"A life of fear," continued

Picking up on an earlier post:

Are you safer from the threat of terrorism than you were four years ago? In an important way, you may well not be, for the simple reason that the Bush administration has so cynically and nakedly manipulated the threat of terrorist attack for political gain that each new warning becomes a little harder to swallow than the one before.
(Add in the fact that key government relief and security positions are being staffed by incompetent cronies, and the problem becomes that much worse.)

What happens when the next threat isn't a made-up "Wag the Dog" distraction from the latest embarrassment to the Bush administration and the GOP?

Think that's harsh? Keith Olberman has the numbers. Specifically, the number 13.

Last Thursday on Countdown, I referred to the latest terror threat - the reported bomb plot against the New York City subway system - in terms of its timing. President Bush’s speech about the war on terror had come earlier the same day, as had the breaking news of the possible indictment of Karl Rove in the CIA leak investigation.

I suggested that in the last three years there had been about 13 similar coincidences - a political downturn for the administration, followed by a "terror event" - a change in alert status, an arrest, a warning.

We figured we’d better put that list of coincidences on the public record.

Follow the link, read the list, manage your anger.

True enough, as Olberman himself is careful to remind us, just because A is followed by B doesn't necessarily prove A caused B. Even when B follows A thirteen times, seemingly as the night follows the day. But, he concludes,

if merely a reasonable case can be made that any of these juxtapositions of events are more than just coincidences, it underscores the need for questions to be asked in this country - questions about what is prudence, and what is fear-mongering; questions about which is the threat of death by terror, and which is the terror of threat.

I think Terry at Nitpicker has it exactly right, and he's speaking for more than just vets:

As a 13-year veteran of the armed forces, though, I find it repulsive that veterans like myself are put in the position where we're forced to decide whether our commander-in-chief is lying or al Qaeda is--and it's actually a hard decision!

It's pretty sad to think that, if a genuine, imminent terror threat emerged tomorrow, and Bush immediately warned the nation, a significant slice of the country might be at risk because they simply didn't believe him. Their last thought on this earth might well be,

"Hmm. Warning us of a terrorist threat. Wonder why he did that?"