NYT Editorial Terror Alerts

[bklyncowgirl]

Great editorial. Sums up very nicely what Dean and others have been saying.

"Our lives have changed so much since Sept. 11, 2001. We know that we may never again be free of the threat of terrorism. It's been a tough adjustment for everyone, and the burden on President Bush is especially heavy. Given the unprecedented circumstances and the costs of making a mistake, it's easy to understand why the administration has had so much trouble managing the way it informs the public about potential danger. But after 17 months in which alerts blinked from yellow to orange and back a half-dozen times, the White House should be past its learning curve. It isn't. The events of this week showed starkly that the system is not working.

The administration was obviously right to warn the country that Al Qaeda had apparently studied financial institutions in three cities with the idea of a possible attack. But the delivery of the message was confusing. The color-coded threat chart doesn't serve the purpose for which it was invented, and Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge is hopeless as a public spokesman on this issue. The Bush administration needs to come up with a method of communication that informs the public in a calm, clear way. Perhaps most important, people need to be made totally confident that this critical matter is not being tangled up in the presidential campaign.

The alert system has always rested on a precarious balance. Local officials must have up-to-date information about possible danger. Private citizens need to know, too, so they can make informed choices and be on the lookout for trouble. But it is possible to go overboard. Ratcheting up the warning level creates huge costs for city and state governments. And if Americans are warned too often, and too shrilly, they will become inured to terror alerts."

Goes on to rip Ridge's campaign pitch for "the president's leadership in the war against terror.''

A must read.

[NJCher]

1. link

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/05/opinion/05thu1.html


Cher

[dw]

2. This writer is loquaciously PISSED...

I wish I could write like this...

Mr. Bush should junk the color bars, which are now of use mostly to late-night comedians. Ordinary people have no way of calibrating their lives to the color ladder. It does them no good to be told to be scared, more scared or really scared, especially when they are also being told to act as if nothing's wrong. Unless the government is prepared to tell people to stay home from work, there's no reason to keep lighting the terror lamps. What we need is information that we can use, not another shot of adrenaline.

We would have been happy last weekend if a senior official more adept than Mr. Ridge had called a news conference to say what the government knew and what defensive measures had been taken. Instead, he spoke in apocalyptic terms, then produced an "intelligence official" who offered more detail and more alarming words, anonymously. Later that day, and on the next day and the day after, other officials spoke off the record, providing additional information that made the situation seem much more complicated.

...

The Homeland Security Department has made it clear that New York City is the spot that comes up most frequently in terrorism-related intelligence, yet money continues to be doled out in a manner that has much more to do with elections than genuine danger. It's shocking that Washington has not followed through on its own information by underwriting the protections cities need to stay safe.

[Miss Authoritiva]

3. Oh, no -- then the terrorists would win!

"Unless the government is prepared to tell people to stay home from work, there's no reason to keep lighting the terror lamps."

Spot-on editorial. Ridge's implied threat levels last Sunday simply did not correlate with the "go about your usual business" instructions.

At least during the Cuban Missile Crisis, Americans were allowed to stop working long enough to duck and cover under desks. Now we have to keep being productive workers and slap-happy consumers until the last nanosecond.