Recycling Fear: Terrorist Threat to Financial Institutions

Go here to read the CNN story. But first, the punch line: this is a story from April 20, 2002!

"'Unspecified terrorists are considering physical attacks against U.S. financial institutions in the Northeast, particularly banks, as part of their campaign against U.S. financial interests,' the FBI said. Sources said the information indicated a possible mode of attack was suicide bombing.

The information that led to the alert, the sources said, came from a variety of intelligence sources, including al Qaeda detainees captured as part of the ongoing war against terrorism. Law enforcement learned the information in the last couple of days, the sources said.

One U.S. official told CNN that Abu Zubaydah, the highest ranking al Qaeda leader in U.S. custody, was a key source in providing the information about the threat. Zubaydah -- al Qaeda's head of operations and man in charge of recruiting -- was arrested in Pakistan earlier this month, handed over to U.S. custody and is being held at an undisclosed location."

"Less Safe and More Vulnerable To Terrorists"

London’s “Economist” (subscription only) which supported the war in Iraq, now has this to say in its lead editorial:

“To understand, however, is not to forgive. For hyped-up salesmanship brings clear consequences: customers become even more skeptical, once they find they have been gulled. The basic claim made by Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair is true: we do live in dangerous times, in which the threat of catastrophic attack by WMD -armed terrorists is real. But the next time politicians call for military action to deal with such threats, on the basis of intelligence warnings, even more people will refuse to believe them. Well-intentioned or not, such salesmanship has made us all less safe, and more vulnerable to terrorists.”

That’s pretty clear – “less safe.” And to drive the point home:

“Mr. Bush still needs to bear the responsibility for having made things harder and more dangerous in several ways. One is the dishonesty already outlined, and its consequence for public trust. Another is his failure to deal with the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison by demanding accountability at a senior level, preferably by requiring the resignation of Donald Rumsfeld, his defense secretary. A third is the negligent lack of preparation and initial resource-provision for rebuilding Iraq.”

That sums it up pretty well.

Lessons of Hubris

I used to think of the New York Times as the "paper of record." But gradually, I have come to see that the Washington Post has better reporting. Today Robin Wright explains how the Iraq occupation has discredited the Bush Doctine of preemptive strikes, unilateralism, war on terror and promoting democracy in the Islamic world. She quotes Geoffrey Kemp of the Nixon Center who says "Of the four principles, three have failed, and the fourth -- democracy promotion -- is hanging by a thread." Read it all here.