Yes, very similar in design to how talk of "the deficit," "abortion," and "gay marriage" are only discussed every two years. Coincidence? I think not.

The terror alerts were pretty obviously intended to sway public opinion so they had to be retired for a while. Foiled terror plots are the new terror alerts.

My guess is that the number of "foiled plots" that get trumpeted will drop off until October. An orange alert or two in the mean time will keep the fear primed. Also, since it worked last time, I wouldn't be surprised if bin Laden releases a new tape at the beginning of November.

Who knows? The Republicans are pretty desperate - maybe they'll pick Khalid Sheik Mohamed's brain or dig up some more anthrax.

Unfortunately - in every sense of the word - yesterday's bombings in India will undoubtedly skew your data upwards...

Duh !!! ... ?? Or is this a trick question?

Yes, Josh, I fear there will be crisis after crisis.

I've been wondering why the Republicans have been jumping on every hot button issue they can lately. Why are they trying to whip up their base into a frenzy now? Because they know those people will vote no matter what. Republicans are banking on low turn-outs. Between now and November, the rest of the general public will be steadily exhausted by each new crisis and the True Believers will be the majority showing up to cast ballots.

Is It Orange Alert Time Yet?

Independent Illinois Grassroots: IllinoisDemNet.com

It seems predictable. In fact, so predictable that it's simple, tired and unlikely.

I see a pattern in its earliest stage. It's all the latest "Bush the Multilateralist" news and the well-publicized meetings with foreign officials that aren't all about Iraq. I think the president will try to recast himself as someone leaders around the world look up to in matters of fighting terrorism. People have settled on how they feel about the president when it comes to his lack of diplomacy. This news will challenge their perception on the issue, which may cause them to ask, 'What else about the president am I wrong about?'

That seems like a much better strategy than rolling out the orange alerts and extra rolls of duct tape.

I think you illustrate why a politicized terror alert system is such an abuse of power. You rightly indicate that our major cities remain targets and that alerts need to be taken seriously. My sense is that there are threats against multiple targets within the United States everyday and that it is up to those in control of the system to exercise good and objective judgment as to when to trigger the system. The problem is that a Karl Rove alert system based on swings in the political campaign cycle (remember the alerts just after the Democratic convention in 2004?) makes everyone, not just left-wing bloggers, more cynical and less likely to do the things individuals and agencies are expected to do during times of actual peril.

When Josh writes his much-needed article, I assume it will not be to score political points about Republican shenanigans, but to call attention to an abuse of power that dampens our vigilance and makes the actual threats more dangerous.

perspective refreshers:

1) U.N. Speech, September, 1998, not covered much as it was the height of his not answering questions on Monica.

2) Interview January 1999
(This may be a free link for non-subscribers, it may not, I can't tell because I am a subscriber)
an obvious attempt at distracting attention from impeachment (sarcasm intended):
Clinton Describes Terrorism Threat For 21st Century.
Excerpts:

....in an interview in the Oval Office late in the day, Mr. Clinton said he had been persuaded by intelligence reports that the United States needs to bolster its defenses.

''I want to raise public awareness of this,'' the President said in the 45-minute interview, ''without throwing people into an unnecessary panic.''

He said he wanted Americans ''not to be afraid or asleep. I think that's the trick.'....

He made the assertions as the White House disclosed that the Administration planned to ask Congress for $2.8 billion in the next budget year to fight terrorists armed with such unconventional weapons as deadly germs, chemicals and electronic devices. Mr. Clinton insisted during the interview that his drive to expand the budget for these programs was rooted in the growing danger of such threats.

Elaborating on some of the initiatives he intends to unveil on Friday, Mr. Clinton said he is weighing a proposal from the Defense Department to establish a commander in chief for the defense of the continental United States, a step that civil liberties groups strongly resist....

In the interview, Mr. Clinton said he hoped that a major legacy of his Presidency would be to stave off unconventional attacks. He said he would be delighted if, decades later, Americans looked back on any such threat as ''the dog that didn't bark.''....

With his Presidency under fire, it is unclear how much of the proposed $2.8 billion in military funds and programs Mr. Clinton will be able to get through the Republican-dominated Congress. But lawmakers have usually supported White House efforts to fight terrorism.

Mr. Clinton said that of all the new threats, the one that ''keeps me awake at night'' is the possibility of germ attack. ''A chemical attack would be horrible, but it would be finite,'' he said, adding that it would not spread. But a biological attack could spread, he added, ''kind of like the gift that keeps on giving.''

Mr. Clinton said he had begun worrying about biological terrorism and other unconventional threats six years ago, in February 1993, after Islamic radicals exploded a bomb under the World Trade Center in New York. The bombing one month after he came into office killed six people and injured more than a thousand.

He said his concerns about the danger of germ or chemical attack were deepened by the Oklahoma City bombing, terrorist attacks in the Middle East and Africa on American embassies and facilities, and reports that Iraq had retained chemical weapons it claimed to have destroyed. Mr. Clinton said he was also troubled by the activities of a Japanese cult, Aum Shinrikyo, which attacked the Tokyo subway system in 1995 with a nerve agent, killing 12 and injuring 5,000.

He said today that terrorists were probably a greater danger than rogue states, which would be afraid to openly attack American targets for fear of retaliation.

He noted that Osama bin Laden, a Saudi fugitive who is accused of masterminding the United States Embassy bombings in Africa in August, has ''made an effort to get chemical weapons'' and ''may have'' tried to get germ weapons. ''We don't know that they have them,'' Mr. Clinton said.....

Don't know, not being a Democrat myself. I suppose it's possible. Seems to me that if most of the Dems have VP aspirations, there needs to be some weeding out - tell the ones who aren't serious to start paying attention to the present jobs.

All I know is that when nominees are made for President and Vice President, it usually turns out to be people I never heard of or at least never knew were being considered.

Certainly there seems to be more fighting over Hillary's chances for Prez in 2008 than anything going on in 2006, except, as you note, this nut Lieberman and his "independent party" nonsense.

If the extremists have benefited from GOP leadership - wouldn't they want to keep the same in power?

A terror attack in the US would be the rallying cry to trot out the flag and support our leaders

So wouldn't it make sense the extremists would make more attempts to do an attack. Even if they are only creating an alert in the US they are still helping. Either way helping the current leadership helps their cause

"In uncertain times like this, we don't need people getting on the job training. We need experienced leadership - re-elect me".

Only in Spain where the ruling party were seen boldy lying on national t.v. did it hurt the "Daddy" party.

Here's a fun article: "Spy Nation", which asks the question:
"Does the vast, immensely expensive, and largely unaccountable centralized intelligence system created by the Bush administration really make us safer?"

Money Quotes:

"Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, a radical Islamic cleric residing in Milan, was on his way to the mosque for noon prayers when he was seized by several men and stuffed into a van. From there he was taken to the U.S. Air Force Base in Aviano, and flown to Egypt, where he was imprisoned for more than a year and tortured at the hands of interrogators who have distinguished themselves - even in the Middle East - for their pitiless brutality. Eventually released to house arrest after the questioning yielded nothing of value, the imam was able to make a phone call describing his experience to his wife.

Nasr, who is also known as Abu Omar, is a veteran of mujahideen training camps in Bosnia. At the time of his abduction from Milan in February 2003, Nasr was under surveillance by Italian authorities, who were trying to learn of contacts between the radical imam - an Egyptian who had been given refugee status in Italy - and terrorist cells in Europe. Nasr's disappearance wrecked the Italian terrorist investigation.

There was little mystery about the identity of those who had seized Nasr. The abductors - a team of up to 22 CIA operatives - were about as stealthy as a homecoming parade. According to the Washington Post, the snatch squad conducted most of its communications via nonsecure cellphones, permitting the Italians to re-trace all of their movements.

They also left behind a thick paper trail of "hotel registries, car rental receipts, electronic highway toll passes and other documents" that were used to identify the Americans, at least one of whom was positively identified as a CIA officer. The operatives spent extravagant sums at some of Milan's most luxurious hotels, such as the Principe di Savoia, "where a single room costs $588 a night, a club sandwich goes for $28.75 and a Diet Coke adds another $9.35," noted the Chicago Tribune. "The CIA's bill at the Principe for seven operatives came to $39,995, not counting meals, parking and other hotel services. Another group of seven operatives spent $40,098 on room charges at the Westin Palace, a five-star hotel across the Piazza della Repupplica from the Principe.""

""Appointed to lead the agency in the midst of a heated presidential campaign, Goss's primary mission … was to yank Langley onto President Bush's political team," reported the November 10, 2005 American Prospect (citing dozens of sources from the CIA, State Department, and other agencies). Within a year he had presided over the resignation of as many as 90 senior officials, driven agency morale to unprecedented lows, and "decimated" the agency's Near East Division, which plays a critical role in collecting and analyzing intelligence from the Muslim world.

"[Goss's] immediate goal in 2004 was to block what had been, until then, a stream of damaging leaks of information about CIA intelligence reports that ran contrary to the White House's rosy optimism about Iraq and U.S. anti-terrorism efforts," reported American Prospect. "More broadly, the Goss team clamped down on dissenting views and radically politicized the CIA's leadership. Even worse, say former agency officials, Goss has acquiesced in the dismantling of the CIA itself, which has bowed too easily to the supremacy of the new director of national intelligence, John Negroponte, the former U.S. ambassador to Iraq, who spent his days in Baghdad contradicting the CIA's clear-eyed battle reports."

Specifically, while in Baghdad Negroponte consistently downplayed the potential threat to U.S. forces posed by the Iraqi insurgency, while the CIA consistently warned that the insurrection would grow stronger and more violent. A suitable illustration of the Bush administration's priorities is found in the fact that it demoted the CIA for providing reliable, albeit politically unpalatable, intelligence about Iraq, while elevating the unreliable Negroponte to be our nation's first "Intelligence Czar.""

"President Bush granted DNI Negroponte another extravagant grant of power through a May 5 executive order assigning to him "the function of the President under section 13 (b)(3)(A) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended." That seemingly innocuous decree, pointed out the May 23 issue of Business Week, permits Negroponte "to excuse publicly traded companies from their usual accounting and securities-disclosure obligations.""

Your tax dollars at work.

The CIA hotel bills remind me of the scene in the Bruce Willis movie, "Hudson Hawk", where James Coburn reminisces about the days of the Cold War, when as a CIA agent, "I got respect! And I got laid every night!"

Josh, here's how it will work. It's a slight variation on time-tested fascist encroachment principles.

First, the government foments some racial incident the size of the Rodney King riots. This requires the placement of National Guard Units on the ground.

Agents provocateurs will be used to ruffle feathers in adjoining neighborhoods, likely gentrifying ones with artists living in the lofts usually available in places like that. LA is the likely test battleground, propensity to riot, lots of area commanders who have remained absolutely silent on the provisioning of arms to the opposition in the absence of any organized hierarchy ready to help move the untrained that resistance will call for. Look for it to start in LA, though. Almost a certainty. Good TV coverage, media in the pocket in many places. Good defenses for very well-equipped armories, easy lay of the urban land to assault and hold without making it look like much more than a few roadblocks. And remember that here news gathering is done from choppers. Sorry, no press choppers during TFR'd military action. That's standard since 9/11.

The National Guard is taunted, reviled by enraged locals. More are called for as tensions rise. And tensions rise as the races eventually recognize that they are not each other's enemy (something good to come out of this).

Sooner or later someone takes a shot. Which side, is immaterial.

The big development is that it gives the POTUS the much-neded excuse to bring the troops home. And when they come home they'll be in primo shape for kicking a few doors down here too and feeling a little more sure about themselves around American teenagers who look like the girls back in their malls in Nebraska and Missouri. Don't look for too many Californiz boys to be deployed back here.

This is an abbreviated sequence, from one that will be much more nuanced, but the skeleton of a few maneuvers I've seen before, though, admittedly in SE Asia. It was all the same, and at the end of the day there were guys with new uniforms on the TV reading curfew sheets. And people in large basements trying to find local armory commanders who might be sympathetic. That will probably be a little too late (hint to readers - -this is something that should be considered NOW).

And the artists who hang brightly painted banners, witty ones, even, will find out what a light tank round does to the interior of a loft building.

I'll try to add a little, but this is the general plan.

I guess what I'm saying is yeah, count on terror alerts. But just understanbd how much more they may portend.

Homless Bound

Unfortunately, it's quite likely that just as the jaded public wakes up to the naked opportunism of the pre-election "terrorism alerts"..... we have a real large-scale terrorist incident.

Bush and Al Qaeda need each other.

If it happens, will people hold Bush responsible for the failure of Homeland Security?

Probably not, they'll be too busy wetting their pants and crying for their mommy.

Things will get ugly. The RW noise machine will be turned to full volume, it'll be their last chance to avoid electoral oblivion, and these guys do not have limits.

I saw some CNN yesterday, and was reminded just how good terror attacks are for ratings. Blitzer's take on the Mumbai bombing was what that meant for OUR safety. These thwarted "attacks" also make for good ratings. The media shares the administration's interest in pumping up fear.

What do you think is coming down the pike in the next four months?

Another Bin Laden tape - video possibly.

And yes, more foiled plots. The arrests will all be accompanied by assertions that the intelligence that pierced the plot came from surveillance of financial transactions and overseas telephone calls and confessions by Gitmo detainees.

Maybe, as a reality check, somebody can point us to a plot of alerts as function of time in the past. Wouldn't it be interesting to see where and how pronounced the spikes are. By updating the plot regularly we might be able see new spikes develop as November approaches.

What interests me about this article (thanks for directing me to it) is where it was published. I can't say that I know a lot about The New American (nothing, to be honest), but I gather from the advertising and links on the page (John Birch Society, Youth Meets Truth), that this is not an organization of what could be called the left.

If this represents the level of disenchantment on the right with Bush and his cronies it has to be good news for the left, come the next election cycle.

Mike

On the heels of the Miami "terrorists" I'm sure some Boy Scout troop somewhere will be busted as a militia group hell bent on overthrowing the US government. Or maybe they'll pay a foreign government/ally - how about Pakistan - to say they foiled a terrorist plot to blow up US interests abroad or foil assassinations. I mean those governments can just cover up the "evidence" from public view or round up some unfaithfuls to be the fall guys.

What will happen in the next 4 months?

Well who cares really?..Everything is about which twin will win, the dems or the repubs, nothing else matters. Even if we have more terror alerts they will try to outdo each other braying about how only they can best protect the Amurkin sheepel...er...people.

And we sheep will all be doing our part in saving the nation by visiting blogs and bravely defending the Red or the Blue on our keyboards here in the land of abundant speech and freedom from thought.

Josh M. raises a very rational and relevant point. For the time being, i think the majority american people, albeit the majority in the polls clearly shows otherwise, haven't yet turned away enough from the grips of GOP propaganda. As a student of political science, i'm coming to understand how difficult it really is to make sense of the grand social-political picture in our country. for instance, i questioned the integrity of that whole 'chicago terrorist plot' deal down in miami. when i first heard about it of course i was moved as 'they' wanted me to be. needless to say, i was not at all surprised to read on TPM and in other small sources that in fact the story was most likely embellished and over blown if you will for the sake of gripping the people as i initially was before i was done watching Anderson Cooper.

Away from that tangent, the game of fear tactics and puffed up job integrity on the part of the GOP is to be expected. Keep digging out there, guys. we can be our own worst enemies if we believe everything that comes across the airwaves and out of the holes of the politicians. question everything. peace. Slainte.

It's certainly starting. I just learned today that around the time the men in Florida were arrested, the State Dept. was dealing with a "large-scale computer break-in." AP says that "investigators believe hackers stole sensitive U.S. information and passwords and implanted backdoors to allow them to return at will." Maybe it's a coincidience, or maybe the gov't needed to round up some bad guys when this happened, and the Florida conspirators looked good.

Well, I'm ahead of you, b. I assumed that the Florida "terrorist" story was bullshit from the getgo.

Hopefully, the rest of America is coming around to the fact that this administration doesn't do or say anything that doesn't have the entrenchment of its associates in our political sphere and the enrichment of them in our economic one as its primary goal.

It would help if the media acknowledged the complete and utter mendacity of this administration rather than breathlessly reporting each new press release as if it were fact.

Don't forget, too, that they don't have to "discover" a new plot. The big event for NYC before 2004, about threats to such sites as the Citicorp building, turned out to be reports from years before. But we bought it, and that building has had heightened security ever since.

From examples like that one, I'm not as afraid as ArtAppraiser that Democrats will sound too soft by stressing civil liberties. Back then, the concept never came up, and Kerry was even trying to run on port security, to shift the frame from who's more of a warmonger overseas to who's protecting America. But the usual mindless fearmongering won.

I'm sure the cycle with be similar: GOP shouting "be scared," and Democrats shouting "they're too incompetent to protect you, so all they can do is raise phony threats." So in a way, we're already caught up to ArtAppraiser's sensible suggestion. The crucial factor may then be whether the media are willing to air the Democrat response seriously, including the media's own hard-hitting reports on the reality of threats. Maybe they're getting more skeptical; we've seen signs of it. But we can expect a stronger GOP media blitz and more media fear of not being "balanced" during an election campaign.

John

http://www.haberarts.com/

Josh:

Looks like the collective wisdom is "yes, we will see more foiled plots and more alerts." I agree.

I used to organize security for an urban college campus. Trust me when I say, good security is very, very boring. You tell your staff to do insanely dull things like read log books, walk around and be visible, check security doors, get to know the students by name. Sirens are exciting, but it's the beat cop that gets it done.

So Dems: embrace your inner Gore. Be the geek who cares about the mundane, terribly boring details of security. Care about locking cockpit doors. Care about scanning containers at ports. Care about tax increases that pay for border security. If dems do this, they will deserve the vote.

The message is this: "cat and mouse" makes a good summer blockbuster but a lousy security policy. How about you keep the mice out of your kitchen by keeping it clean and putting the food away instead of living like a drunken bachelor? A cat in your house means you've failed to put down an ounce of prevention and now must get your pound of cure.

It's poindexter, but true.

"hear"

Are you implying I'm too dumb to spell correctly? What's the meaning of such quibling pedantry? Why don't you behave like an adult and simply ignore typos and minor errors in grammar and spelling as long as the meaning is clear?

The principal enemy we face is Osama, most of us thought

Most of you can't think.

The enemy of the haves is the have-nots, always has been, always will be. Einstein and Freud talked about this in the '30s when the former was exploring pacifism while watching tensions grow.

Have-not is always relative...so the third world views us as haves but the poor at home do not feel they have much. There's always tension among the latter as to who their "real" enemy is.

Modern liberals, too often, have decided that our own haves are the "root cause" of all the world's troubles and the ultimate enemies of peace and justice.

A related question, inspired by Suskind:

Will Bin Laden intentionally make noise to spark terrorism alerts that will help Bush & Co. in the elections?

It would be interesting to plot this as some sort of event study. In August 2004 someone posted something like this at:
http://img70.imageshack.us/my.php?image=aproval_vs_alert_chart_NEW.gif

I think that it was discussed at:
http://juliusblog.blogspot.com/
http://juliusblog.blogspot.com/2004_08_01_juliusblog_archive.html

Tetsuo

I would never have expected, even the Bush administration to be so political about our security, but I find it shocking that the increased terror alerts pretty much stopped after 11/04...

But the question should not be "if" it's going to happen, but how to deal with them. An opposition should be able to make people feel safer than the current congresidency (I'm looking for a word that implies no separation between congress and the administration). Dems should have a set of strong policies so that they could just say: "See, we'd keep you safer. Together we can do it better. Blah." Preemptively striking their strong points means we don't have to worry about what they will try to do.

Because of your insulting comment that we felt the main enemy was at home. This despite the fact that Clarke, et al, were on the Al Qaeda case from before, that liberals were warning about the Taliban before, (while oil companies negotiated with them) and that is AQ that whacked us, not you-know-who.

As I said, I voted against this administration and feel results justify my decision.

They have already started this again.

The two arrests, which upon further review are not as serious as they were played out to be. The Florida group is a bunch of crazies, and the subway group had never met, and they knew about them for a year.

There was nothing after the 2004 election until this. And now we'll see more of these tips or alerts based on old information, arrests of groups that probably aren't real terrorists, etc.

Except the Reich had full employment, even a labor shortage, all we have is 'statistical full employment' which is to say a slowburn depression.

The Reich was more animated even if it was more leathal. I mean all those uniforms, marching, tourch parades, nuremberg rallies. I hesitate to say that the Reich was more lethal. We are only in year 6 of the 4th Reich. At this point in the 3rd Reich, the summer of 1939 - things were just heating up but had yet to boil over. Hitler had murdered members of the S.A. and rounded up Jews but his death toll, at that point, was probably below the 100,000 that Bush is currently responsible for in Iraq.

They say it is wrong to pull out the Nazi card, and he that does first, loses an arguement. But they also say that he that doesn't study history is condemned to repeat it.

From the very inseption of Bush I find disturbing parallels: A loathing of intellectualism, A loathing of international organizations, preemptive war doctrine, the use of the persecuted majority and stab in the back as campaign tactics, just to name a few that were evident in 2000. Oh and there is this little tid bit: Both came to power during a constitutional crisis, appointed by a cadre of a few old men behind closed doors trying to solve the crisis without surrendering their political pretenses.

In my mind, the Germans have some cover - in the 12 preceeding years before Hitler came to power they had experienced the loss of a major war, saddled with guilt, two major economic depressions, one inflationary, the other deflationary after all that, a constitutional melt down is hardly exceptional. And after all that, Hitler almost didn't make it to the chancellorship.

We on the other hand put Bush in office at the height of our power, prestige and prosperity. The 12 years before Bush came to power saw the U.S. win a multigenerational global cold war AND in the preceding 8 years the largest peace time economic expansion in our history. History won't be kind to us for having handed the reigns over to Bush after that.

He that hath a trade, hath an estate - from Poor Richards Almanac - Benjamin Franklin

Isn't it clear?

Osama bin Laden will be coming out with a video in early August, supporting Ned Lamont in the CT primary. 

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Josh,

I wrote about this very thing on Sunday: http://texpatnation.blogspot.com/2006/07/silly-season.html.

I hate to be so cynical about our government, but I truly believe that they are manipulating the terror alert system and wreaking all kinds of havoc in the process; not the least of which is public confidence in governemnt.

Expect 4 or 5 more 'almost terrorists' to surface, possibly 1 raised alert but not in the usual place(s). It'll be Nashville or Green Bay or something like that.

Josh,

Absolutely, with Faux News and the rest of the noise machine stoking fear every step of the way.

I just don't know how we combat this.

Bushco delenda est

This poster might want to use a less ambitious vocabulary so we won't resort to "quibling pedantry."

That Ridge quote is key. Maybe it was guilty conscience? I don't know, but we have the head of DHS essentially stating the terror alerts were political.

I hope that makes it into Josh's piece... 

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