http://www.iht.com/articles/522482.html
"General John Ashcroft and Robert Mueller 3rd, the director of the FBI, created unease last week with their vague warning that Al Qaeda was planning an attack in the United States. It was not so much the grimly familiar warning. It was the absence of Tom Ridge.
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The public understands that warnings are not likely to be specific.
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But two and a half years after the Sept. 11 attacks, bureaucratic turf battles over the nation's security are inexcusable. The 2002 law that established the Department of Homeland Security gave Ridge the responsibility of coordinating terror-related intelligence analyses and threat assessments. His color-coded terror advisories are often mocked. But at least they signal Washington's best relative estimate of risk.
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Last week, Ashcroft failed to bring Ridge with him - and Ridge had been on television that very morning assuring viewers that there was no new intelligence requiring an increase in the threat level.
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That left everyone wondering what to make of Ashcroft's different message.
What's to wonder... Ashcroft is just covering his ass, so no-one will ever be able to say he DIDN'T warn them. Fascists love mass paranoia, yes, but look Bushie's "approval ratings" are WAY down. There are plenty of cases already of soldiers returning home and killing themselves...
The mass paranoia is spiralling round the other way: golly we might actually be in the wrong.