Was the "Dirty Bomb" arrest a cynical PR stunt by the Bush Administration?

Is your post a cynical attempt to discredit the Bush administration on this BBS?

 

I think it might be. Everytime this administration has been criticised in recent months for security, or intelligence lapses they have flooded the news with administration members talking about nuclear threats from Al-Queda without any additional evidence. Seems more than coincidental.

 

Come on guys, you have no evidence pointing to your conclusions.

Elvis says- Everytime this administration has been criticised in recent months for security, or intelligence lapses they have flooded the news with administration members talking about nuclear threats from Al-Queda without any additional evidence.

Should the administration risk the lives of our "human intelligence" in the field so you can feel confident in the veracity of our government's warnings? The public is not entitled to our military intelligence sources during a time of conflict, nor can our government release information that may lead to our people being compromised in anyway. You really should not try to disparage our leaders for following prudent policies.

 

In a word yes. But like I stated before, this is nothing that the other party wouldn't be doing had their guy (Al Gore) been selected by the Supreme Court and 9/11 happened on his watch. This is the ugly, smarmy reality of politics nowadays, and it makes me sick to my stomach.

 

Q: Was the "Dirty Bomb" arrest a cynical PR stunt by the Bush Administration?


Yes, like swopa posted, the guy was arrested a month ago!

BTW, has there been a 'formal' declaration of WAR?? Just because you call it a 'war' does that mean it's an ACTUAL war? "War on Terrorism"...?? how about a "WAR ON STUPID POLITICIANS AND BUREACRACY"?

 

Swopa - I see your point.

But this isn't 1984 or the X-Files. They could have been holding this guy for a month trying to get info from him and follow the leads. Possibly they were forced to "leak" this information before the press did? When they captured him, there is no way they would have told us immediately. I wouldn't expect them to. It could be like you are saying though, this is somewhat of a PR Stunt. They got as much as they could from him in secrecy, then they displayed him like a trophy.

I know that politics are corrupt, but I just can't believe that any administration would start/prolong a war for it's own benifit(Wag the Dog) when innocent people are going to die.

 

Someone please show The NY Times where they can find the defininition of "conspiracy" in any dictionary. Weren't there some live people arrested in conjunction with the 9/11 Plan, i.e. planners?

Why is it that mostly the Democrats et al who are offended by this particular news release?

<b>If politicking critics weren't so eager to rise up and point fingers and be heard there would be no need for any PR angle.</b>

It is just pragmatic. The Dems do it. The Reps do it. I bet even Ralph Nader does/would do it!

If you can't handle your own fallout-- just don't pay attention maybe?!

 

Me neither. Just like I didn't believe Clinton made any military movements to distract from his scandal, I don't think the current administration did anything sinister either. I'm leaning towards the theory that the press was about to leak it, the administration found out, then they released it before people could say they weren't being told enough.

 

tb, you're missing my point entirely.

I think I understand your point. I just don't see any credible evidence to support your theory. You could be correct- I don't know.

I'm not asking the government to release more information about how they caught this guy. I'm asking why they bothered to release any information at all.

They have to release information at some point. They are holding an American citizen in a Navy brig and have suspended his rights. We do have a right to know about this action at some point.

So why do we know now? Because our government decided to make a f--king PR blitz out of telling us.

Did the government decide to create a media frenzy, or did the news media pick this story up on a slow news day and turn it into a circus?

And does the public feel more safe, or less so, to get melodramatic warnings from the government about terrorist "dirty bombs" at the same time that the most-viewed movie in the country graphically depicts the explosion of such a device?

I know I am being picky here, but a dirty bomb has a relatively small charge, and threatens a population with radiation. "The Sum of All Fears" deals with a full blown atomic explosion.

After all, wasn't this one of the crackpot rumors spread by the right wing about Clinton -- that he would seek to establish some bogus "emergency" in order to quell controversies and cling to power?

I am guilty as charged with this statement, lol. I guess I did my fair share of unsubstantiated finger pointing during the Clinton years. In my defense, Clinton made it so easy.

Look at how much closer Bush is to doing exactly that. And look at yourself, telling us that we shouldn't question our leaders.

Of course we should question our leaders, but you should also agree that you have advanced a conspiricy theory in your post.

 

http://www.usatoday.com/usatonline/20020612/4185665s.htm

Swopa, more news to support your theory. Bush apparently agrees with you, and Ashcroft may the culprit.

Isn't it nice to have a president that appreciates the value of truth?

 

Swopa, more news to support your theory. Bush apparently agrees with you, and Ashcroft may the culprit.

HA! I like this snippet:

<I>Despite their private concern that Ashcroft overstated the alleged plot, White House officials cited Al Muhajir's arrest as evidence that Congress should quickly pass President Bush's plan for a homeland security department.</I>

We caught the guy - that's evidence that the system doesn't work and needs to be reformed as quickly as possible!

 

Interesting column from Dowd of the NY Times:

Summer of All Fears
By MAUREEN DOWD


WASHINGTON -- Washingtonians are well known for being hypersensitive to the elements. A dusting of snow or a heat wave can shut down schools. A Code Red unhealthy air alert, as we had here yesterday, leaves the streets deserted.

So you can imagine the panic spread by the prospect of radioactive mist settling on monuments, and uranium-laced, cell-mutating gamma rays ricocheting down Pennsylvania Avenue.

John Ashcroft's announcement that the military has in custody a bona fide Al Qaeda operative who was exploring how to set off a dirty bomb in D.C. or elsewhere was designed both to make our teeth chatter and our gratitude well up. Weren't we thankful that the Bushies were finally catching somebody and protecting us?

To maximize the drama of the moment, Ashcroft aides went into the Justice Department in the pre-dawn hours to prepare the attorney general to give the news live by satellite from Moscow.

On the Hill yesterday, Republican lawmakers were using headlines about the dirty-bomb plot to try to hurriedly push through the president's homeland security makeover.

"This is what's at stake," said Representative Mac Thornberry of Texas. "This kind of attack, using chemical, biological, nuclear weapons, radiological weapons, or some other kinds of suicide bombers of the kind we've seen. We must act quickly."

It's bad enough that the terrorists are using fear as a device. Does the Bush administration have to do the same thing?

The Islamic enemy strums on our nerves to hurt our economy and get power. The American president strums on our nerves to help his popularity and retain power.

Both the bad guys and the good guys are playing with our heads and ratcheting up the fear factor.

If you'd only paid cursory attention lately, you'd think the government had grabbed the offensive against terrorists and that the C.I.A. and F.B.I. were now cuddle buddies. But the question is being asked here: Is the Bush crowd hyping things?

First the government leaked word that it had identified a Qaeda mastermind of the 9/11 plot, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, a development hailed as an investigative coup. But the creep is still at large.

Then the president unveiled his Homeland Security Department plan. But yesterday even top Republicans were dubious about whether it could work without the F.B.I. and C.I.A. under its umbrella.

And on Monday Mr. Ashcroft, Bobby Three Sticks and Paul "Bomb Iraq" Wolfowitz breathlessly told the nation that they had thwarted a scary radiological bombing plot.

In its eagerness to convince itself and us that it has prevented something, the Bush administration has built up the dirty bomber into an Atta-like terrorist capable of leveling downtown Washington.

But privately it acknowledges that he may be far less than that. The plotter was a Chicago street punk named Jose Padilla, a hothead with a long criminal record who was thrown in jail in Florida for shooting at a motorist in a road-rage incident.

Even law enforcement officials and counterterrorism experts were skeptical about whether he had the brains, know-how and materials to build a dirty bomb from scratch, or whether he was even an officially sanctioned Qaeda terrorist.

"There is no indication he had the means to do it or was given the authority to do it," said a law enforcement official in New York familiar with the case. "It is a bit of stretch to say he was here to do it."

The mind games of fear begin with Abu Zubaydah, the U.S. captive, one of Osama bin Laden's top lieutenants, who fingered Padilla.

Based on nuggets and head fakes given to them by Zubaydah, American agents are fanning out all over the world, possibly going on wild goose chases. Some of his tips have checked out, some have not.

The feds do not know for sure if Zubaydah is playing them, or if he has led them into a wilderness of mirrors. With Padilla, is Zubaydah throwing agents a decoy? A small fish that they're turning into a big marlin, while there's another Mohamed Atta running around undetected in this country?

The Qaeda leadership has regrouped. Osama and Mullah Omar are out there scheming somewhere. But Mr. Ashcroft says we can sleep more soundly tonight: Jose Padilla, Chicago street thug, is in the brig.

 

I am so tired of all this sniping.

First the Admin was criticized for making too many alerts, then for not doing enough and being uncommunicative, and now for exaggerating the situation.

If your ass was on the line, how much would you underestimate a threat?

 

Here are some other questions:

Is SWOPA posting this just because it's the Bush administration?

Would he post it if it was the Gore administration?

Does he really care about what is at issue, or is he merely taking a shot because he perceives that one is there to take?

I love it when people make a big deal out of something, not because they're really concerned about the issue, but because they don't like the people involved. I have no idea what it is with SWOPA, but I think we've all seen it happen on other occasions. "If my guys does it, don't say anything about it. If the other guy does it, pretend that you're really concerned about it and that it's an outrage. You know, make it seem like it's actually important."

 

Dowd had another interesting article about how the Bush administration trots out the homeland security issue for their own political purposes. How sa, preying upon American's fears for his own political future.

Dept. of Political Security

Dept. of Political Security
By MAUREEN DOWD



ASHINGTON — With the most daring reorganization of government in half a century, George W. Bush hopes to protect something he holds dear: himself.
After weeks of scalding revelations about a cascade of leads and warnings prefiguring the 9/11 attacks that were ignored by the U.S. government, the president created the Department of Political Security.
Or, as the White House calls it for public consumption, the Department of Homeland Security.
Mr. Bush's surprise move was a complete 180, designed to knock F.B.I. Cassandra Coleen Rowley off front pages. He had resisted the idea of a cabinet department focusing on domestic defense for nine months.
But clearly, Iago Rove saw his master's invincibility cracking and did a little whispering in W.'s ear. Why not use national security policy for scandal management?
So the minimalist Texan who had sneered about the larded federal bureaucracy all through his presidential campaign stepped before the cameras to slather on a little more lard — and nervous Republicans all over town found themselves suddenly praying that bigger government could save those in need (of re-election), after all.
By introducing yet another color-coded flow chart, the president tried to recapture his fading aura of wartime omnipotence. The White House even gave lawmakers "sample op-ed" pieces they could rewrite and submit to their local papers, beginning: "President Bush's most important job is to protect and defend the American people."
Even that champion of bloated government, Teddy Kennedy, seemed dubious: "The question is whether shifting the deck chairs on the Titanic is the way to go."
And others wondered whether it would be too unwieldy to have a department with 22 agencies devoted to eradicating both Al Qaeda and boll weevils. (The proposed Homeland behemoth does not include the F.B.I. or C.I.A., but it would envelop the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.)
All day Thursday, before Mr. Bush addressed the nation, Special Agent Rowley, who was sporting a special badge allowing her to pack heat in the Capitol, and Bobby Three Sticks Mueller, who wasn't, had given the Senate Intelligence Committee a stunning and gruesome portrait of just how far gone the bureau is.
Their testimony made clear that there is no point in creating a huge new department of dysfunction to gather more intelligence on terrorists when counterterrorism agents don't even bother to read, analyze and disseminate the torrent of intelligence they already get.
"I think at the present time it's not done very well," Ms. Rowley said about the clogged-up information flow. Looking at the bureaucratic trellis of the F.B.I. reorganization chart, she asked: "Why create more? It's not going to be an answer."
There are already too many pompous gatekeepers between the F.B.I. chief and the field offices, she said. And the computers are ridiculous, unable to send e-mail or access the Internet or to search for two words together, like "aviation" and "school."
The blunt Midwesterner with the oversized glasses suggested that the disarray was less about modernity than the ancient flaws of ego and ambition — "careerists" with a "don't rock the boat" attitude that hampered aggressive investigations. (Mr. Bush's plan would do nothing to disempower them.)
Mr. Mueller was confessing all kinds of dysfunction, as well. "When I first came in, I did a tour," he recalled. "There's a computer room downstairs . . . there were a number of different computer systems. There were Sun Microsystems, there were Apples, there were Compaqs, there were Dells. And I said, `What's this?' And the response was, every division had a separate computer system until a year or two ago."
Asked how long it would take to get their computers up to snuff, Mr. Mueller replied: two to three years.
If we're really in a national emergency, couldn't the president call America's software geniuses and tell them to wire up the F.B.I. this week?
Maybe if Mr. Bush brings Rudy Giuliani in as the new cabinet officer, he can work magic. But reorganization is an old dodge here.
The shape of the government is not as important as the policy of the government. If he makes the policy aggressive and pre-emptive, the president can conduct the war on terror from the National Gallery of Art.

 

giddyup & TraJ: Did you guys trust Clinton? Did you assume he was hiding stuff all the time?

I think this is simply a case of those who do not trust GW calling him on it. The same thing would go for conservatives being critical of Gore or Clinton or anyone else on the other side of the aisle.

Having been around a lot of political stuff (on both sides), this smells like spin to me. Was there news value in releasing the information? Maybe. Was it a tactical release? Probably. There really isn't anything wrong with it except that the WAY it was released was misleading, but it was MOSTLY the fault of the media for turing it into WWIII.

The Bush Admin just released the info. Ashcroft probably exaggerated to get people to focus on the problems and threats, but the media ran wild with it and, frankly, everyone in America fell for it. Everyone fell all over themselves to say they'd do anything and everything to protect themselves even though, in this case, there was little to be protected from.

The Bush Admin scored a victory because the constituency made the decision to hand over some control for the information released and the media won because they got plenty of good ratings off of the blitzkrieg of information.

Ultimately, it sounds a lot like much ado about very little if not nothing. Any political consultant worth his salt is probably talking about what a stroke of genius it was to release the info now.

 

I'm not criticizing criticism. My point is that sometimes people bring up stuff they really don't care about simply because "the other side" is doing something that someone somewhere might not like. They do it just so they can do damage to "the other side." Both sides are guilty of doing that kind of thing. I realize that. I just don't like the "This doesn't really bother me, it's not really all that big a deal, but I'm pointing it out because I hope it makes somebody choose not to vote for so-and-so next time around."

 

<b>Jeff</b>: It's just <b>our turn</b> to complain about the tactics, although I earnestly think that this should be a period of greater national unity because these threats are real and have been made evident on 9/11.

Who could blame GWB for wanting to keep that going?

I forget the details but wasn't Clinton 3 for 3, meaning he ordered military strikes of dubious value on the VERY days that upcoming news was going to hit him hard.

Bush is doing what.... <b>releasing information</b> which softens the criticism and justifies his Administration's actions?

Perhaps he did just anticipate the press; I don't know.

Yeah, the principle is the same but the actuality seems vastly different.