TIMING IS EVERYTHING

NYC THREAT a hoax [story] And the timing of the threat after Bush said he stopped ten threats is um dubious.  Is the scariest thing that these threats seem um manufactured?  Or is it scary that Bush believes they work? Or has paranoia struck three?

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[Steve Soto/ The Left Coaster] Both the FBI and the DHS thought the threat was questionable, even though it was the CIA and the Pentagon that gathered the information from the Iraqi informant in the first place. A local TV news station had the information on Tuesday, the 4th, but held it at the request of federal officials until Thursday. I’d like to think that the federal officials wanted the story held until they could check it out, but with the sorry track record of this administration in manipulating terror threats for political advantage, who knows why the threat was held until after a string of bad political news came out last week? Bloomberg, in the middle of a reelection campaign, went with the information.

There are a number of ways to look at this. First, it could be Al Qaeda toying with us once again, just to see how they can make us jump. Second, what kind of credibility does military intelligence and the CIA have left after this, especially since the military had deemed this informant to be reliable?

ON THE QUICK TURNAROUND [Kevin/Wizbang] While many were quick to praise New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg for fast action and criticize the Bush administration for muddled response, in hindsight the "intelligence officials" who tried to downplay the threat as "not credible" were right on the money.

FROM THE YOU CAN'T DISPROVE A NEGATIVE DEPARTMENT [Roger L. Simon] I should I feel chastened now that it has been disclosed this threat was a 'hoax.' I do not.

THE HERETIK SENDS out a note from the real world. The 'hoax' was a hoax, no quotation marks needed.  What is 'real' on the other hand needs all the quotation marks possible.