William Rivers Pitt (TruthOut): Fabricating Terror

[Jack Rabbit]

From TruthOut
Dated Wednesday August 4

Fabricating Terror
By William Rivers Pitt

Let me get this straight.
Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge came barnstorming out on Sunday with a blizzard of warnings about looming terror attacks against targets in New York, New Jersey and Washington DC. Our nifty color-coded alert system was raised to Orange, or High. Headlines from coast to coast blared the bad news, and the stock market began Monday by giving itself a sound beating.
Late Monday night, however, had articles popping up on the Washington Post and the New York Times. This was the Post's midnight take: "Most of the al-Qaeda surveillance of five financial institutions that led to a new terrorism alert Sunday was conducted before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and authorities are not sure whether the casing of the buildings has continued, numerous intelligence and law enforcement officials said yesterday...'There is nothing right now that we're hearing that is new,' said one senior law enforcement official who was briefed on the alert. 'Why did we go to this level? I still don't know that.'"
The data was three years old.
Tom Ridge, in his Sunday remarks, said, "President Bush has told you, and I have reiterated the promise, that when we have specific credible information, that we will share it. Now this afternoon, we do have new and unusually specific information about where al-Qaeda would like to attack."
The data was three years old.
"The quality of this intelligence," said Ridge on Sunday, "based on multiple reporting streams in multiple locations, is rarely seen and it is alarming in both the amount and specificity of the information."
The data was three years old.

Will in his best style.

[The Spirit of JFK]

1. kick

Will Pitt. HE gets it.

[Dyedinthewoolliberal]

2. Nicely done

:kick:

[Ilsa]

3. Saw this in the New Zealand Scoop.

Love the article. emailed link out. Pitt nailed it.

[Miss Authoritiva]

4. Just exactly when do they tell us NOT to go about our usual business?

When they up the terror level AND give us a paid day off, then I'll know it's for real.

Oops -- forgot that Republicans don't believe in paid days off. Okay, an unpaid day-of-terror leave.