Terror! Impending Doom….ish. Sorta.

Call me cynical. Supposedly, al-Qaida is poised to strike the United States “hard.” They are “90% ready” for a major attack within the US during this Summer or Fall, or so we’re being told. The sky is falling, and rough beasts are slouching en masse towards their particular Bethlehems.

…and yet, the nation’s terror threat level not been raised.

Hrm.

The President not changed his schedule, still going to plenty of “soft target” campaign appearances.

Hrm.

Administration officials told the New York Times “there’s no real new intelligence.”

Hrm.

I’m sure I’m just being a nay-saying liberal. It’s entirely possible that John Ashcroft and his pals have our best interests in mind, and are being properly cautious and issuing a pro-active warning.

Of course, it’s entirely coincidental that this warning-but-no-elevated-threat-level makes for a very nice distraction from Bush’s nose-dive in popularity and approval, and bumped reports of gas prices, Iraq, Abu Ghraib, etc. to second-and-third place below-the-fold stories. Entirely coincidental.

From the NY Times:

“Attorney General John Ashcroft said at a news conference that intelligence reports and public statements by people associated with Al Qaeda suggested that the terrorist group was ‘almost ready to attack the United States’ and harbored a ‘specific intention to hit the United States hard.’ But some intelligence officials, terrorism experts — and to some extent even Mr. Ashcroft’s own F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III — offered a more tempered assessment, saying, ‘For the next few weeks we have reason to believe there is a heightened threat to the U.S. interests around the world.’ And some opponents of President Bush, including police and firefighter union leaders aligned with Senator John Kerry, the expected Democratic presidential candidate, said the timing of the announcement appeared intended in part to distract attention from Mr. Bush’s sagging poll numbers and problems in Iraq.”

“‘ … There’s no real new intelligence, and a lot of this has been out there already,’ said one administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. ‘There really is no significant change that would require us to change the alert level of the country.'”

I’m sure I’m just being cynical.

One Final Stalker-related Post

Folks, I have a request. Don’t respond to the stalker’s posts in the comments. Ignore him.

At the request of the abuse department of his ISP, I’ve removed all of the IP bans, and have forwarded every one of his posts, with the IP log and time/date stamp, to them, and will continue to do so with every additional post he makes. They’ve informed me that they are willing to disclose his identity and address with a civil subpoena, rather than just a criminal one, so I’m pursuing that route, and the archived posts sent to the ISP makes it so that they can be called as a witness.

Continued posts on his part will just add to the evidentiary chain, so it’s in my interest to let him continue to post to his twisted little heart’s content. Give him enough rope, folks. No need to pay him any attention. He’ll hang himself.

He continues to bray about bringing a “defamation suit”…which I certainly hope he does. To do so, he will have to forego anonymity, which will save me the effort of the subpoena.