Was The Elevation of the Terror Level Politically Motivated?

[Northern Paladin]

If you ask me Yes. The raising of the Terror Alert to "Orange" was Politically motivated and just a Charade to make Bush look tough on Terror and create the illusion that he and his Adminstration are indespensible when it comes to protecting America.

When in fact they failed to protect America on 9/11 and the only thing that Bush and Co are have been good at is fabricating lies.

The whole Terror Alert System is shady.
It's all a Conspiracy to control the Psyche of the average American and a pretty transparent one at that.
http://www.capitolhillblue.com/cgi-...ive=14&num=1771

[JoeDas]

I tend to agree that the terror warnings seem phony, but who knows for sure
...

nobody really pays any attention to them anyway, so it's no big deal. whoever changes their day-to-day life based on what arbitrary color Tom Ridge is pointing to that day is an idiot

[Telperion]

I would say yes, because the pattern of terror alerts (not one of which has been followed by a terrorist attack) suggests an attempt to psychologically condition the populace.

Here is an article written my someone who would fall into the "Yes" camp:

Terrorist Warnings Another
Ploy To Steal Election
By Jason Leopold
Assistant Editor
Online Journal
8-6-4

It's official. I'm a conspiracy theorist.

I'm probably one of thousands - maybe tens of thousands - who believe George W. Bush will do anything to retain control of the White House. It's not safe to have a healthy dose of skepticism like this these days. But this has to be said. I don't believe the country is going to be attacked by al-Qaeda anytime soon. I don't care how specific the so-called threat is. I don't care how many targets have been identified. I don't care how solid this new information is. I don't buy any of it. What I do believe is whenever Bush's approval ratings start slipping, the administration issues a terrorist warning saying an attack is imminent. Coincidence? I don't think so.

Consider the evidence.

This past Memorial Day weekend right through mid-June, Bush's approval ratings yo-yoed due to bad news coming out of the war in Iraq. By mid-June, 51 percent of Americans disapproved of the way Bush was handling the war in Iraq, up about four points from May, according to polling results from Zogby, Gallup and Pew.

Bush was taking a beating in the press in May and June because of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and the high number of military casualties the U.S. suffered in Iraq. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, on May 26, Attorney General John Ashcroft held a press conference warning the public that al-Qaeda "wants to hit America hard." Ashcroft didn't release specific information because he didn't have any. He said that somewhere in this country seven al-Qaeda operatives were planning an attack. That's hardly information that warrants a press conference. His announcement didn't even elevate a change in the color-coded terrorist alert system. In fact, it was all a smokescreen to change the news cycle. It worked. Bush's numbers went back up soon after Ashcroft's press conference.

However, the Wall Street Journal reported a couple of days later that the Department of Homeland Security found that Ashcroft's dire warnings of an attack on American soil "had been known for some time" and "was not new or specific enough to merit an announcement or other action."

Ashcroft cried wolf on a half-dozen other occasions too; last July 4, last Christmas and right before the Super Bowl, to name a few. Those alleged terrorist threats identified banks, shopping malls, power plants and stadiums, obvious targets for a militant group that wants to rack up a high number of casualties.

So when Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge announced Sunday that terrorists want to blow up the New York Stock Exchange and the Citicorp building in Manhattan's financial district, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund in Washington, DC, and the Prudential Building in Newark, NJ, the threat seemed more real, more imminent, because, for the first time, we got specific information. But as far as I'm concerned, the Bush administration picked those targets out of a hat. The only way this administration can rebuild its credibility is if one of those targets is blown up or an attack is thwarted.

Why? It just so happens that every single terrorist warning was issued whenever Bush's approval ratings lagged and when bad news was coming out of the war in Iraq, such as the failure to find any weapons of mass destruction, the huge financial cost of the war and a shortage of troops. Need evidence? Check pollingreport.com and then check the Department of Homeland Security and the Justice Department web sites and you'll see how the terrorist warnings were issued at the same time Bush started to fall behind in the polls.

The Australian newspaper, The Age, ran a Reuters story that quoted unnamed senior U.S. officials as saying that the constant flow of terrorist warnings since March 2003 "may also just be a ploy to shore up the president's [sic] job approval ratings or divert attention from the increasingly unpopular Iraq campaign."

A few weeks before the Democratic National Convention, The New Republic ran a story alleging that senior Pakistani intelligence officials were pressured by members of the Bush administration to make arrests of so-called high valued terrorists during the Democratic National Convention, in an attempt to boost Bush's standing in the polls during a time when John Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee, would have likely received a bounce in percentage points for his campaign.

The July 7 article, "July Surprise," said a Pakistani official was told by a White House aide "that it would be best if the arrest or killing of [any] HVT [high value targets] were announced on twenty-six, twenty-seven, or twenty-eight July.' - the first three days of the Democratic National Convention in Boston."


That event actually occurred on July 29 when Reuters reported that an unidentified U.S. official confirmed that Pakistan arrested "a senior al Qaeda member wanted by the United States in connection with the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa" all of which lends credibility to the fact that the White House will do whatever it has to do to make sure Bush is elected.

Here's more proof. Last week, at the end of the Democratic National Convention a Newsweek poll showed Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry leading Bush in the polls 52 percent to 44 percent. Less than three days later, Ridge, Bush's Homeland Security chief, announces that al-Qaeda wants to blow up targets in New York, New Jersey and Washington, DC. The jury's still out on whether the latest terrorist alert will put Bush ahead of Kerry in the race for the White House.

Bush has said on numerous occasions that America is safer since the overthrow of Iraq's former dictator Saddam Hussein. But on Monday, Bush told reporters "America is in danger." Last Friday, while campaigning in Missouri and other battleground states Bush said, "America has turned a corner." Talk about flip-flopping.

- Jason Leopold is the former Los Angeles bureau chief of Dow Jones Newswires where he spent two years covering the energy crisis and the Enron bankruptcy. He just finished writing a book about the crisis, due out in December through Rowman & Littlefield.

Copyright © 1998-2004 Online Journalô. All rights reserved. http://onlinejournal.com/Commentary/...04leopold.html

[Dr. Solar Wolff]

All the targets identified on the East Coast were targets of Jewish interests. The one on the West Coast, the Bank of America headquarters is not owned or controlled by Jews but it would be no great loss. If these targets are the targets at risk, the "terror alert" should be lowered.

[Northern Paladin]

All the targets identified on the East Coast were targets of Jewish interests. The one on the West Coast, the Bank of America headquarters is not owned or controlled by Jews but it would be no great loss. If these targets are the targets at risk, the "terror alert" should be lowered.

Needless to say protecting Jewish Interests is prority one for the Bush Adminstration.
But the point is the Terror Alerts the Bush admin issue aren't creditable.

They are just Political Charades and not based on any Real Intelligence. After all there is no real way for Americans to find out if the Bush Admin is being sincere when issueing these alerts. I think Bush and Co know this and have taken advantadge of this.

[Telperion]

Here's another article on this topic:

Blunkett issues rebuke to Bush on terror alerts

By Francis Elliott, Deputy Political Editor, The Independent
08 August 2004


David Blunkett has issued a barely coded rebuke to President George Bush for issuing a terror alert that resulted in "ridicule".

The Home Secretary went on the offensive to explain why Britain did not follow suit when the US administration issued a warning on information that turned out to be four years old.

Ministers and senior figures in the security service are known to have been dismayed at the nakedly political use made of recent intelligence breakthroughs both in the US and in Pakistan.

There was widespread irritation in Whitehall at last Sunday's warnings, repeated by Mr Bush, based on information captured by Pakistani intelligence agencies on al-Qa'ida's preparations for attacks on British and US targets.

The British response was markedly more low key, insisting that there was no specific information of an imminent threat: an assessment which looked far more credible as fuller details of the seized information emerged. Mr Blunkett comes close to openly criticising Mr Bush in a newspaper article published today in which he defended his refusal to comment on the the latest assessments.

"In the United States there is often high-profile commentary followed, as in the current case by detailed scrutiny, with the potential risk of ridicule," writes Mr Blunkett in The Observer.

"Is it really the job of a senior cabinet minister in charge of counter-terrorism? To feed the media? To increase concern? Of course not. This is arrant nonsense."

The remarks follow those made yesterday in which Mr Blunkett drew a contrast between "alerting people to a specific threat and alarming people unnecessarily".

The Home Secretary has clashed with Tom Ridge, the head of the US Department of Homeland Security, before. Mr Ridge is the man who issued last week's warning.

He is known to have been furious when Mr Ridge grounded flights around the world causing travel chaos during the Christmas holidays without first warning him.

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/pol...p?story=549100

[Dr. Solar Wolff]

Since Bush's "Weapons of Mass Destruction" and Saddam's links to Al Quada have not materialized, why doesn't anyone, especially people in the press, ask Bush, every time he opens his mouth, for just one scrap of proof to substantiate his claims. The same goes for Tom Ridge and other members of that bandit administration.

[Evolved]

You're supposed to report anyone who 'looks suspicious,' damn, half my neighborhood look like Al Qaida operatives! On my local news channel they made a report about an Arab exchange student went missing and instead of going to his home in the Detroit area he was found in New York city.. OOOOooh, scary!! Because no one ever visits New York city, especially foreign visitors. And a Pakistani guy is being held on 'immigration violations' but they are questioning him because he (GASP!) made videos of buildings.

I'm sick of all these terror-inducing terror warnings. The purpose is very simple: keep people in fear, which convinces their small minds to not only support the war (and any future wars against "terror"), encourages them to buy plastic sheeting, duct tape, bottled water and other totally useless crap for their "terror readiness kit", but also gets people used to the militarization of society in general. They press a button and we're supposed to freak out. Death and chaos is their bread and butter, more terror means more war, more war means more money. Nothing gives them a bigger boner than thousands of dead Americans.