New from WashPost on terror threat: Orange alert till after inauguration?

[Newsjock]

I don't have this in LBN because it's not onlnie yet, and because this is stuff that's in the middle of the Post's overall threat story. But take a gander at this!

... Federal officials have been discussing raising the national threat level between now and next Jan. 21, the day after the presidential inauguration, although Homeland Security Department officials said Tuesday no such announcement is scheduled.

The Justice Department and FBI plan to ask for the public’s help Wednesday in locating several suspected terror sympathizers, including some whose names have not been made public before. The bureau likely plans another public push to find Aafia Siddiqui, a 32-year-old Pakistani woman who has a doctorate in neurological science and has studied at MIT and Brandeis University in the Boston area, as well as in Houston.

The FBI also could seek help locating a man Siddiqui has been linked to, Adnan G. El Shukrijumah, a suspected al-Qaida member who spent time in Florida and whose name has come up in interrogations of captured al-Qaida lieutenant Khalid Sheik Mohammed.

... “I’m more worried than I was at Christmas time,” said one senior U.S. intelligence official, comparing the “election threat” to the cancelling of specific airline flights around the holidays. He said the U.S. government is convinced there are still as yet unidentified al-Qaida operatives residing in the United States, waiting for the word to launch plots.

[Jacobin]

1. How convenient.

These thugs in the administration will do anything to stay in office

[Junkdrawer]

2. It's really simple: No 'terra attack, no one believes it when Bush steals

the election. Oh, they can still steal it, but no one would believe it. So......

[enough]

3. What is this going to do to the lives of Muslim Americans? (nt)

[aquart]

4. We are in fantasy land.

He said the U.S. government is convinced there are still as yet unidentified al-Qaida operatives residing in the United States, waiting for the word to launch plots.

Convinced BASED ON WHAT EVIDENCE???????????????

They sifted the Muslim community like they were panning for gold. You mean they still don't know who's in this country?

This is absolute crap. I don't believe a fucking word of it.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

5. Blah-d-blah-d-blah.

[Snoggera]

11. Took the words right out of my mouth.

I would have added another blah d blah for good measure. This is ridiculous. I don't know a soul who pays any attention to the alerts.

[nadinbrzezinski]

6. Personally I foresee us going to Red

before the election

And boy they are easy to predict

[OneBlueSky]

12. exactly what I was thinking . . .

with the threat elevated to orange, anything that happens to warrant increased vigilance will automatically take us to red . . . there's no place else to go . . . and once we're at red, all rights are suspended and they can do any damn thing they want . . . scary and, imo, damned likely . . .

[DoYouEverWonder]

7. Why is finding Adnan G. El Shukrijumah suddenly

such a big deal. The FBI issued an alert for him last October and supposedly he has been in the US since sortly after 9-11?

I guess W's speech was such a bomb last night, that they need a major distraction?

[Old and In the Way]

8. No specifics according to CNN.

So just what is the point of broadcasting a threat which has no specific details for the public to use? There is none, except to be afraid. Because if your afraid, your gonna want to stick with a resolute pResident with a solid record on terror (or so we are told).

Total bullshit.

If you have evidence, action it and deal with it. If you don't have evidence, don't broadcast it and set off fear and terror in people's imaginations.

[suzijane]

9. suspension of election

The purpose of starting the "terra, terra" build-up now is to prepare us for when they announce that they are going to suspend the elections, just for a "few months", to avoid "another Madrid." And the US Sup. Ct. will of course, find that a perfectly acceptable use of the president's War Powers.

[RC]

10. And there will be rioting in the streets......

Suspending elections will wake yet more people up to these criminals.

[hedda_foil]

13. And guess what the brand new Bush ad focuses on

The awfulness of Kerry wanting to change parts of the wonderful patriot act that helps the gubmint in the person of our fabelus attorney genrul catch terruhists in the USofAy.

What an amazing coinkydinky.