Posted on 07/15/2004 10:28:27 PM PDT by churchillbuff
Washington - Warnings that terrorists are plotting "something big" against the United States are based on "very, very solid" information, the CIA's acting director said on Wednesday, likening the threat reports to those that preceded the September 11, 2001 attacks.
John McLaughlin, the acting CIA director, noted in an interview with National Public Radio that the US had ample warning of an attack before the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington but no specifics on the timing and targets.
"But we did have conviction that something big was coming at us. We have that same conviction now," he said.
"And the reason I say that it is serious is that I think the information I've seen is very, very solid. We have very little doubt about the information we have in terms of its sourcing and its authenticity," he said.
McLaughlin would not comment on the specificity of the intelligence this time, but said the agency has developed much more intelligence on al-Qaeda and its intentions since September 11.
Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge warned last week that "credible reports" indicate al-Qaeda plans to carry out a large scale attack in the US to disrupt the elections.
Ridge said precise knowledge of the time, place and method of attack was lacking, but security is being stepped up at the sites of the Democratic and Republican nominating conventions this summer.
The Democratic Party's national convention is to be held in Boston July 26-29, while President George Bush's Republican Party is to hold its convention in New York August 30-September 2, ahead of the November 2 US presidential election.
Asked whether Americans should cancel vacation plans or stay away from Boston and New York during the conventions, McLaughlin said people should go about their business.
"But citizens themselves need to keep their eyes open and be alert," he said
Under kerry, the US would take no action by starting a war with Iran or Syria, period.
I DO wish the author would use the proper "Democrat National Convention" instead of "Democratic." I know - I'm picking fly poop outta pepper, but for some reason that always bugs me....
Gee thanks, now it bugs me too.
Me three.
Not to worry about encrypted communications. These days, we can decrypt most anything terrorist-related quickly enough.
The bad guys usually speak in code, I think. Stuff like, "Farouk needs more money to move his grandmother out of Fallujah. Is his donkey still in Mosul?" Experience may tell us that this telephone conversation is about terrorist activity in Miami, but it tells us nothing else.
In one recent story, a Congressional committee member said that after a recent terrorism briefing several other members were reconsidering whether they'd go to the conventions.
Boy are you lucky I didn't have a mouth full of coffee when I sat that.
I wish the author would use the more accurate "CommieRAT National Convention."
"Many of us lived through the cold war nuclear threat and have plenty of practice in living under a threat. I suggest the younger ones just suck it up and get with the program. "
Well said!
The continuous whine of yours that killing terrorists "isn't making us safer" is a sad reflection on the fact that you don't understand that we are at war.
Which part of "war on terror" don't you understand? This is a war that will go after the terrorists wherever they are gathered in large numbers and supported by goverments hostile to our government.
PS - your namesake clearly understood appeasement does not work and you may wish to read some of his biographies.
What you say sounds harsh. But only because the western democracies have become so complacent through extended peace, that they have developed a false sense of security and superiority when it comes to the philosophy of war. (Or "conflict", as these metrosexual intellectuals would disdainfully sniff). Call it the Chamberlain syndrome.
If you asked Americans or Russians during WWII to hold Japanese and German civilians harmless for the aggression of their fanaticists - you would have been roundly castigated, and eventually locked up.
It is absolute lunacy to let the enemy, who swims in the waters of sympathetic "civilians", to hit our soft targets, meaning to murder our civilians, at places of their choosing, and then expect our military to ferret out only those exact individuals with yellowcake on their hands. And then, to bring them back to skate through the travesty of our looney-tune "justice" system. Instead, the hordes of terrorists disappear into the folds of the societies that actively cheer them on.
This stupidity of ours is a luxury that will disappear in a nuclear flash over one of our cities. And frankly, no argument will be necessary after that. We will nuke so many deserving and undeserving targets in the aftermath, that muslims will be dragging out anybody remotely sympathetic to the Islamofascists, and dismembering them before Al Jazeera cameras, all while pointing to themselves, shaking their heads, and yelling "We hate Al Queda!!"
And will all that have been necessary? Nope. The leftist-inspired sentimental idiocy permeating our society will be the cause of these mutual disasters.
I dont think they have anything to worry about. Too bad......
Wait a minute. This can go both ways, we are hearing there is credible information of an attack and going but what? when? where? On the other hand the terrorist are hearing we have credible information of an attack and they are going...what do they know? Do they know when? Do they know where? Its a mind game both ways. Imagine yourself them and if you would be thinking to proceed or are you busted.
And, I meant to remind you - even the Senate Intelligence Committee report last week mentioned that Iraq was training Al Qaeda terrorists on weapons training and how to attack America. And yet you don't think we should go after the very people who are actively supporting and working with Al Qaeda terrorists. Hmm. Strange set of priorities you have there.
Oh, I know you'll whine that we've "forgotten" OBL. But you see, we haven't. There are over 20,000 soldiers in Afghanistan whose sole job is to find him. And why do you think our military can't do two things at once?
In his brand new book, "The Secret History of the Iraq War," the man I consider to be among America's foremost intelligence experts Yossef Bodansky, former director of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare writes that, in the fall of 2002, Saddam Hussein supplied operational weapons of mass destruction to Osama bin Laden's terrorists.
He also concludes that Iraq's intelligence services provided extensive military assistance to al-Qaida beginning n the early 1990s.
He also, once again, shows that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, as well as most of its program to develop more, had left the country prior to our invasion.
The blood would be on the terrorists' hands. It's irresponsible to play politics with something this serious; terrorists hate all Americans regardless of political persuasion.
Major power grid breakdown during the election - electronic voting screens would go down, votes can't be counted.
Carolyn
If we end up with anyone on the payroll overseas, they are almost always foreigners and in many cases end up working as "double agents" who have an intimate knowledge of our country. If not that, we have some fresh college graduate with a 3.8 GPA from some somebigivyleagueuniversity hit the ground in Bangkok, Hong Kong or Prague with his testosterone in overdrive and armed with his Lonely Planet guidebook...
Its all politically correct and stuff but its simply not secure and one day we are going to have to face up to that painful reality...
Man, you have nailed it. My father was of the last generation of agents on the ground, speaking the language fluently, and gathering information that cannot possibly be photographed from low earth orbit. He, along with others of his ilk, retired during the Frank Church witch hunts that decimated our intelligence apparatus.
Today, our ground capabilities are a joke. Our "agents" are PC affirmative action POS's getting their tickets punched by being geographically positioned in various countries, as if kicking back and reading "USA Today" in Prague, Kiev, Bangkok and Cali somehow qualifies them as intelligence operatives.
And I have a relative that thinks that he should be qualified as an agent, and he would be - he speaks Russian fluently, and Turkmen to boot, which he picked up as a Peace Corps volunteer and State Dept NGO in Turkmenistan and Kiev after graduating from BU. He can look Russian, Tartar, or Turkmen.
He laments, though, that he'd probably face some snot-nosed little twit from some Ivy-League university for the interview, who learned Russian on a summer trip to Moscow, who knows nothing of living there, nothing of the ground politics, but thinks she gathered much through osmosis while sticking out like a sore thumb in her baby-blue North Face backpack, trekking through the train stations.
But it's even worse than that. The seeming majority of young Americans overseas seem to feel the need to hate the US, and spread that hatred to foreigners - who have always admired and wanted to live in the US.
When I visited this relative in Kiev, I saw the confusion on the faces of his Russian employees and friends, as he spouted off about American foreign policy, Bush, Republicans in general, the US military and our way of life. His Russian friends were hard-pressed to come up with the same disdainful sneer about America, that is truly only the thin veneer of spoiled brat-ism that characterizes the vast majority of pampered and elitist NGO-types, who stoke the envy-borne hatreds of our international friends and enemies alike.
I could see the signs of relief on their faces when I spoke up and said, "Hell no, I don't agree. America is a great country that has done profound things for the world, more than any other superpower in history, and I am damn proud to have an unapologetic President who has a solid grasp of our founding principles, and how to back'em up in practice." They would argue with me, but I could tell they were much more comfortable with what they secretly believed.
Sorry for the long rant...
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