51. For a while I’ve been so frustrated with Bush and the Democrats’ failure to put a leash on him that I wanted to hear NOTHING about politics.

    Well, I must say that Bush’s directive gives more fuel to the conspiracy-believers that he set himself up with dictatorial powers and will then ensure that something happens so he can use them and screw up the next presidential election.

  • The Rethugs are nothing if not superb at creating diversions and changing the subject. And they get away with it everytime. Fear mongering has been their stock-in-trade since 9/11, and it has worked. Certainly Bush got many more votes in ’04 than he would have had that not been the case.

    They are in serious deep do-do now, and like many others commenting here I am suspicious. Cheney and the neocons have not subverted the Constitution to the extent they have merely to let the Democrats have the White House next year. Any so called terrorist attack from now on is a coup as far as I’m concerned, and designed to create a police state with dictatorial powers.

    And the American sheeple will sit still for it.

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