Orange Alert Timing is Suspect
...I Think I Smell a Rat

After Tom Ridge raised the terror alert two days ago, Howard Dean suggested there may be political motivation for the change in threat level. In an interview on CNN's Late Edition, he said he was
...concerned that every time something happens that's not good for President Bush, he plays this trump card, which is terrorism.

His whole campaign is based on the notion that 'I can keep you safe, therefore, in times of difficulty in America, stick with me.'

When you're going to run on inspiring fear in the American people, that's politics.

The president himself made the choice to inject politics into the campaign on terrorism. That was his choice. He's now going to have to live with the consequences.
I watched as Blitzer asked him if he really wanted to make that reach. Remember, this is the same Howard Dean who suggested in December that the capture of Saddam Hussein did not make us any safer. Oh yea, and he was right then, too.

Today it is reported by The Washington Post, The New York Times, ABC News, and CNN, among others, that according to officials, the intelligence information leading to the current terror alert is years old. The New York Times piece puts it in a nutshell with its opening paragraph:
Much of the information that led the authorities to raise the terror alert at several large financial institutions in the New York City and Washington areas was three or four years old, intelligence and law enforcement officials said on Monday. They reported that they had not yet found concrete evidence that a terrorist plot or preparatory surveillance operations were still under way.
Of course Tom Ridge is rushing to his own defense as seen in news at CBS and MSNBC, and the current lead story at FAUX News is that, amid these terrible threats, the Statue of Liberty has reopened.