The Coast Guard's initial concern was exactly the uninformed knee-jerk, emotional reaction that most Americans and FReepers had too. Luckily, cooler heads prevailed at Coast Guard. Sorry I can't say the same about here.
Just plain false. I suggest you read the even-handed analysis of the issue in Kenneth Timmerman's Homeland Transparency. He concludes the assurances were anything but reassuring, but in fact were weasel words.
Apparently unlike W the American people had learned to reflexively scrutinize spin and examine the platitudes dispensed by the party in power...they learned to parse Xlinton routinely. Thus, when the same kind of weasl-word misrepresentations were made under him, the People were put on their guard. The name-calling against Conservatives only lit off the explosion. The tinder had already been stockpiled.
The American people are slow to wrath, but when their wrath is once kindled it burns like a consuming flame.
--Theodore Roosevelt: First Address to Congress December 3, 1901