Tuesday, November 30, 2004
Where's the Orange?
With today's resignation by Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge, quite a bit of attention has been drawn to his department. All day long there has been wide speculation as to who will be chosen to replace him. I've heard several names mentioned; Mitt Romney, Asa Hutchinson, Mike Leavitt, Rudy Giuliani, and even Joe Lieberman (I know, I laughed too). But I think that the media is missing something big here. Why aren't we at Orange alert?
Last summer, the nation's terror alert level was elevated to orange based upon what turned out to be out-dated intelligence. The Bush administration strongly defended the move and denied accusations that the warning was politically motivated. But nonetheless, the terror threat level was raised. Now yesterday, we saw the release of a new video featuring bin Laden aide Ayman al-Zawahiri who vowed to continue the fight against America and yet our threat level remains at yellow. According to Matt Lauer of the Today show, previous videos released by al-Zawahiri have been followed closely by an al Qaeda attack. He cited the Bali nightclub bombing and the recent bombing in Egypt as examples. So what gives? Here we have something tangible that has signaled attacks in the past, but we aren't raising the threat level. Does this make sense to anybody? Could it be that those terror alerts over the summer were really politically motivated? Or is our nation's safety being ignored now that the election is over? Neither one of these scenarios is too rosy.
What do you want to bet that nobody in the media will have the balls to ask this question? Wouldn't it be nice if the press would do it's job?
Last summer, the nation's terror alert level was elevated to orange based upon what turned out to be out-dated intelligence. The Bush administration strongly defended the move and denied accusations that the warning was politically motivated. But nonetheless, the terror threat level was raised. Now yesterday, we saw the release of a new video featuring bin Laden aide Ayman al-Zawahiri who vowed to continue the fight against America and yet our threat level remains at yellow. According to Matt Lauer of the Today show, previous videos released by al-Zawahiri have been followed closely by an al Qaeda attack. He cited the Bali nightclub bombing and the recent bombing in Egypt as examples. So what gives? Here we have something tangible that has signaled attacks in the past, but we aren't raising the threat level. Does this make sense to anybody? Could it be that those terror alerts over the summer were really politically motivated? Or is our nation's safety being ignored now that the election is over? Neither one of these scenarios is too rosy.
What do you want to bet that nobody in the media will have the balls to ask this question? Wouldn't it be nice if the press would do it's job?
