The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has raised the threat level at the nation’s airports from yellow to orange.
And what are we Americans to do when the alert level is changed from yellow to orange?
According to the DHS website (http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/CitizenGuidanceHSAS2.pdf) – at yellow,
we are to ensure our disaster supply kit is stocked and ready; check
telephone numbers in our family emergency plan and update as necessary;
develop alternate routes to and from work or school and practice them;
and continue to be alert for suspicious activity and report it to authorities.
At orange,
we are told to exercise caution when traveling; pay attention to travel
advisories; review our family emergency plan and make sure all family
members know what to do; be patient; expect some delays as well as
baggage searches and restrictions at public buildings; and check on
neighbors or others that might need assistance in an emergency.
Last week at the airport, I wondered how this change was supposed to be useful to me.
Then
I returned home to read that the Pentagon finally leaked transcripts
purported to be from 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, suggesting
his responsibility for those attacks and other terror plans.
This was followed by another leaked transcript purportedly from Waleed bin Attash, who confessed to plotting the bombings of the USS Cole and two U.S. embassies in Africa.
The 9/11 Commission admitted that its entire report is based on evidence
of such men secretly detained by US forces. It did not question these
men nor was it even permitted to interview the interrogators! Instead,
it was only given access to notes selected by Bush officials these men.
So why is additional information being leaked now, more than five years after the 9/11 attacks? Might it be for a simple political agenda, just as raising the terror threat level appears to be?
On
May 10, 2005, former Department of Homeland Security (DHS) head Tom
Ridge said he wanted to “debunk the myth” that he had been responsible
for repeatedly raising the threat level during his tenure at the DHS.
Ridge reported that the Bush administration periodically put the US on
high alert for terrorist attacks even though he argued there was only
flimsy evidence to justify raising the threat level. Ridge said he
often disagreed with Bush officials who wanted to elevate the threat
level to orange or a “high” risk of terrorist attack but that he was
overruled.
Ridge commented: “Sometimes we disagreed with the intelligence assessment. Sometimes we thought even if the intelligence was good, you don't necessarily put the country on (alert) … There were times when some people were really aggressive about raising it, and we said, ‘For that?’”
An examination by MSNBC political commentator Keith Olbermann discovered thirteen “coincidences” whereby a “political downturn” for the Bush administration was followed by a “terror event” that led to a change from yellow to orange in the national threat system.
Bush and his people are under attack for incompetence and
corruption. And they respond with raised terror threats and leaked
transcripts to make us afraid. Do you feel safer now?