Dick Cheney says that the election of Ned Lamont is an ominous sign.

“[They terrorists are] betting on the proposition that ultimately they can break the will of the American people in terms of our ability to stay in the fight and complete the task.

“And when we see the Democratic Party reject one of its own, a man they selected to be their vice presidential nominee just a few short years ago, it would seem to say a lot about the state the party is in today.”

He said that yesterday. Today we get the terror alert that Steven D has been predicting for a nearly a year. I don’t know the details of the terrorist plot. It may have been more serious than the man that wanted to use a blowtorch to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge, or it may be less serious than the three year old intelligence the GOP used to disrupt the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston. It’s hard to say. All that is certain is that we have been predicting both a widening of the war in the Middle East, and an increase in terror threat reporting for this summer, and we predicted it starting last fall.

We had solid reasons to make these predictions. They involved an analysis of the last midterm elections, in 2002, and analysis of the poor polling numbers for the President, for Republicans, and for incumbents/Congress. It involved an analysis of the facts on the ground in Iraq and the status of negotiations in the UN over Iran’s nuclear ambitions. It involved an analysis of PNAC documents and public policy papers and editorials by leading neo-conservatives. It involved a careful reading of Michael Ledeen’s columns over the last five years.

Starting with the 2002 midterm, we now know the following:

Ridge said he wanted to “debunk the myth” that his agency was responsible for repeatedly raising the alert under a color-coded system he unveiled in 2002.

“More often than not we were the least inclined to raise it,” Ridge told reporters. “Sometimes we disagreed with the intelligence assessment. Sometimes we thought even if the intelligence was good, you don’t necessarily put the country on (alert). … There were times when some people were really aggressive about raising it, and we said, ‘For that?'”- USA Today, May 10, 2005.

We also know that a marketing campaign was rolled out in September of 2002, involving Judith Miller and Scooter Libby. Andy Card explained the timing.

“from a marketing standpoint, you don’t roll out a new product in August.”

Of course, this year, after so many lies and so much failure, a post Labor Day terror alert would not be easily believed. It’s the story of the boy who cried wolf. This year, from a marketing point of view, you don’t roll out a campaign of fear after Labor Day, because it is too close to the elections and smacks too much of desperation.

Of course, these terror alerts are not just about covering up for failure, they are also for mobilizing public opinion for Phase Two: Syria. First, Israel bogs down in an intractable war in southern Lebanon, then the international community proves incapable of providing a united front against Hizbollah, or of providing a peacekeeping force. Then fear is ratcheted up in the U.S. and the U.K., then American troops are inserted into southern Lebanon, then they are attacked, then we move on or bomb the hell out of Damascus. All of this was probably discussed at Beaver Creek. I also discussed this here.

Contrary to many in the blogosphere, I refuse to be a proud member of the reality based community. That phrase is probably the most misinterpreted statement in modern history. What the aide meant was that the neo-cons create history, while we merely study it.

The aide said that guys like me were “in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” … “That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

How do they create history? They give the Israelis the go ahead to invade Lebanon at the next provocation. They issue false terror warnings based on old intelligence or the the mad ravings of mental patients. They plant phony stories of terror and WMD in the New York Times. Perhaps they carry out false-flag operations. They act. We witness.

When you predict that something will happen because you have analyzed the enemies intentions, and then they do pretty much exactly what you predicted at the time you predicted using the methods you predicted, then it is not a conspiracy theory.

We can either be a reality-based community that credulously ignores the past, including the history of 2002, or we can shout down conspiracy theorists for their lack of complete knowledge and cooroboration…or we can admit that the administration was lied about terror in the past and are likely do the same, now.

There are real terrorist out there aiming to hurt us. Cheney’s policies increases their numbers and passion every day. But we should not succumb to these tactics. We must stand up to them. Otherwise, we “will be left to just study what [they] do.”