The media pundit's pundit. Written by NYC insider Jeff Jarvis, BuzzMachine covers news, media, journalism, and politics.
Alert
: Officials say that this week’s alert came not only because of the surveillance recently discovered but also because of a separate stream of intelligence pointing to a current plot.
The officials said the separate stream of intelligence, which they had not previously disclosed, reached the White House only late last week and was part of a flow that the officials said had prompted them to act urgently in the last few days.
I repeat: No gotcha.
So, three days in, and they’ve said a different thing each day.
That’s right, move along, nuthin’ to see here.
Well, Do… er, Mork, maybe they would prefer to divulge as little of their sources as possible. Didja’ ever think of that?
Thanks for doing your part to help reduce the value of our intelligence assets.
All this just makes me wonder whether the government is at all competent to deal with information like this at all. I have the feeling that nobody really has a clue.
The issuance of vague alerts makes me feel that the government has no idea how to ensure my security, but just wants to be able to say ‘I told you so’ in case something really does happen. It has nothing to do with party politics, it’s just evasion of responsibility.
I personally wouldn’t change my actions or my emotional state on the basis of these alerts. Jeff, I think you are allowing yourself to be manipulated.
Jeff, I think you are allowing yourself to be manipulated.
Begging to be, more like.
That’s right – convince yourselfs that the terror warnings are ALL political, and that there IS no terror threat here.
Bush hatrid is a psychological response liberals have because the possibility of confronting a true menace like the terrorists is too overwhelming to them, and in their minds Bush is an easier target that can be dealt with and over which they have some power to influence and control his fate.
The more they hate Bush, the more they deny the terror threat. This is General Psych 101.
Sydney – no-one’s denying the existance of terrorism.
This is about the purpose and effect of the terror warnings.
They tell us that there is this threat out there, but there is nothing we can or should be doing about it, and then, by the way, we’re here to make everything OK.
So what is the purpose of the alert?
Mork,
Have you considered the fact that by alerting about these plans, the government was working on actionable intelligence that would deter terrorists from accomplishing their mission?
Walking home from work today, there were TONS of police officers around the Citigroup building. There were actually more police today than yesterday (half of them probably to deal with all the f’n media that’s parked on Lexington Avenue).
By announcing that the government knew of their plans to topple the Citigroup building, terrorists cannot execute their plans now without undergoing extreme difficulty. They’ll have to disband the operation for now, which gives us more time to catch and kill them.
Honestly, if you can’t use your brain to think of some good reasons for announcing these things – other than the derranged leftist rant that this is all about interfering with your precious 4-point pseudo-bounce from the convention – then perhaps I’ve overestimated you guys.
Morky’s just snotty because he, like all the other gotcha’s, have been gotcha’d themselves and made to look like real fools. Even he isn’t stupid enough to actually believe that the administration should be releasing all intelligence information to the public just to satisfy the braying donkeys.
And as everyone knows, if, god forbid, the terrorist do manage to succeed in one of our countries, these same braying donkeys such as mork will be the first ones to eeeor loudly and widely about how the warnings were ignored and its all the governments fault(no matter how obscure the warnings were)
What type of idiot would believe that this or any administration post 9/11 wd be playing politics with the evidence of threats of terror attacks? Oh that’s right: Brain dead, Bush is Hitler idiots.
Thanks for playing Mork.
Lawrence Wright has written an impressive article in the Aug 2004 issue of the New Yorker “The Terror Web”. The fact is Al Queda had planned to bomb Spain two years before they actually bombed Spain. Islamofascists have had years to formulate all types of attack plans which can be implemented at a time of their choosing.
If one were to believe that the administration’s current terror alert is politically motivated, then all I can say is either these people do not really believe Islamofascist terrorism exists or are themselves attempting partisan politics whereby risking the lives of all who understand the reality of the threats the enemy, Islamofascist terrorist, pose.
Some of the intelligence you people were saying that Bush knew 9/11 was coming was a lot older than 3 years. Some dating back to 1996. 5 years, was that information to old? Was it?
Of course not. You just want them to shut up and when another attack comes you can say, “what did he know and when did he know it”.
So now, every Administration will be doing the same thing until the end of the US. Hopefully eons from now. Because they do not want to have to answer questions about intel that does not really say anything, but just hints at something, and their lack of doing something.
Why would you trust someone from DHS when you can trust someone from Ork?
If it was political timing, why would they issue a terror warning in the beginning of August? It doesn’t seem like an opportune moment: Kerry failed to get a bounce from his convention, the RNC is coming up in about a month, and Bush’s best bet is to help people realize we’re in an econmic boom. It seems to me that issuing spurious terror threats is actually bad for the economy, and therefore bad for Bush. Therefore the inference that this terror warning is politics only makes sense if you already assume that all terror warnings are politically motivated; certainly this warning is not evidence supporting that hypothesis.
There is timing involved, however, but it is of the CYA variety: the bureaucrats at Homeland Security are scared shitless of leakers reporting terror threats to the media before HS can act on it. What would the headlines be if HS did not warn us? “Bush Fails To Act on Al Qaeda Intel” I would imagine.
The American public needs to be told up front that such and such is based on old stuff but is now being given THIS WEEK because of etc etc–first the alert. Then NY Times exposure.Next, a new story to say “well, there were some new thingws but we could not tell you”…that hardly inspires confidence.
So, freddie, you believe the administration should out all it’s sources, ending their usefulness for future intelligence, so that you, personally, will be inspired with confidence?
Of course, it all had to be politically motivated. God knows the electorate in NYC and DC are teetering on a knife’s edge in choosing between Bush or Kerry and, this might be just the thing to tilt the race to Bush.
You all seem to not be seeing the big picture. Team Bush’s continuous manipulation of information for political gain has created an environment where everything that comes out of the White House is going to be treated with skepticism. So now these warnings are completely useless since the public cannot determine if they’re genuine threats or just misdirection to turn attention away from something else.
Caps mine:
You all seem to not be seeing the big picture. Team Bush’s continuous manipulation of information for political gain– CARE TO SHOW WHERE? EVEN THE 9/11 REPORT SAYS THIS DIDN’T HAPPEN. SO YOUR PROOF IS……??? has created an environment where everything that comes out of the White House is going to be treated with skepticism YOU MEAN DEMS PLAYING POLITICS WITH THE TERRORISM ISSUE, A CLEAR SIGN OF HOW UNSERIOUS THEY ARE ABOUT WINNING THE WAR ON TERROR . So now these warnings are completely useless since the public cannot determine if they’re genuine threats or just misdirection to turn attention away from something else.YOU’VE BEEN WARNED. DO WITH IT AS YOU WILL, BUT DON’T BITCH THAT YOU WEREN’T TOLD IF GOD FORBID SOMETHING HAPPENS.
Republicans see a threat, they heighten security. Democrats see a threat, they whine about Republicans playing politics. And you people wonder why your patriotism is questioned.
“So now these warnings are completely useless since the public cannot determine if they’re genuine threats or just misdirection to turn attention away from something else.”
So how would all of you critics handle it? You’re the Prez, you have terror threats, you don’t know which ones are real or are going to be acted upon soon, you have to protect the public but you don’t want to be alarmist for no reason and destroy your credibility.
What would you do, Robert the Troll?
Bush should discontinue all terror alerts. If something happens, too fricking bad. Go crying to John Kerry and Howard Dean.
Robert McClelland:
You’re kidding, right? You’re going to try to perpetuate the “Bush lied” myth yet again? How many times does this need to be disproved in order for you to drop it?
You incorrectly assume that this president is like the last one – constantly lying to suit his political purpose, even when under oath.
Americans aren’t stupid enough to start believing your crap just because you keep bringing it up over and over. Get a life.
PERFECT MEDIA MOMENT
They get a free shot at the Pres. No matter what he does they get to complain. Even if he does nothing, they get to complain.
FOR THOSE WHO HATE THE PRES.
It’s not a free shot unless you say what YOUR BOY would do?
Politics is a cruel sport, not for the weak or faint of heart.
Speaking of perfect media moment – Sydney touched on one above…. There are camera crews sitting on the sidewalk across the street from that Citigroup building – at least there were the last two days – with cameras trained on the building. Numerous people have mentioned this to me, and it seems pretty messed, up, don’t you think?
Scott, you see the government lying, I see the NYTimes backpeddling on the front page since, oops, it turns out they were wrong about the intel. It’s not the government, it’s the media spin by the NYTimes and The Washington Post you have to fear. They are the ones peddling hysteria. I even laughed at the front page picture of people having bags searched at the NYSE and the dogs. I thought, where have they been the last 3 years.
They are the manipulators. If they actually did some fact checking before splashing accusations on the front page, there wouldn’t be this controversy, but rather the whole picture of what has transpired.
Last, remember how the media said that the bombing in Madrid was due to their involvement in Iraq? They were planned years before anyone could call an election (parliamentary system and all) and before the invasion of Iraq. It was part of their claim to Spain or Andalusia in their words. The media defined the “reasons” as Iraq related since Spain supported us and the operatives statement and new threat was along the lines of, “Yeah, that’s the ticket! Now we will interrupt the elective process of those who stepped in our way in the future!” It worked! The PM lost big and the Spanish pulled out of Iraq in a jiffy. The media gave the terrorists a new way to instill fear in the people of democracies – elect those who will leave us alone, and we won’t kill you. THANKS BBC, NYTimes, et al!
When will people stop reading the NYT? They seem to be little more than the prpaganda arm of the DNC, the Tass and Pravda of the liberal U.S.
Wow, operating under the Mork mentality, the NYT has it made. They can freely omit or distort the facts they have, assume things that they have no basis to assume and whine when they’re called on it. Yet when the administration goes out of its way to correct their mistakes it’s Bush that’s somehow lying and incompetent. The Great Orson would be impressed.
What would you do, Robert
There is nothing Bush can do. His credibility is shot and there is no chance of him restoring it. Too bad for you Americans. Now there is no way for your government to alert you to a possible threat and have it taken seriously.
How many times does this need to be disproved in order for you to drop it?
It has not been disproved even once, noWMD-boy. Team Bush has We know exactly where they are, they’re in the area around Tikrit lied about everything Atta definitely met with Iraq agents in Prague in order to justify going to war yellowcake, mushroom cloud, the sky is imminently falling with a country that posed no we did everything possible to avert a war with Saddam threat to America.
I think it’s a little early to say there’s no “gotcha” in this story: Tom Ridge said:
“The detail, the sophistication, the thoroughness of this information, if you had access to it, you’d say we did the right thing.”
In other words, “If you knew what I know….”
I want to know specifically what Ridge and the administration knew before I’m willing to let them off the hook.
Allan Cook
Now there is no way for your government to alert you to a possible threat and have it taken seriously.
…says the guy sitting up in Canada where he doesn’t have to worry about it and has no idea whether people down here are taking the alerts seriously or not.
Well my experience here where the alert actually is (and Sydney & Tom, I’m curious about your experiences) is that some people are skeptical about the alert, and some people aren’t; but all of them are reacting the same way – they’ll take any alert seriously because they don’t really have a choice, and do anything they neeed to do – but frankly, there’s not much they can do about it – so they just want the people who can (the city, the police, etc.) to take it seriously. And given the number of police out here, I’m guessing that that is happening.
says the guy sitting up in Canada
Typical xenophobe answer from the right.
“The detail, the sophistication, the thoroughness of this information, if you had access to it, you’d say we did the right thing”.
In other words, “If you knew what I know….”
Right, Allan, I’m hoping you never know the details that the administration knows, because then our intelligence would be a sham.
Guys, the only way to deal with trollfarts like Bwave Sir Wobert and Mork from Ork are to ignore them. From what I have been able to observe of Wobert, and from Mork’s obsessive trolling on Tim Blair’s blog (until I banned him one too many times, I guess, and he found a new blog to infest) these fellows are sad cases with no lives, probably working as a lowlevel cog in some bureaucratic department somewhere, clutching at their staplers and mumbling that they’re going to burn the building down one day, you’ll see…
Andrea – given that you post obsessively to your own blog and others at all hours of the day and night, flit from low-paying job to low-paying job and have trouble paying the rent on time (according to your own blog posts) and have so little self-respect that you pay for Tim Blair’s hosting just to get a little of his reflected whatever (even though he has considerably more resources than you), you don’t think that your last post might be, well, projecting?
Hey, Mork, obsessively? By my count Andrea posts, on average, seldom more than one or two posts a day on her blog. And what’s Andrea’s finances or employment got to do with anything?
Your personal attack on her has crossed a line. I’m formally asking Jeff to ban you.
It has not been disproved even once, noWMD-boy. Team Bush has We know exactly where they are, they’re in the area around Tikrit lied about everything Atta definitely met with Iraq agents in Prague in order to justify going to war yellowcake, mushroom cloud, the sky is imminently falling with a country that posed no we did everything possible to avert a war with Saddam threat to America.
Oh dear lord, what a study in idiocy.
*SIGH*
There can be no argument with the closed minded. We’ll just have to beat them at the polls.
Typical xenophobe answer from the right.
Typical point-ignoring smear attack from the left.
PS- Look up the meaning of the word xenophobe, because his point certainly doesn’t fit that description.
Typical xenophobe answer from the right.
(sigh) ….I kinda figured he’d miss the point, namely that he’s far away from the situation. Typical.
Heh. Xenophobic about Canadians. That’s actually pretty funny.
There can be no argument with the closed minded.
You did not present an argument, rube. All you did was declare that the matter was settled and I was therefore wrong. So I gave you four examples of outright lies by Team Bush. Let me present them again.
1) Rumsfeld declared he knew exactly where the WMDs were.
2) Cheney declared that the meeting between Atta and Saddam’s agents was confirmed.
3) Bush repeated over and over again that Saddam had the capacity to attack America, specifically with nukes.
4) Team Bush claimed that war was forced upon them because they had already tried everything else to resolve the situation.
All lies.
And here are some more for you to mull over.
Guys, the only way to deal with anal retentive net nannies like Andrea Harris is to ignore them. Rubes like Andrea have no life so they spend their time dictating how they think the internet should be run. They also fear any sort of differing opinion to the point where they have to silence it because they lack the intellect to challenge it.
So just ignore her. She’ll piss and moan for a while but then she’ll move on to waggle her finger on someone else’s blog once she realizes nobody cares what demands she wants Jeff to impose on his blog.
“With this legislation America’s military will know that their country stands behind them as they fight for our freedom and as they spread the peace,” –U.S. President G.W. Bush, 05.08.04
I live in Tipperary Ireland and, of course, there are terrorists here in Ireland (we call them freedom fighters). I hope Mr. Bush doesn
“Our enemies … never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we,” –U.S. President G.W. Bush, 05.08.04
This guy
“Guys, the only way to deal with anal retentive net nannies like Andrea Harris is to ignore them. Rubes like Andrea have no life so they spend their time dictating how they think the internet should be run. They also fear any sort of differing opinion to the point where they have to silence it because they lack the intellect to challenge it.”
Mr Canada, heal thy self
Ptolemy:
>”Mr Canada, heal thy self”
What was the point of that? You’d figure if you’re going to waste the time with a post, it might as well be meaningful. You must post for the sake of posting. A definite sign of no life.
Michael – try reading it again. It’ll be like those old Magic Eye posters – if you concentrate really, really hard, suddenly, you’ll see that (lo and behold) Ptolemy is saying something which you apparently missed on the first rad-through – namely, that Rahbert is the proverbial kettle-caller (in fact, I would not be surprised if that quote is from Harris’s caveat to responding to trolls like Rahbert, suitably modified).
If the guy is a Canadian, who gives a flying f**k what he has to say about this country, our president, or our internal issues and politics?
F**k that sh*t. Canadian? Sorry son, your voice doesn’t count for jack.
And that’s not “xenophobia” either, that’s common sense.
Trump:
In the very first paragraph of the Declaration of Independence (July 4, 1776), there is a reference to “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind.” Apparently you
Trump:
I noticed that O’Pat Ire (post above at 2:04 p.m.) is a “feriner” too. He’s spouting off about our great country and I think he’s poking fun at our great president. He should probably be investigated under the extraterritorial provisions of the USA Patriot Act.
God bless the world…uh, I mean America. Sorry, I slipped. Really, I did… I mean, I forgot, but I’m really patriotic. Nuke Mecca! Go Bush — See. Please don’t have me and my family investigated, arrested without charges, held without trial in solitary confinement and tortured until the end of the War on Terrorism.
Michael – take a couple of deep breaths (they’ll help with the hyperventilating), and rejoin us in the real world.
Michael, stop it! You are just too viscious! Relax and remember its not your site. Its not Mr Canada’s either. He has a site of his own you know its just NO ONE ever goes to it. As a result, he is forced to crap all over everybody else’s. I never meant to mortally offend your favorite honestly. Why all the support for foreign posters and all the hate for your fellow Americans anyway Michael? Franky has the same problem it seems. How do you hate your own family yet love the neighbors down the street unconditionally?
I live in Tipperary Ireland and, of course, there are terrorists here in Ireland (we call them freedom fighters).
Hey, O’Thuggery from Tipperary Ireland, we remember here in the States your “freedom fighters” well – those lovable kneecapping thugs that bombed innocent people in pubs and financed their barbarity with bank robberies and brought the heroin trade to Dublin. They are all yours to admire, my friend, as we Americans have a little better moral clarity on the definition between homcidal “freedom fighter” and terrorist. They are both the same, you idiot.
Hey, Michael, you trolling idiot, if you understood what your bud, O’Thuggery, was really saying your stupid mouth would be closed. His political beliefs are dispicable, but you are too stupid to get it.
Onecent: Andrea has a long history of showing up wherever I’ve left a comment launching one of her habitual slimy personal attacks.
I have a simple rule with Andrea: if she ignores me, I ignore her. If she comments substantively and politely, I respond in kind. But if she starts in with the personal garbage, I fight fire with fire.
But I never cast the first stone.
Ptolemy:
>
>”Hey, Michael, you trolling idiot, if you understood what your bud, O’Thuggery, was really saying your stupid mouth would be closed. His political beliefs are dispicable, but you are too stupid to get it.”
I’m not that familiar with what O”Pat Ire, or you, are talking about. After reading his post, I do admit that I thought I could see why he said he called them Freedom Fighters.
The Irish were probably sick of the English occupying their country and oppressing them, so they fought back — to be free. It worked. Sort of like the Founding Fathers did in this country to throw off the chains of British oppression in 1776. Both we and the Irish were Freedom Fighters.
Nelson Mandela was a Freedom Fighter (or terrorist) too. His terrorist organization was called the ANC. After spending 25 years in prison, he became the president of South Africa and won the Nobel Peace Prize.
Jews were Freedom fighter or terrorists as well. Among many others, they blew up the King David Hotel in 1946, killing 91 innocent people. Their Freedom Fighters were called Irgun, and Menachem Begin was its leader
“I
onecent:
I
Ptolemy:
Now I understand what you mean by
In the very first paragraph of the Declaration of Independence (July 4, 1776), there is a reference to “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind.” Apparently you
Trump:
I traveled around the world a bit: Europe, Asia, South and Central America. You wouldn’t believe how nice “feriners” can be. I noticed most are especially nice when they find out I’m an American.
When I compare that ridiculous remark you just made with experiences I’ve had abroad, I can’t help but conclude that you’ve never been outside of the U.S.
You have no idea how ignorant you sound.
Trump:
BTW, here’s the full cite from “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind.” Apparently, you think it might have referred to something other than our “internal politics.”
THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”
Since almost all of the info is from before 9/11, you can damn well bet it included the WTC. Of course, they didn’t act on it then. Didn’t tell us about it then. Didn’t install extra security at key buildings then.
Mind you, I’m not saying that security at the door could have stopped a couple f-ing AIRPLANES, but I would be quite upset that the knowledge they had (remember the briefing memo on 8/6/01 entitled, “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.”?) was not given to the public who worked in those buildings.
Of course this is all political. They want us to be afraid, so they can run on the “protecting us” platform.
If they can’t distract us with a couple colors and vague threats, we might notice that only 32000 jobs were created instead of 243000.
We might notice that the cowardly nimrod is trying to question yet another veteran’s patriotism and courage.
Oops, gotta go, it’s orange. Where’s the duct tape?
Balled up inside your skull, apparently.