PANIC STILL SELLS

Yesterdays announcement that British law enforcement officials had broken up a plot to blow up several airliners using seemingly innocuous household liquid containers and a source of heat/light like a camera flash sent the American media into quasi hysterics - - blather blather blather about long lines,
and uber fear about the first ever RED alert on the fabulous Tom Ridge Spectrum of Scary. As has been the case soooooooo many times in the past since 2001, fear fright and the molding and shaping of same inundated the airwaves. Was it real? Well, this time it was the British reporting after all, not the U.S. holding up a group of 20-somethings doing calisthenics and talking about joining up with bin Laden, so it must be real. And this one was in THE FINAL STAGES (dun dun DUN!) so we just did DODGE a bullet.

But then it came out that the Decider in chief had been briefed on this in advance. Twice, over the course of a full week before the announcement. Then we got Satandick out on the trail - the day after the Lieberman loss, doing his best Jersey-protection-racket schtick. about how you know, "we got us a nice country here, wouldn't it be a shame if someone came in and blew part of it up? Heh heh heh, remember that when you vote." And then, Bam, this story breaks. Smell - I mean sound familiar? As it turns out, this is not a new threat, its been around for eleven years or so, and nobody's done anything about it.

Its the Piggy Rove playbook - dusted off and being recycled once more. Scare 'em scare 'em scare 'em into voting for us. Will it work again, or will enough people be courageous enough to call bullshit on it this time? How, you say, well here's two ways:

1. Remind people that timing is everything, and that every time this Adminstration's been hit with some bad news (Plame, bad economic numbers, Downing Street memos, Duke Delaybramoff) there's been some "foiled plot" announced and pimped in the media to change the subject;

2. Point out that this report clearly indicates that British Law enforcement officials, working with intelligence sources, foiled this plot. Why is that important you ask? Well, who was it that advocated an approach to terrorism that favored coordination between law enforcement and intelligence sources, and the military only as an adjunct to capture after the first two prongs had worked together to locate and identify the terrorists? Yep, ol' soft on terror John Kerry favored this approach, and these bozos mercilessly ridiculed him for it. So, to compare results, the Brits isolated and captured 24 of these plotters, didn't kill any civilians in so doing, and there've been no loss of lives. Cheney's war effort got Hussein, got Zarqawi, but not bin Laden, not Al Zwahiri, and killed about 2,800 American servicemen, wounded 18,000 others, and killed at least 50,000 Iraqis. Hmmmmm, whose approach to combating terror is more effective and efficient? Take your time.