As you all know, in the game of chess, a piece (usually a pawn) is sometimes sacrificed to gain a larger advantage. It’s called a gambit.
The gambit of the boys of the Bush administration is to cry “Be afraid!” every time they need to boost their standing and polls. Thing is, the American people, gullible though many are, will get wise to the false alarms. Sadly, what’s lost in the overplay of gambits is not just the game but also the credibility needed to warn Americans about real dangers.
Keith Olbermann nailed the skepticism — and the odd timing — of the NYC subway scare last night on MSNBC’s Countdown:
Overall message to New York straphangers, be afraid, but not too much, because we stepped in on this. But remember, be afraid anyway.
Timing, coincidence.
[…….]
CRAIG CRAWFORD, MSNBC ANALYST: Hi, there. You’re sounding a bit skeptical tonight.
OLBERMANN: Well, I’m—yes, and I’m going to raise this question as skeptically and bluntly as I can. It’s not a question that doubts the existence of terror, nor the threat of terrorism. But we’ve cobbled together in the last couple of hours a list of at least 13 occasions that – on which — whenever there has been news that significantly impacted the White House negatively, there has been some sudden credible terror threat somewhere in this country. How could the coincidence be so consistent?
CRAWFORD: It’s, it is a pattern. One of the most memorable was just after the Democratic Convention in the 2004 election, when they talked about the threat to New York and even the World Trade—World Bank, and it turned out that was based on intelligence that was three years old, (INAUDIBLE) even before 9/11.
There is a pattern here. And I think it’s difficult sometimes to take it at face value. But in these moments, when it looks like a crisis, it’s (INAUDIBLE), those of us who bring it up get accused of treason. That’s what Howard Dean was accused of when he raised that after the Democratic Convention scare alert.
OLBERMANN: About, that was, I think, by the way, number 12 on the list. About the speech, and again, not to question the existence of terrorism, but if a prominent politician takes any issue and seems to be using it as a last line of personal political defense, does history, does our history not teach us, and supposedly the politician, that he risks trivializing the issue, that he risks sounding like Joe McCarthy on communist infiltration?
CRAWFORD: The president has given this speech so many times now. It was a bit stronger in his assertion that we will stay the course until the bitter end … But in many ways, he just turned up the volume on a broken record. … […]
Update [2005-10-7 15:7:49 by susanhu]: Now the Washington Monument has been evacuated. Wolf Blitzer says he knows nothing about it. No one knows why.
BELOW, Keith talks to terrrorism expert Evan Kohlmann — and Keith, in growing frustration, says, “It’s beginning to sound like one loud scream of jibberish.“:
EVAN KOHLMANN, FOUNDER, GLOBALTERRORALERT.COM: Good evening.
OLBERMANN: I have to read this. It just has crossed on the Associated Press wire. The doubts in Washington about this, while the FBI man is in New York talking about interrupting some plan or getting some people who might be involved in it out of the way, and he was talking as if they had actually reduced a tangible threat, then he said it was totally uncorroborated.
Now the Washington sources who had said that the threat was at best exaggerated, there’s now a quote attributed to a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, a man named Russ Knock (ph), who said, “The intelligence community has concluded the information, this information to be of doubtful credibility. We shared this information early on with state and local authorities in New York.”
It’s beginning to sound like one loud scream of jibberish.
KOHLMANN: Well, I mean, it’s not something we haven’t heard before. We’ve seen this kind of infighting before between federal agencies over the value of terrorist captures, over the threats to various different targets inside of the United States.
In this case, I’m not really that surprised. New York has one of the most important counterterrorist programs in the country. It is independent in some ways of the federal government. And they do consider New Yorkers to be very important, and they consider New York to be a primary target. And they treat New York as a primary target.
So everything, whether it even has the ring of truth, is taken very seriously.
I think what happened here is, there was an overabundance of caution. And I can’t necessarily blame the New York authorities for that. But are you asking, is this a credible terrorist threat? No. It doesn’t look like there’s a credible terrorist threat against the subway system.
Is it good to be alert and aware? Well, that’s a different story. It probably benefits us to be alert and aware, because even if there’s not a real plot from Iraqi insurgents going on right now, that doesn’t mean that it couldn’t happen in the future.
OLBERMANN: The coincidence factor, which is more of a political thing than a terrorism issue, but as we mentioned here, a quick hour or so of research has produced a list of 13 reasonable occasions in which events that have been politically disadvantageous to the current administration have been occurring simultaneously, or followed quickly upon, with (INAUDIBLE), with something related to terrorism on a big scale.
And I’m just—in your opinion, from your perspective on the counterterrorism threat, can they—can coincidences like that, in that volume, really be coincidences, or do we have to look at the prospect that somebody could really be playing domestic politics with terror?
KOHLMANN: Well, I would concede to you that there are those that play domestic politics with terror. And we even had an incidence of that last week.
I, unfortunately, I mean, I just disagree with the administration when they say they arrested the number-two most important al Qaeda official in Iraq. I don’t believe that they did. He was an important guy. He wasn’t number two.
However, this particular piece of terror-related news, this threat against the subway system, …
and I’ll say it again — Keith totally rocks. 🙂
This administration is turning into one giant “Boy Who Cried Wolf” (and no, I don’t mean Blitzer or Wolfowitz). The more times they make these claims of “terror in the streets/skies/subways”, only to have them proved false or overblown, sooner or later the American people are going to become complacent. Then, when we do get hit again, the anger at the misAdministration is going to be huge: “Hey, I thought you idiots were going to protect us!”
Nice that Keith and his crew are able to “connect the dots” — wish the rest of the MSM weren’t scrambling to find their crayons…
Keith is a sanity check.
btw, c-posted it at DailyKos.
If I were a gambling addict, I’d bet on how many minutes/seconds it takes any given diary to roll off the list at DKos these days.
I love Keith, he has a way of delivering lines, and the voice to make it stand out….when someone else reads the same words it just doesn’t sound the same.
I missed that last night. Thanks Susan. Keith is good. He gives me hope for the MSM. But then there is that woman who comes on on MSNBC. Is it after him? I don’t know her name. But, I just think she is a Republican/Corporate shill. So, what gives? Is Keith just our token news boy.
And, in my quest for indictment news last night, I switched to Fox. I think it was at 9, when that woman I couldn’t stand came on MSNBC. And I got Hannity, I think. Whoever. But, Gingrich was on. And in the background, they were having a conversation about whether there should be an indictment. Of Bill Clinton. For ignoring a terror threat of something. I mean, it is five years after the man has been in public office. The real President and the real country are like, fucking burning in a lake of fire or something, and they are still discussing impeaching/indicting Clinton. Are there really people who find that to be credible news coverage. I guess so. If it wasn’t such a colossal, Orwellian effort at mind control, I would have laughed more.
is the blond talking head du jour. The spouse and I have been DVRing the early Keith, just in case something breaking happens that pre-empts the repeat here on the Left Coast. It’s delightful to have the recording stop just as she opens her mouth… 😉
I think sometimes she’s trying to out-do Nancy (“Guilty until proven…awww, screw it”) Graceless over on CNN Headline News…
She ain’t right.
I remember, like Wednesday of Katrina, Martin Savage gave this heart-wrenching report about conditions after Katrina, and Rita cut him off basically, and started talking about looting. Looting, looting, looting.
I saw her the night the levees broke or the night after. Yes she was in the looter zone. She kept showing that clip of five people in a Wal-Mart. It was a very sad commentary on our priorities here in the U.S.
Rita Cosby is a female Geraldo Rivera. A tabloid whore through and through.
6PM has become a black hole for news, for me. At least for me. Larry King is senile. Rita is too difficult to listen to. And I think Hannity is on FOX then.
Luckily, I checked around and found that one of the PBS stations I get has the Newshour on at 6pm, so now I switch when Keith is done and watch Newshour…. it’s at the least an intelligent, thoughtful show. The piece that Newshour did on the HUGE fight on the Senate floor yesterday over the torture bill was really something. Their Web site is quite good too, and has audio of the show.
Boston, it was hannity and I didn’t catch it all but seems it was regarding a new book out about Clinton, very scathing, I gather, Fries may be the name of the author, but something in it about Clinton asking heads of other countries for money is what I gathered as I was channel surfing at the time.
Alan Combs was trying to have an intelligent discussion about Rove, et. al. but Gindgrich kept slipping back into the Clinton thing and at the end Hannity says “See what I have to deal with everyday”, in reference to Alan.
Fear is always the #1 ingredient in any campaign designed to gain control of the psychological autonomy of the public mind and to then deploy that public to do one’s bidding.
As the monstrous Nazi Goering famously said;
If you can scare people, if you can make them afraid of an enemy of your own devising,and if you can get them to believe you have the power to eradicate that fear, a public so duped will do whatever you want.
BushCo did a good job of fearmongering early on. They managed to dupe (or otherwise render silent) a majority of the public into supporting their insane agenda. But of course they have no progress to show for their absurd claims and people are finally getting wise to it.
They’re bound to try mightily to reignite this fear that served them so well previously, and this is where they’re especially dangerous, because I think there’s virtually nothing they would not do in order to regain whatever support they need to advance their murderous agenda. I believe Hariri’s murder in Lebanon was part of this calculus; an attempt to demonize Syria to a point where the Syrian’s themselves might foolishly react in a way that would provide the pretext for a US attack on their country. Thankfully, it didn’t work, but these maniacs are still working very hard to widen the war and their focus will remain on jigging up a nuclear threat alarm from Iran.
Hopefully this will fail to, but we must be diligent in watching their moves. And, in a brazen act of international sanity, the Nobel commision awarded El Baradei the Peace prize, a stunning slap in the face to the neocon ideological extremism. This will make the cheney gang very angry however, and when megalomaniacs get angry they are at their most dangerous. So we must watch them very closely.
But so seemingly true.
I myself am not comfortable with analyses such as this. Like most people, I never want to believe that those people in authority in society are as evil and diabolical as they may sometimes appear to be.
Unfortunately, I had the enlightening but profoundly disturbing experience of spending time in Argentina during the late ’70s and early ’80s when the Generals were in charge. I can only say abut that time that I encountered firsthand the face of real evil there. Not the murderous acts in the streets so much, (though that was occuring with disturbing regularity. But the evil I speak of was the evil we encountered in the cocktail party circuit. I’m speaking about the well dressed and the well coiffed pseudo-aristocrats who as business people and government functionaries, supported the murderous regime of the Generals with a causalness and righteousness that was truly sickening, and very frightening.
Seeing and hearing these otherwise normal appearing captains of industry and government and their self absorbed wives and mistreses extolling the virtues of mass executions and merciless torture, seeing them revel in the power they had over others and seeing the pleasure they experienced at hearing stories of indescribable sadism, I was totally disabused of the notion that our authorities are somehow above such abominable behavior and appetites.
This is why it’s perhaps easier for me to ascribe the absolute darkest of motives and acts to the Cheney and the neocon gang who’ve hijacked the US government’s executive branch. This is why I can easily envision them having a callous and merciless agenda of murder and mayhem in the MidEast. Watching these creatures in action is a stark reminder to me of those days in Argentina. There’s nothing I wouldn’t put past Cheney and Co. Nothing!
Man. I have a hard time believing in evil men. Just fortunate to not have seen that much of things like you experienced first hand, I guess. I hate to imagine a world where people are, in some calculated way, so willing to lie, cheat, steal or kill (through inaction, I hope). I want my old country back. Even if it was imaginary.
I don’t bandy the term “evil” about hardly ever, since I believe that alot of what so many people describe as “evil” is really just an expression of their own fear rather than an identification of an “evil” component to the target of their accusations.
In a sense, “evil” might not even be the best term to describe these creatures I refer too. “Monsters” might be more accurate, butin the context of today’s world, I think “evil” has relevance in that people can identify with the term as a way to describe that which is devoid of compassion and inimical to human life and dignity in every respect.
That term “monster.” Now there is something I have seen in some pretty devolved human beings. But no one with any power in the system. I couldn’t imagine some of the people I’m talking about (violent criminals) being in power. Fucking scariest thing you’ve said. If I honestly thought Bush or Cheney or anyone in power was like some of the people I have met who are “monsters.” Whoa!
Today has not been really chipper around here.
This news about the Al Queda threat to NY and The Washington Monmument does not require everyone to be absolutely evil, just pressured.
So the FBI sends out daily reports on threats to the White HOuse. The White house then decides…you better alert the nation- whenever they feel it is to their advantange to do so. The White house get these reports all the time and they don’t usually act on them. But when it is politically to their advantage they do.
THE PRESIDENT JUST GAVE A SPEECH YESTERDAY ON IRAQ AND TERRORISM. NOW ALL OF A SUDDEN THERE ARE THREATS.
They are trying to boost his popularity. If there is an attack and they are asking for it. All hell will break loose. The genereal…cant’ remeber his name who led the army into Iraq said after 911…one more attack and the nation will be under military control.
Then the local people are alerted and they are scared because they don’t know what it means and they are afraid to say this is bullshit because what if? and you can’t dismiss it…so they go on TV.
I thinks that’s how it works.
The Goering quote should be part of the Republican platform.
If we don’t see some damn credible evidence that these two new “terror threats” in NYC and now at the Washington monument are real, I am really going to start believing that BushCo has manipulated all of the bullshit from day one.
It is absolutely outrageous. Oberman was so right on it with his list. It is circumstancial evidence that we are being actively manipulated by the party in power. God am I sick of this crap. They’ve turned me into a person who what? Is rooting for the fact that there is really a dirty bomb on the subways, or really a bomb at the monument.
This is so obvious I can only make lousy jokes about it.
There hasn’t been an attack on the US because no one wants to attack the US bad enough. Don’t you see that? 911 was a one time shot. There is no terrorist network in the US. IT’s local. It is not organized. It’s a bunch of people getting together on their own with backpacks.
Al Queda does not exist! It’s a myth!
These guys are paranoid provincial hill people who run our government. They are not sophisticated. They are ignorant and uneducated. They have education but it is worthless. It’s not the education of worldliness. It’s fucking stupid. The war in Iraq is sooooo stupid.
I am sick of experts on TV who are just dummies with degress.
I am sick of people using big words like credible and corroborated and speaking in an authoritative manner like Bloomberg and kelly. They are bufoons. They are fools.
Don’t even think for a minute that there is a threat. Nothing is going to happen unless the UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT attacks it’s own people and blames it on terrorist, because that is what seems to happen on occasion in Iraq. Witness the idiot Brits that got causght with a car full of bombs.
This is just pure madness
You’ve seen that BBC documentary — The Power of Nightmares. Al Quaida. Just a nice marketing device.
I wasn’t thinking about it. But I did see it on video not on the internet.
The great part was when …I don’t know if I remember, the CIA was putting out false information and the Neo Cons grabbed to buttress their point of view and when they were told it was false they accused the CIA of not knowing what it was talking about!
This is just crazy!
I just heard another little news item on CNN about a letter purported to be from bin Laden’s brain (Zawahiri), to Zarqawi in Iraq, advising him that killing fellow Arabs might not be such a goodidea as itcan hurt their cause. Also, purportedly Zawahiri said al Qaeda hadpretty much given up the fight in Afghanistan and is also quite low on money and that many of their key people have been eliminated.
This was only anout a 1 inuteong piece and I haven’tyet heard any other mention ofit, but here’s the thing. the idea of Zawahiri actually composing a letter like this andsending it, through wahatever channels, is ludicrous in the extreme. I’m sure thisis pure propaganda hoax dreamed up and implmented by the Bush regime. Designed to trick people into believeing that victory against Al Qaeda might be just around the corner if only we’d support the Prez for a whilelonger, (like until after the ’06 elections. HAHA).
The world hasn’t seen a propaganda machine like this one since Hitler, Stalin, and Mao.
Hit Post instead of Preview. Sorry for all the typos.
Our Nation leaders and local heroes like Mayor Bloomberg are merely trying to protect us from the Baby Bombers, (not baby boomers_. These evil infants have somehow agreed to sacrafice themselves for the cause of Islam. The baby carriage warning came from an uncorroborated credible source. Uncorroborated AND credibile! That’s a pretty hard combination to beat. Go ahead and try and beat that. That’s a source that is credible but what they don’t if they are telling the truth. That’s pretty scary.
The terrorists have just closed down the Washington Monument. Now we have now where to pray and give thanks to this great nation. This nation of Truth and clarity.
THe federal government merely passed on the uncorroborated credible information to local government and Mayor Bloomberg and Chief of Police Kelly are tying to protect us from a growing danger.
The threat of Al Queda is everywhere. If you see any suspicious activeity…for example…people moving boxes in and out of their home you should alert the authorities. If someone looks out of place, say a black person in a white neighborhood…..or a white person in a black neighborhood please do something!
I want to thank President Bush for caring about me and for caring about you.
ALL OTHER NEWS COVERAGE IS IRRELEVANT
ALL OTHER NEWS COVERAGE IS IRRELEVANT
ALL OTHER NEWS COVERAGE IS IRRELEVANT
ALL OTHER NEWS COVERAGE IS IRRELEVANT
ALL OTHER NEWS COVERAGE IS IRRELEVANT
ALL OTHER NEWS COVERAGE IS IRRELEVANT
ALL OTHER NEWS COVERAGE IS IRRELEVANT
ALL OTHER NEWS COVERAGE IS IRRELEVANT
ALL OTHER NEWS COVERAGE IS IRRELEVANT
STAY TUNED FOR MORE INFORMATION ON HOW THE TERRORISTS!
I am losing it. I think I’ve become, like, television intolerant. I am not living in the same place they are talking about. The terror alerts that turn out to be nothing. On CNN a government secretary is telling me that the 35,000 jobs that were lost last reporting period is great evidence that our economy is strong. Seriously losing it. What was the guys name? Winston. From 1984. I need to get a little diary, and start writing down my thoughts, right before someone nabs me and puts me away.
In reference to “1984”, just in case anyone might want to read it online, here’s a link. There’s quite a list of other significant titles here too.
From the New Yorker interview with author William Finnegan, discussing his article:
I don’t think it’s New York’s problem:
Source: AP via Yahoo.news.
In addition to the online interview, the full New Yorker article by Finnegan on New York City’s independent counterterrorism and intelligence efforts is well worth a read.
Oh yeah, NYC is so far ahead of the feds it’s scary. That article got me thinking about what we could have been doing.
CBS News’ Public Eye (their ombudsman site) has this additional post from Craig Crawford today on media complicity with these types of terror warnings.
Mr. Crawford isn’t going to be making many new friends in government circles anytime soon, I suspect.
This just in from MSNBC:
A can of soda was found inside a baby carriage!
There are sending in a robot. Bomb experts and a representative from Canfields sparling water, lemon flavor division to diffuse the can should it in fact be an explosive.
I love the way they are linking the guys in IRAQ -the frontier on the war on Terrorism to NYCity. Right after his speech yesterday.
Is anybody out there!
ALL OTHER NEWS MUST BE INTERRUPED!
New York, New York:
Dialing up the fear in the face of bad political news. What a shock. Passing information along to others, then downplaying its credibility to insulate yourself, never been done before?
But that’s not all:
Suddenly everywhere there’s the Evil-doer Flu – Poised to take down 150Million+ world-wide. This is a real world health issue that has been on the professionals’ radar here and abroad for months and years, but all-of-a-sudden it’s an RFN CRISIS, the number one public health problem facing this country and every single MSM cannot get enough of it. You might even call it a growing, imminent threat. (What Next: The War On Flu?) What changed on that front in the last week to elevate it up the chain and get the attention of BushInc and all the MSM?
As long as these Nutbags force feed us fear and the MSM greedily passes it along and never gives anyone a suggestion that there is anything you can do about it (even to be engaged in public debate and political process), the sense of overwhelmed futility grows, along with an almost unbearable need to either mindlessly obsess about the current “threat” or to shut down, turn off and tune out.
Let’s see, Bush’s approval in the 30’s, Rove going back to testify to the grand jury (maybe about his boss and Bush), Hot-tub Tommy in some seriously hot water, Frist pulling a “Martha” (think he would enjoy prison as much?), the slow bloody unraveling of Iraq continues, the administration is still covered with the blood and mud of Katrina, our grand-kids’ public debt getting heavier and heavier, more tax cuts on the menu for their base, gotta find time to gut those last few environmental laws that survived before, the radical right telling them their SCOTUS nominee is either too hot or too cold (probably means this porridge is really just right for their corporate base), have to find more ways to drain our credibility abroad, need to stamp out those faint signs of recovery of credible journalism in the MSM and on and on.
So much to do and so little capital to do it with.
Could there be any more expected time for the dread pirate MR. FEAR to make his way back up to center stage.
Cynicism? No, fool me once, shame on me. Ah, you know the rest.