(updated edit for readablity 080304101132-bit)
I’m a little annoyed with Drudge this morning.
He seems taken with the idea that the info that raised our alert levels over the weekend was in fact a couple years old… Some of it pre-dating the original 9/11 attacks. The implication of his coverage appears to be that this is old stuff and not worthy of our attention, and that therefore this stuff was politically motivated.
He posts headlines from the NYT and WaPo, two of the farthest left-leaning papers in the country, who are doing everything they can to see Kerry in the WH….
“Much of the information that led authorities to raise the terror alert at several large financial institutions in the NY and D.C. areas was 3 or 4 years old… NYT Tuesday Page One Splash To Claim: Intelligence and law enforcement officials ‘had not yet found concrete evidence that a terror plot or preparatory surveillance operations were still under way’… WASH POST Page One: Alerts Stemmed from Pre-9/11 Acts /// ‘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’… POST: ‘Most of the information was compiled prior to the Sept. 11 attacks and that there are serious doubts about the age of other, undated files’…
Certainly, this is how the leftie Blogs are reading it this morning. I guess they’re getting hungry for something to chew on… and like the rabid dogs they are, they go after anything that moves.
However, let’s try the real world, shall we?
I would point out that the 9/11 attacks, too, were in the planning stages for many years. AQ has set itself in a long, drawn out terror war… one of long-term attrition, long before the US and the remainder of the west recognized it for the threat it is.
Given the mindset of AQ, those plans as have been discovered should be taken more seriously than most 4 year old plans. AQ targets symbols. That’s what terrorism is about. The buildings named in the intel we learned of over the weekend certainly falls directly in line with this thinking.
Contrary to what the Democrats are claiming, we have no way of knowing these targets are now off the table. Matter of fact, if past be prologue, we must assume they’re still targets, and still in danger.
AQ is of the impression time is on their side. They figure to wait a good amount of time between attacks. We know they’re coming, we know what they’re about in terms of targets. The only question to my mind, is “when”.
You’re going to see, over the next several days, a lot about how this alert raising was politically motivated. Such charges are themselves politically motivated, and one supposes, are to be expected from a group of people who are backing the likes of Kerry; They have little else to run on, than to attack anything that moves. These political attacks don’t have to make sense, they just have to be noisy. Kerry’s complaints seem to fit right into that scenario.
However, the facts Kerry’s people would like you to forget are that AQ has never regarded terrorism as a short-term occupation. Again; the 9/11 attacks were years in the making. We know that once a target is set, it remains an objective until it’s no longer standing. The only thing to responsible people could do with this info was to act according to the idea that these places are still objectives, simly because we have no indication that these targets are off the table, as it were. This is particularly true, given this guy they captured had these files in his computer as active.
And it should be pointed up; Can you imagine the howling from the Kerry camp had the administration not acted as such? They’d claim Bush wasn’t doing enough…
Bush and his people are figuring, apparently correctly, that the complaints from the Kerry camp are going to continue no matter what is done or not done. This is, after all, an election year. Gaia forbid (snicker) that they should ever say anything a Republican President does is correct at any time, much less during an election cycle.
Oh, speaking of which, our intel suggests that AQ wants to strike again prior to the election, ala Madrid. And we have a list of targets, now. And Bush reacts according to this info.
Sounds like a good plan to me.
It could be called a responsible action.
One could say it’s good leadership.
One might even say Presidential.
Meanwhile, a hopeless challanger for the office of President, along with his party, desperate because their own convention gave them no boost in polling numbers at all, but rather helped the afore-mentioned incumbant, and who are out there hunting for an issue to run on, are claiming that a responsible action by the current administration is politically motivated? Whoda thunkit?
Pass the salt, please.
Dodd Harris has more [1]…
Update: Dodd adds even more: Look at the people Pakistan picked up just today [2], based on this ‘old and non-current’ info.
Good Job, Dodd, Keep goin’, man…