The reason I ask is because news stories indicate that threat level was raised to Crayola Orange last week because a passenger on one of the Air France flights was supposedly tied to Al Qaeda.
Now anyone with an ounce of brains would have waited until that passenger showed up, then grabbed him for questioning.
But instead, the administration had Tom Ridge tell the world about it. Unsurprisingly, the passenger in question did not show up.
The passenger could still be a terrorist, you say? It took the French about a New York minute to check it out.
... the United States had given the French counterespionage service DST the name of a Tunisian man with a pilot's license. American authorities thought the man might be tied to Al Qaeda, the source said, but a DST investigation determined that the man was still in Tunisia and was not in the DST's files. [Air France Terrorist Inquiry Founders]
So do you think the administration was really inept enough to warn away someone they thought was a terrorist? Or was it another opportunity for a bit of fear-mongering and making political points?
Yesterday, White House spokesman Scott McClellan, speaking to reporters flying with President Bush to Crawford, Texas, cautioned that the period of high alert is not over, noting the "ongoing nature of the threat and the continuing efforts that are underway." "We are working to make sure that we are doing everything we can to protect the American people and prevent attacks," he said. [Ibid.]
The choices seem to be an administration that's incredibly stupid or one that's cynicallymanipulative and unforgivably under-handed.
Scary times, Quasimodo.
Article comments
1 - debbie
With the holidays I haven't been paying too much attention to the news so I don't know the details on this one.
Unfortunately, if we have to be 'wrong' I would rather err on the side of safety rather then take chances. It is a lot easier to tell the country sorry for the inconvenience than it is to tell families sorry we decided not to pay any attention to the passenger lists.
The hard part is knowing when to take info seriously and pass it on and when to spot that it is false. Don't want to cry wolf too often because that would defeat the purpose of the alerts.
I may be naive, but I have to trust that the gov. is checking info as it comes in and rates it's reliablility. If they feel it is significant enough to raise the alert status then I think that we should heed the warning. It may be a pain in the behind but it will never be as big a pain as 9-11.
2 - Hal Pawluk
I appreciate your position and probably would have been in the same place up into the 1980s.
Since then, I've seen representative government being gradually pushed out of the way until today's administration, which seems unable to do anything without a political twist. It seems that we no longer have a representative government, but rather a bunch of governors driven by self-interest.
I'm still drafting a piece to clarify that, but will post something at some point, possibly in the first half of next year.