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Feeling very orange today

16 comments on Feeling very orange today

Feeling very orange today

: Another terror warning — but this one is more specific than usual, thus scarier. ABC News and The NY Times report that authorities have intelligence of attacks against specific (unnamed) companies in New York. Says ABC:

Sources at several law enforcement agencies tell ABC News that an “overseas source” has provided the information about the threat to New York and that it is more significant than the usual “chatter” intercepted from likely terrorists that has prompted warnings in the past….

“Intelligence reporting indicates that al Qaeda continues to target for attack commercial and financial institutions, as well as international organizations, inside the United States,” the New York City Police Department said in a statement released today on the “ongoing al Qaeda threat.”…

Intelligence sources say al Qaeda plans to move non-Arab terrorists across the border with Mexico.

Authorities already have in custody a woman of Pakistani-origin arrested after crossing into Texas. She carried a South African passport with several of the pages torn out, $7,000 in cash and an airplane ticket to New York….

Particularly disturbing to authorities were the intelligence reports that the attack may involve one or more suicide truck bombings, a tactic never seen in the United States, but one widely used by terrorists elsewhere.

Well, the difference between a suicide truck bombing and the first bombing at the WTC and the bombing in Oklahoma City is that the asswipes didn’t die. The Times adds:

Another law enforcement official in New York said many companies and institutions had already been contacted, and that they were warned to pay particular attention to their parking garages and heating, ventilation air conditioning systems.

“We’ve notified security directors to secure HVAC systems, and parking garages in particular, because of concerns about a vehicle bomb,” he said.

16 responses to “Feeling very orange today”

  1. Beth Avatar
    Beth

    I can’t imagine showing up at work tomorrow morning and having security checks at my parking garage or seeing crews checking out the ventalation system and realizing it was my company that was a target.

  2. Brett Avatar
    Brett

    Ted Kennedy so profoundly uttered: nothing to fear but four more years of George Bush.
    What an absolute idiot.
    Jeff, you were right to point out Jay Rosen’s keen insight that al-Qaeda was at the convention for all the security.
    We can’t afford the posture of “I triple dog dare you!” from Kerry’s foreign policy. That’s just giving terorists a free shot at killing more Americans.
    The reason that Bush again leads with likely voters (post-convention USATODAYGALLUP linked on Drudge) is that Kennedy/Kerry are wrong. Homeland security is a much larger issue with voters than dumping George Bush.
    The former lieutenant governor for Mike Dukakis is following in his leader’s footsteps for his party’s tunnel vision. No traction. The treads have been botoxed.

  3. david Avatar
    david

    If W wins it’ll be interesting to see how many alerts they put out next year when there is no election. My guess is if W gets back into office magically we’ll have less “chatter” of impending doom at least until the 2006 election cycle.

  4. Charlie (Colorado) Avatar
    Charlie (Colorado)

    David, you silly dick, if you can’t figure out after the 9/11 commission report that there are going to be alerts now every time there’s a hint of the scent of a possible threat, it’s because you’re too illiterate to read the papers.
    Strong response follows.

  5. onecent Avatar
    onecent

    Hey, David, try to stick it out. After Kerry wins, the alerts will end. Kerry will surrender and we can ignore the likes of her.

  6. billg Avatar
    billg

    So, Charlie, you’re saying we can expect more warnings as a political response to the commission report?
    I don’t doubt the intelligence, but I’d have a lot more confidence in Tom Ridge if he wouldn’t engage in blatant bootlicking every time he gets in front of a microphone. We don’t need Ridge to tell us that the Bush administration is supposed to be working hard to keep terrorists from killing us. We expect no less.

  7. david Avatar
    david

    Charlie Charlie Charlie anyone in their right minds would question this administration for anything they say to us. Right now I’m listening to Matt Drudge on WABC; hardly a liberal commie bastard, and he was questioning this announcement. Considering that they have raised the threat level many times in the past and NOTHING has come of it…I’m glad they haven’t come true of course BUT how come they’ve never had any reports about how even one of these imminent attacks were twarted. All warnings came and went and nothing happened so why should we believe them now especially when Ridge makes a political speech while making the announcement!
    Shrub knows the more scared he keeps people the better his chances for reelection.
    ………………………
    WASHINGTON (Reuters) — President George W. Bush may be tapping into solid human psychology when he invokes the September 11 attacks while campaigning for the next election, U.S. researchers said on Thursday.
    Talking about death can raise people’s need for psychological security, the researchers report in studies to be published in the December issue of the journal Psychological Science and the September issue of the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.
    “There are people all over who are claiming every time Bush is in trouble he generates fear by declaring an imminent threat,” said Sheldon Solomon of Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York, who worked on the study.
    “We are saying this is psychologically useful,” said Solomon.
    Jeff Greenberg, a professor of psychology at the University of Arizona in Tucson, said generating fear was a common tactic.
    “A lot of leaders gain their appeal by helping people feel they are heroic, particularly in a fight against evil,” Greenberg said in a telephone interview from Hawaii, where he presented the findings to a meeting of the American Psychological Association.
    “Sometimes that may be the right thing to do. But it is a psychological approach, particularly when death is close to peoples’ consciousness.”
    For their first study, Solomon, Greenberg and colleagues asked students to think about either their own death or a neutral topic.
    They then read the campaign statements of three hypothetical candidates for governor, each with a different leadership style. One was charismatic, said Solomon.
    “That was a person who declared our country to be great and the people in it to be special,” Solomon, who worked on the study, said in a telephone interview.
    The others were task-oriented — focusing on the job to be done — or relationship-oriented — with a “let’s get it done together” style, Solomon said.
    Fearing doom, choosing charisma
    The students who thought about death were much more likely to choose the charismatic leader, they found. Only four out of about 100 chose that imaginary leader when thinking about exams, but 30 did after thinking about death.
    Greenberg, Solomon and colleagues then decided to test the idea further and set up four separate studies at different universities.
    “In one we asked half the people to think about the September 11 attacks, or to think about watching TV,” Solomon said. “What we found was staggering.”
    When asked to think about television, the 100 or so volunteers did not approve of Bush or his policies in Iraq. But when asked to think about Sept. 11 first and then asked about their attitudes to Bush, another 100 volunteers had very different reactions.
    “They had a very strong approval of President Bush and his policy in Iraq,” Solomon said.
    Solomon, a social psychologist who specializes in terrorism, said it was very rare for a person’s opinions to differ so strongly depending on the situation.
    Another study focused directly on Bush and his Democratic challenger, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry.
    The volunteers were aged from 18 into their 50s and described themselves as ranging from liberal to deeply conservative. No matter what a person’s political conviction, thinking about death made them tend to favor Bush, Solomon said. Otherwise, they preferred Kerry.
    “I think this should concern anybody,” Solomon said. “If I was speaking lightly, I would say that people in their, quote, right minds, unquote, don’t care much for President Bush and his policies in Iraq.”
    He wants voters to be aware of psychological pressures and how they are used.
    “If people are aware that thinking about death makes them act differently, then they don’t act differently,” Solomon said. Solomon says he personally opposes Bush but describes himself as a political independent who could vote Republican.
    http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/07/30/campaign.fear.reut/index.html

  8. Ben Avatar
    Ben

    david – the transmitters in your head are indicating that you haven’t taken your meds today. Remember, one of the red ones and two of the blue.

  9. Andy Avatar
    Andy

    Howard Dean has wrapped himself in the same cynical skepticism questioning the validity of the warning.
    What is teh proper course of action? Do Nothing and have people die? Warn people and be cited for political opportunism? Warn people and scare away the bad guys?
    Can anyone think of a FASTER WAY to LOSE the election than to be caught fabricating a warning?
    I prefer a warning where nothing happens. That means many innocent people lived another day.
    What is really important-?

  10. TC-LeatherPenguin Avatar
    TC-LeatherPenguin

    (yawn) What? You mean there’s gonna be a THIRD dog sniffing my ass when I try to get into 40 Broad this morning?

  11. James Stephenson Avatar
    James Stephenson

    Just think people are blaming Bush for 9/11 because he did not warn people of possible attacks.
    Now people are mad at Bush because they are warning us anytime they get some kind of Chatter.
    WTF people, make up your minds. The information they have this time seems a hell of a lot more specific then the crap they got for 9/11.

  12. Lola Avatar
    Lola

    David, please unwrap the tinfoil from your head and get this: people are trying to kill us, which means your brother, your sister, your cousin, your 4th cousin once removed. They aren’t gonna stop just because we can craft fancy words begging them to stop – we have to physically stop them. Anyone who can do this without wimping out gets my vote, and it goes to the one who can speak plainly and make other people scared to death, not someone who can give a limp-handed salute.

  13. shark Avatar
    shark

    David and fellow travelers of his like Howard Desan prove that Kerry and his party are unworthy of being trusted wth our national security.
    Heaven forbid something happened, would David and Dean have the sense to STFU, or would they start yelling about how Bush should’ve stopped it???
    Cretins

  14. Dann Avatar
    Dann

    David & Co.
    The problem with your position is that our government cannot win. If they up the alert level and nothing happens, you claim it to be either paranoia or using the alerts as a political tool. If they do nothing and something does happen, then the administration is asleep at the switch and needs to be booted out of office. If they act preemptively in good faith and learn the intelligence was faulty afterward, then they are liars. If they don’t act and later learn that the intelligence was faulty, then they are incompetent.
    It seems that the set of conditions where America can win against the terrorists is so limited as to preculed victory.
    BTW, for those that may be interested, I’ve recently enabled comments via Haloscan on my minor league blog.
    Regards

  15. Dann Avatar
    Dann

    errr….preclude

  16. Angelos Avatar
    Angelos

    Yes, we need to know if there is any credible information. This time, there seems to be something. Three weeks ago, there was nothing, it was pure politics and fear-mongering.
    Homeland Security and other agencies should be apolitical though, to have and trustworthiness and credibility.
    Instead, we have Tom Ridge, Bush lackey, saying “But 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 have every right to be cynical about that crap.