"A life of fear doesn't suit us"

The Rovean view of politics is simple: As long as your party has got power now--and perhaps even for the next forty or fifty years--it doesn't really matter if in the process you damage beyond repair the very system you want to govern.

A case in point is the shameless hyping of the "terrorism threat" to keep the hooples from looking too closely at the unsavory goings-on at the top of the government.

Exhibit 1: The NYC subway terrorism plot
Date: 10/10/05
Executive summary: Turns out there really wasn't one.
Source: Associated Press
Excerpt:

A reported plot to bomb city subways with remote-controlled explosives has not been corroborated after days of investigation, law-enforcement officials said Sunday amid an easing sense of concern.

Interrogations of suspects captured in Iraq last week after an informant's tip about bomb-laden suitcases and baby carriages have yet to yield evidence that the plot was real, officials said.

"The intelligence community has been able to determine that there are very serious doubts about the credibility of this specific threat,"
Homeland Security Department spokesman Russ Knocke said. "This is after ongoing review and analysis.

Exhibit 2: Bush reveals the 10 worldwide terrorist plots foiled since 9/11
Executive summary: Turns out the list was padded with old cases, including several "plots" that were never put into operation.
Source: LA times
Excerpt

In his policy address Thursday, Bush spoke at length about terrorists and their organizations, saying that at least 10 plots had been foiled worldwide by the U.S. and its allies, including plots in the U.S.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan had said a day earlier that Bush's speech would provide "unprecedented" detail about terrorist threats, some of them never before disclosed.

However, Bush did not detail the foiled plans, and hours later, the White House released a sketchy list of "plots, casings and infiltrations" that had been disrupted or stopped by the United States and its allies since the Sept. 11 attacks. It did not explain whether any of the incidents were new or disclose how advanced the plots were, although most experts said they did not represent plans that had been put into operation.

On Friday, the White House responded to questions seeking clarification on the potential attacks by referring inquiries to the FBI or other counter-terrorism agencies. The FBI referred the questions to the White House.

"I'm not going to have more to say on those matters at this point," McClellan said.

He said the list of foiled plots had been prepared by "the intelligence community" and was released late in the day, hours after Bush's speech, because officials needed to make sure the information it contained would not jeopardize national security.

The White House acknowledged that many of the plots cited by Bush were based on previously known information. But it would not comment on whether Bush and his administration had claimed credit for thwarting terrorist plots in the United States that, in reality, had not risen to the level of a "serious" operational plot at all, as some federal counter-terrorism officials maintained.

Exhibit 3: The capture of the second most wanted Al Quaeda leader in Iraq
Date: 9/28/05
Executive Summary: Turns out he wasn't all that important.
Source: NY Times
Excerpt:

On Sept. 28, to take one recent instance, the president announced the smiting of a man he identified as "the second most wanted Al Qaeda leader in Iraq" and the "top operational commander of Al Qaeda in Baghdad." As New York's Daily News would quickly report, the man in question "may not even be one of the top 10 or 15 leaders." The blogger Blogenlust chimed in, documenting 33 "top lieutenants" of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi who have been captured, killed or identified in the past two and a half years, with no deterrent effect on terrorist violence in Iraq, Madrid or London. No wonder the nation shrugged at the largely recycled and unsubstantiated list of 10 foiled Qaeda plots that Mr. Bush unveiled in Thursday's latest stay-the-course Iraq oration.

Exhibit 4: All those Code Orange terrorist alerts between 2001 and 2004
Date: 5/10/05
Executive Summary: Turns out some of them were just political hype, some weren't, and there was no way to tell which was which.
Source: Former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, in USA Today
Excerpt:

The Bush administration periodically put the USA on high alert for terrorist attacks even though then-Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge argued there was only flimsy evidence to justify raising the threat level, Ridge now says.

Ridge, who resigned Feb. 1, said Tuesday that he often disagreed with administration officials who wanted to elevate the threat level to orange, or "high" risk of terrorist attack, but was overruled.

Exhibit 5: President reveals terrorist threat to LA's tallest building
Date: 3/31/04
Executive Summary: Turns out no such threat was never carried out, the story "viewed with a degree of skepticism by U.S. intelligence."
Source: LA Times
Excerpt:

President Bush said yesterday [10/6/05] said that a serious terrorist threat to the tallest skyscraper in Los Angeles (now called US Bank tower) was thwarted sometime since 9/11. [ . . . ]

For what it's worth, the Bush list was a clip job. The threat to Library Tower has been well-known.

Exhibit 6: National security advisor warns of "mushroom cloud" to hype invasion plans
Date: 9/8/02
Executive Summary: Turns out there was no nuclear threat from Iraq.
Source: CNN
Excerpt:

"We know that he has the infrastructure, nuclear scientists to make a nuclear weapon," [national security advisor Dr. Condoleezza Rice] told me. "And we know that when the inspectors assessed this after the Gulf War, he was far, far closer to a crude nuclear device than anybody thought -- maybe six months from a crude nuclear device."

Dr. Rice then said something that was ominous and made headlines around the world.

"The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly he can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."

I thought of those comments this week following the statement from the chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix, acknowledging that no "smoking gun" has been found yet since the resumption of the weapons inspections.

For obvious reasons, a lot of this hype circles back around New York City. I've always believed that these nine words sum up New York, its ethos, its charm, its annoying side, and its magnificent response to 9/11:

Hey! Yeah, over here! That's right! I'm still standing!

Or, as Roy at alicublog nicely put it:

A life of fear doesn't suit us.

Exactly so. What's true for NYC is true for the USA: We're better than this.

An administration that drives by fear because it's unable to lead is unworthy of our support. An administration that makes its citizens so cynical they will no longer duck, even when trouble is coming, deserves to be on Ground Zero when the trouble hits.