The Terror Alert System does a better job of communicating OUR plans to Qaeda than it does of protecting us from a Qaeda threat.
In the case of this latest threat notice, we can not afford to keep up a full-court press and keep these buildings under high guard forever. Sooner or later we're going to have to rachet down the additional protection and surveillance.
All Qaeda needs to do is wait a month or so and then restart the clock on their operations - in fact they can use the alert system to synchronize their watches.
As far as I'm concerned, the system actually makes us less safe.
I'd rather the government just privately warn the affected institutions, discreetly deploy special forces (at Federal expense not state or local expense) and kill the SOB's when they decide to act.
And Ridge is doing Republicans no favors when he treats changes in the terror alert status as an opportunity to campaign for George Bush.
We must understand that the kind of information available to us today is the result of the president's leadership in the war against terror.
We haven't learned squat in my opinion since 911, we still fail, miserably, when it comes to hunting down an organization that has stated publically that it intends to kill 4 million Americans.
Posted by: dorsano at August 6, 2004 12:41 AM