.....regardless of where you stand, you gotta admit this is pretty funny: Overheard on a train in NYC Q. Do you really think George Bush would scare New Yorkers about a potential terrorist attack if it was only based on four year old information? A. They invaded a country based on 12 year old information. Well, at the very least it got a chuckle outta me.....
It was NOT "4 year-old" information - it was "fine vintage" information! Damn liberals, always trying to spin fine vintage information into something bad.
As Bush recently asked reporters: “Imagine what would happen if we didn’t share that information with the people in those buildings and something were to happen, then what would you write? What would you say?" That being said, yes the joke brought me great humor.
Thats stupid, and considering that the president is a figurehead and their is actually a braintrust guiding most of our moves it seems dumb to always center on one man. Even if you dislike his moves. Considering that, if that is really how government works than we are all screwed no matter who is president.
Newsweek National News Al Qaeda's Pre-Election Plot Exclusive: With an eye on striking America, bin Laden's network is hard at work. On the trail of its targets and tactics Page 1: Qaeda Plot to Strike the American Homeland http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5636197/site/newsweek/ Page 2: The Crack-Down http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5636219/site/newsweek/ Page 3: 9/11 Mastermind Tips Off Investigators http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5636231/site/newsweek/ Page 4: The Ongoing Shadow Wars http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5636232/site/newsweek/ NewsweekAug. 16 issue - It's called the president's Daily Threat Report (PDTR), or, in bureaucratic shorthand, the Putter. The document is so secret that only about a half-dozen people in the U.S. government are allowed to see it. When the Putter contains especially sensitive information, a red stripe runs down the side. At 6:40 a.m. on Friday, July 30, Fran Townsend, the president's homeland-security adviser and counterterror chief for the national-security staff, opened up her red-striped Putter and received a jolt. For several months, the U.S. government had been picking up reports from its spies, electronic intercepts and "liaison services" (friendly intelligence services) of a Qaeda plot to strike the American homeland before the November election. High-level Qaeda operatives had been traveling from around the world to the outlaw wilds along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, apparently to meet and plan, NEWSWEEK has learned. These terror summits had an uncanny resemblance to the Qaeda meeting in Malaysia in January 2000 that firmed up the 9/11 plot. But no one seemed to know the essential details: What were the targets? When would Al Qaeda strike? And were the attackers already in the United States? The Friday-morning Putter revealed that an undercover operation on the far side of the world was starting to bear fruit. In mid-July, the Pakistanis, working with the CIA, had arrested a Qaeda operative named Mohammed Neem Noor Khan and "flipped" him—turned him into an undercover agent who could lead investigators right into the Qaeda network. The 25-year-old computer engineer was a Qaeda facilitator, a midlevel logistics man who knew and communicated with the top operatives meeting to plan an attack on the United States. In an interview with NEWSWEEK, Townsend recalled thinking, "This is the real deal"—a chance to crack the plot. It was the break the Feds had been praying for, but, unfortunately, also a chance to further bewilder the American public, who have been made fearful, cynical or just plain dizzy by trips up and down the threat ladder. In an effort to sort out what to believe, NEWSWEEK spoke with most of the senior intelligence officials involved in assessing what they call the "pre-election" plot. Constrained by secrecy and a desire to put a positive spin on the story, these officials were not entirely forthcoming, but they did reveal enough to gauge the seriousness of the Qaeda plot. The more difficult question is whether the public revelations not only unduly frightened the American people but, in the long run, made them less safe. U.S. officials firmly deny it, but a knowledgeable British source argues that, by going public, Bush administration officials compromised an ongoing surveillance operation that ultimately could have uncovered more about Al Qaeda operations around the world. Top U.S. intelligence officials do concede that they are often faced with difficult trade-offs—move now, and disrupt the plot? Or keep watching and waiting in hopes of learning more? There can be little doubt that Al Qaeda is trying to strike the American homeland before Nov. 2. "We are in the midst of Al Qaeda efforts to attack the U.S. on a scale as big or larger than 9/11," says John Brennan, chief of the Terrorist Threat Integration Center, the interagency operation that consolidates threat information (and produces the Putter). The decision to raise the threat level to Code Orange ("high") last week was not, as partisans and conspiracists suggested, a Republican political stunt intended to slow John Kerry as he came out of the Democratic convention. But the announcement was clumsily handled, and the confusing press accounts that followed mostly obscured a larger and more important story. The uncomfortable truth is that a frantic, multibillion-dollar, global intelligence effort has not been able to answer—definitively, at any rate—the scariest and most basic question: are there Qaeda operatives inside the United States? "We have to assume there are," says Townsend. "But we don't know. The reports are mixed." Certainly, at least a few Qaeda operatives have entered America at some point since 9/11. The FBI is hotly investigating whether Khan was one of them. And Khan's arrest has already led to the detention of some major Qaeda operatives in England and Pakistan, and will flush out still more in days to come. ...article continues on pages 2-4 linked above.
