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Wednesday, August 04, 2004

No, there really WAS new information! Honest!
Posted by Jill | 9:28 AM
Not that the media were beating the fact that the Administration put New York on Orange Alert based on old information the way they would beat to death, oh, say, a presidential BLOWJOB....but the not-so-sleeper cells of Bush apparatchiks in the halls of what passes for media in this country did happen to mention it yesterday. This was enough to put the White House back into spin mode, and today the New Whore on the Block, otherwise known in common parlance as the New York Times, reports that:

"Senior government officials said Tuesday that new intelligence pointing to a current threat of a terrorist attack on financial targets in New York and possibly in Washington - not just information about surveillance on specific buildings over the years - was a major factor in the decision over the weekend to raise the terrorism alert level.

"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."

Well, on the calendar that I've always lived on, "late last week" takes us up to, I don't know, like maybe Friday? And the terrorism alert was issued over the weekend? You don't think it might have been germane to the discussion to mention that the information had been compiled a while ago, but that new information had surfaced to indicate that the threat was once again real? Hell, even I might have believed that one.

No, my friends, the Mayberry Machiavellis pulled a fast one on us, trying to draw attention away from the Kerry/Edwards Stop the Insanity Summer 2004 Bus Tour by beating us again, I mean terrorizing....I mean terrifying Americans with yet another chorus of "The Terrorists are coming!" And now that they've been caught, suddenly they claim that there's new information...and we're supposed to take them at face value.

The Times, which has for the most part gotten in touch with its inner Bush Lapdog of late, gingerly touches on this: "That shifting tone may prove frustrating to the public, providing little guidance for assessing the gravity of threat information whose details remain shrouded in intelligence reports not available to anyone outside the highest ranks of the government."

On the other hand, it does accomplish three things: It makes people feel so uneasy that they might prefer the fool they know to the knave they don't; it contributes to the atmosphere of fear that allows Ashcroft to do whatever he damn well pleases, and it just might get the Administration off the hook the NEXT time they allow a terrorist attack to occur so that they can gain political advantage.

Just like last time.



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