Me thinks thou dost protest too much

The raving right wingnuts like Sean Hannity (whom I heard last night driving home from tennis) have been going off the deep end in criticizing Howard Dean for his recent comments suggesting that the raising of the terror alert from elevated to high in NYC and Washington D.C. had political overtones. (Note, I listen to these nutjobs occasionally for a laugh and to find out what the bushies are putting out as the party line talking points, but then I usually find myself shaking my head in sadness that these blowhards have large, dedicated audiences who believe their rantings as gospel) Thus quoth Hannity last night:

It is simply beyond the pale!

He went on, and on, and on ad nauseum (and I do mean nauseum). He also tied in Dean to the Democratic nominee (Kerry), suggesting that "if he weren't such a nutjob (or maybe it was fruitcake, can't recall his exact words now), Dean would be the party's nominee..." clearly with the intent to convince his listeners that the liberals are simply not to be trusted... they are undermining the war on terror with statements like these... beyond the pale! (rolls eyes)

Of course, even Kerry seemed to distance himself from Dean's comments. I too thought at first that based on the fact that there was general bi-partisan affirmation from the likes of Leiberman that the intellegence was "disturbing" and "credible" that the raising of the alert status was probably warranted, despite the fact that Ridge capped off his announcement with a campaign pitch about how this demonstrates how effective our commander in chief has been in leading the fight against terrorism and in addressing the inherent problems in intelligence sharing between agencies. (gag)

However, today's headlines reveal that there's more to this story than had first been made known. Much of the surveilance information that had been discovered in the laptop of the al Qaeda operative captured in Pakistan over the weekend predates the 9/11 attack. Furthermore, there's no evidence that suggests that there were or are plans for a related attack based on the surveilance. There was even reporting that the information was often out-dated.

Sure, it is "disturbing" to find hard evidence that al Qaeda has been conducting such thorough surveilance, but is there really enough of substance here to warrant the elevation of the terror threat status at this time? I mean really, any idiot knew that al Qaeda has and continues to be "out to get us" and we have been told all along that there are likely still ongoing operations here in the states. This is not news... only the affirmation and detail with which they have been carrying out their activities is new... certainly not unimaginable unless you think that because these guys hang out in caves on the boarder of Pakistan and Afghanistan that they must also be unintellegent. They have demonstrated repeatedly that they are far more sophisticated than the administration and the intellegence community thinks they are.

Will the Holland Tunnel be restricted to commercial traffic for an indefinite period of time? Will the 12 hour shifts for the police remain in effect indefinitely as well? Should we report anyone wearing a khaftan as being a suspicious muslim terrorist? Doesn't the raising of the alert in this manner simply play into the hands of the terrorists?

For all we know, this guy in Pakistan could have been set up as a fall guy by al Qaeda; to be caught with enough information (which was probably archived to a zip drive for further dissemenation anyway) to scare us into thinking there'd be an attack (the quintessential definition and motivation of terrorism) so as to alleviate the pressure on Pakistan to find HVTs. Afterall, this guy was basically unknown to our intellegence crowd before May according to various reports; he may have been deemed expendable.

The bottom line though is that there's little doubt in my mind that the raising of the terror alert status was politically motivated. I'm not quite convinced that it was entirely unwarranted, but clearly, Dubya doesn't want to be caught with his pants around his ankles again, especially during the election season. But therein lies the rub. Dubya is being too reactive and rather than thwarting terrorism, he is giving into it and in the process, he has put us in a state of FUD which is exactly what al Qaeda wants.