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This is bad both ways.

Either there is an attack as they predict, which will be BAAAD.

Or, there will be no attack, this was all hype and innuendo by disinforming islamists in custody, the American people will say "WTF!?", they will think Homeland Security called 'wolf', there will be scores of jokes on Leno/Letterman about the color codes, and then when the next national alert is announced, everyone will ignore it as groundless, and the terrorists could well sink one of their WMD's into action.

...when the next national alert is announced, everyone will ignore it as groundless, and the terrorists could well sink one of their WMD's into action.

Oh puuuleeze. I'm already ignoring it. And so should anyone with even half a brain. This is like a really bad game of telephone, but with serious consequences and great expense. By the time the message reaches the media, or even the administrative levels of homeleand security, it has been so hopelessly mangled that it might say just about anything. "Al Queda Sneezed!" becomes "AlQueda is going tok plant a dirty bomb in Washington....no, a biological attack on New York.....No, I mean an attack against tunnels...No, shopping malls". What a bunch of crap.

You want to see how this kind of crap resmbles a bad game of telephone? Let's look at a report from FBI headquarters in Oklahoma City, only about a week ago.

A disoriented man caused a stir Tuesday when he entered FBI headquarters in Oklahoma City and spilled a soft drink on the floor of the lobby.
By the time the situation was sorted out, the FBI office was awash in reporters, camera crews, firefighters and even a hazardous materials crew.
"The guy came in to furnish some information," Special Agent Jay Moeller said. "He wasn't all there. He had some sort of head trauma or something."
Realizing the man was in crisis, the FBI contacted his family and called for an ambulance to take him to Mercy Health Center.
Right about then, he spilled his soft drink on the lobby floor. Somehow the spilled drink turned into a report that the man was spraying a mysterious powder around the room -- something, Moeller said, that never happened.
"He dropped his Coke on the floor of the atrium where you come in," Moeller said. "HAZ-MAT, the fire department and an ambulance showed up for a spilled Coke."

Philippe de Croy said it much better than I ever could,

The problem, of course, is that the economics of the situation are arranged to guarantee too many warnings. If something bad does happen, ambitious politicians opposed to whoever is in power will screech that not enough warnings were given in advance; so the ambitious politicians currently in power try to preempt those screechings by giving warnings now, however unhelpful they may be. The media likewise are destined to be useless, as they are rewarded for helping to goad the public into hysteria. More people feel that they have to watch CNN, listen to news/talk radio, etc., to see whether there is a new warning or a follow-through on the old one. A nervous viewer is an attentive viewer.
Since the politicians and media evidently are going to be no help, it falls to us individually to learn to live with a little (indeed, very little) extra risk without distraction and anxiety. Unless a warning is specific enough to call for clear precautions, the sensible and patriotic thing is to ignore it.