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Getting Ready for Terror
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The intel bosses predict a fresh round of al Qaeda attacks in the next six months. The Daily Beast's experts on what America needs to do now to get ready.
What the Public Should Do
By Michael Chertoff
Demand greater government vigilance to prevent and protect against major attacks. And don’t assume that a dearth of successful terror strikes means our work is done.
Manage Risks, But Guard the Constitution
By Rep. Jane Harman
Strong leadership in the intelligence community is key to heading off future threats. But don’t shred civil liberties in the process.
We're Still Not Serious About Terrorism
By Steve Emerson
Of course there will be another attack soon. The real problem is that the administration is not doing enough to combat the rise of radical Islam in America.
Reduce the Shock Value
By Paul Pillar
It’s the terrorists’ goal to spread fear. The government should educate the public about risk—and try to head off the disruptive blame game that follows each attack.
Why Panetta Should Stop Talking
By Reuel Marc Gerecht
If the CIA chief had a good asset inside Al Qaeda, he wouldn’t be discussing the group’s plans publicly. And predicting attacks only risks lowering the intel chief’s credibility if one doesn’t happen soon.
Disrupt Al Qaeda's Core
By Bruce Riedel
The best response to news of fresh terrorist attacks ahead is to step up the pressure in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen and elsewhere—and pour on the diplomatic and intelligence resources.
Get Pakistan's military moving, and crank up the PR campaign—reminding the Muslim world of the terrible toll al Qaeda attacks have taken on their own.
An Utterly Useless Warning
By Edward N. Luttwak
The CIA’s announcement about a coming Al Qaeda threat does not help us protect anything, anywhere, at any time.
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Tunku Varadarajan is a national affairs correspondent and writer at large for The Daily Beast. He is also the Virginia Hobbs Carpenter Fellow in Journalism at Stanford's Hoover Institution and a professor at NYU's Stern Business School. He is a former assistant managing editor at The Wall Street Journal. (Follow him on Twitter here.)
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nipoleon
Isn't Al Qaeda always supposed to be wanting to attack us ?
You mean, they've been taking time off up till now ?
Crawl under your beds America, Al Qaeda's on the warpath again !
ccrider27
Sounds like there's something these guys already know, like how Blackwater is going to do a couple of false flag operations to bump up their business.
Jinglebob
During Bush's term it was Halaburton, now it's Blackwater (They have changed their name by the way), the Left always has to have a boggy man.
easton
no, no, no, you mean crawl deeper under your beds since America has not yet crawled out from under the bed. Americans are now 10X more likely to be killed by the Mexican drug cartel than Al Qaeda yet people somehow manage not to shriek in fear whenever they see a Taco Bell (oh, wait, maybe I shouldn't mention this, because maybe now they will)
Ronin58
Consider the goals of jihadism...reestablish the caliphate of the 12th Century A.D., expel Israel from Palestine, and return to the distinctions ...Dar Es Salaam and Dar es Arb ...ultimately redeeming the world by extending the rule of Islam . These are not our old friends the Commies. These are the disaffected and perverted intelligentsia from failed states,cultures, and repression. They can only find redemption for the failure of their states/cultures by assigning cause and blame to "Western" imperialism...
hence reference to the Crusades.
Their most recent triumph is the enormous strategic debacle that the Bush regime brought on by the distraction of the Iraq invasion. It succeeded in driving a wedge between our potential allies ,the Arab /Islamic street, and it made Mesopotamia an enormous recruiting ground for the Jihad.
Now we are all focused on the other great legacy of the Republican regime,
the economic collapse and fiscal crisis that has hamstrung our society, polarized it , and undermined the US as a perceived world power.
It makes great sense to me to have the CIA warn us about the high likelihood of an attack ...a bitch slap to have us face up to the enormous task at hand and suck it up about what has to be done.
WTF...we stand in line at the airport,we have to put our toiletries in a sandwich bag, we notice something funny goiing on at a public area...Too F...g
bad for us.
The Limeys have had a long history and lots of experience around terrorism...
They don't bitch and moan...they face it,and frankly,do a great job at killing it...
Also consider that the media is also a field of battle...don't you think giving the enemy a false sense of security is a good tactic...? You don't hunt terrorists...you suborn and trap them...you want them to come out ...
BTW
Luttwak is brilliant...but he also a dick...lots of critique but no balls to suggest a better strategy...that's why he's a "think tanker" and not in "The Company".
He thinks like a "world of warcraft"guy vs a "in the field soldier/scholar".
Rant # 23.5
JayFish
This is where media does us a huge disservice...by becoming terrorism enablers. Writing big, ominous "I'll-be-back" headlines on top of articles that scare the shit out of us. Isn't this the very definition of terrorism...to frighten us into a frantic frenzy? Boy, are we taking the bait.
crypto
I've got a great idea Jay. These guys believe that if they blow themselves up and take some of us with them Allah will provide them with 72 virgins in heaven. Now suppose we have a heart to heart talk with 'ol
Allah and get him to give these guys 144, or double the number , of virgins if they will just blow Washington DC up and leave the rest of the country alone??
T1Brit
JayFish is right !!!!
I logged in to say the same thing !!
Why don't you just put a bloody great RAMBO poster of a f*cking jihadist up there ???
Oh you already did !
WHAT THE F*CK IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?
T1Brit
more printable comment :
That image on the front page and the whole message of the article is TOTALLY IRRESPONSIBLE
Take it down
kscr14
Chilling pic that made me shiver.
TWBBug
This so called warning just goes to show ya the Obama Administration is Chicago Politics as usually, pay to play. It doesn't seem he has anyone there with true experience in what they are task to do (I supported and voted for him so don't play this off as a teabagger). I am also from Illinois originally and Chicago politics are and have always been crooked. The fact they want to hand Blagoievich is laughable.
At any rate...this is so stoopid and again, just reaks of inexperience in the White House and how uniformed Obama is of what his right hand is doing...or his left.
Meanwhile, I just get a notice our healthcare premium is going up 20% on top of news not long ago, I will have to pay a co-pay in each service in my heart dr.'s office. I pay to go in; I pay for ekg and/or echo and Lord only knows what the hell else and they are bizzie throwing me these stupid propaganda warnings all aimed at taking my mind off things.
NEWS ALERT! IT AIN'T WORKIN'
easton
incoherent post. Obama is not responsible for the Daily Beast or these pundits. And the whole point of the intel community is to provide intel as best they can, the difference between Obama and Bush is that Bush politicized intel to get desired policy results "Al Qaeda wants to kill us, lower the Capital gains tax rate or you are a traitor who loves the terrorists." Show me how Obama is politicizing this intel. It is pathetic how you equate TDB with Obama.
And why are you bringing up your health care in this thread?
crypto
It's pathetic easton, the way you jerks attempt to blame your chosen one's shortcomings on somebody else. Don't you have any other path for goodness sake. This blame crap has gotten past old.
sailormoon
I am not an idiot, I believe they want to attack us everyday. They are an ideal,a goal, all over the world. Any jihdist can spring up anywhere, thru the internet.We should be secure,ready,fighting all threats, but it has become a constant, converstion, everyday.everywhere.We make the terrorist, bigger than life.This is like the fortune teller that tells you",Someday you will fall in love."We must be vigilant,ready, strong,but we cannot feed their ego.That is what is being done. Our movies, our ideas, our pictures,all feeds them.
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orpheusckauszlawski
You are hoping Holder has a crack team? You are saying Eric Holder is on crack? Interesting. Soon the FBI will be knocking on your door.
WalidMaaytah
There they go again. The same fearmongering garbage used to justify invading Iraq, is being trumped up again to pave the road for a new Bushy, wacko adventure in the world. That doesn't mean that Al Qaida doesn't want to or may be planning to do another operation - they probably do, but that's nothing new, and they've been at it for so long. But to announce it the way only our greedy, sleezy war merchants who know how to do it best is but another scheme, ploy and tactic to keep Americans living in fear, so they can push their agendas, sell new weapons or push for yet another war or invasion.
So who benefits most of these terror-hyped announcements, which will lead us to who is behind them? I think it's a sinister, old, direct or indirect, collaborative effort between Israel, who loves keeping us scared to death of Muslim terrorists so it can justify what it's doing to the Palestinians and to keep our minds off and oblivious to the undisputed fact that its occupation of Palestinian lands is the number one reason and factor in recruiting and firing up terrorists around the world, and the evangelical far-right Republicans whose sick, crusade-infested ideology and love of warmongering which have been proven over and over to be behind much of the horrendous disasters we got suckered into. Of course, let's not forget also our major oil and weapons corporations who just love such news, for obvious reasons, and who have much stake and direct benefit in spreading such fears among American people. Man, with so many groups in this country that stand to benefit greatly from war and death, I'm surprised that we haven't been entangled with more wars around the world.
We were major suckers once, when we let them do it to us after 9/11, and I'm afraid they still count on us as still being major naive, frightened-to-death suckers whose paranoias can be used and manipulated to sell us more wars, and in the process make tons more money for themselves, in addition to furthering sick agendas for others.
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boredwell
I would argue that a terror attack in the next six months could happen today! I would argue that al-Qaeda may not even be the architect. What's the benefit of alerting the public with such a timeline any old how? The warning doesn't merit mention even if the purpose is to prepare us mentally. There's no prep for destruction and death that comes out of the imminent yonder. I live in earthquake prone San Francisco so I know something about being prepared but then again I've never been trapped beneath a building. In this world there are no guarantees. Everyday most of us confront daily dangers-walking and driving-without giving the possibility of murderous muggers or drunk drivers a second thought!
orpheusckauszlawski
Michael Levinson, though banned by the Beast is very actively running for president. He has a Constant Contact mailing list mostly for newspaper people all over the country but open to the public. I signed up for it.
Yetsrday he sent out an 11,000 word 30 page request for access that went to ABC,NBC, CBS, PBS, Fox, and CNN.
He has this idea he is entitled to equal time in response to president Obama's State of the Union speech. He says he is an independent candidate and independent voters, at 51% of the electorate are more than both parties put together.
Therefore, because he asked for the air-time, under the "equal opportunity" law, he is entitled to give a speech.
He is very cagey. He writes down in advance what he is going to say so it is clear, or will be clear if and when he gets them into court that they, the giant billion dollar networks are cheating the public, violating their Public Interest obligation to us, that we are constitutionaly entitled to be an informed electorate.
I sent Lev an email and bet him five bucks they stuff his ass in the nearest trash basket, but this is what he wrote about avoiding the next terrorist attack. What he wants to make a mass media speech about, amongst other issues (all stuff he was posting here before the Beast people sent him packing)
Here is his intro lead into a paragraph from Time. (It should be clear from this Lev is definitely a candidate for domestic assassination).
The "Town Halls" Obama has scheduled are all clearly pre-scripted events, manipulating the image of spontaneous, open ended democracy in motion, an imagery, by his own admission, as above, that is sadly false, save the insights into his character we are given by his words. Were Obama our true leader, more than an aloof technocratic election winner, the near tragic loss of an airplane loaded with innocent people, by virtue of an intelligence fiasco on his presidential watch, would not have taken place!
Has president Obama stated the safety of the American people is his primary concern? Were Obama not flying around to fake Town Halls, to answer pre-determined questions and set up answers, he might have been insuring it was safe for the rest of us to fly!
Does president Obama read Time Magazine? One imagines he does. After all the president has been the subject of many articles and the cover. Copies are on Air Force 1 and in the White House residence.
"There's a quiet revolution underway at the CIA and its sister agencies. A new generation of analysts, determined to drag their Cold War-era colleagues into the world of Web 2.0 information-sharing, have created Intellipedia, a classified version of Wikipedia they say is transforming the way U.S. spy agencies handle top-secret information by fostering collaboration across Washington and around the world. Rolled out in 2006 to skeptical veterans at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., Intellipedia has grown to a 900,000-page magnum opus of espionage, handling some 100,000 user accounts and 5,000 page edits a day, according to the CIA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence."
The Intellipedia is a wiki board for the gathering and analysis of intelligence information. But the CIA officials at the top, according to Time, do not have their hearts in the Intellipedia, and volunteer agents operate it!
By Executive order the president can order all of the agencies to use and share the intellipedia, functioning as a tripod, with cross relationships at every level of security, and thousands of agents involved, the newly formed National Security Commission at the top, as overseers, able to see every thing below!
Structure is the issue. Each of our intelligence agencies has adopted a managerial structure first developed by J. Edgar Hoover: Nothing can happen, or be investigated without approval or assignment from someone at the top of the command chain, exactly the opposite of what must be done to protect our nation.
The government can easily employ one thousand Arabic speaking Americans to translate every political Arabic web site into English and post the sites on the Intellipedia Wiki.
We have state of the art data base management tools and search engine software these agencies are not using! Without these proposed changes, mostly accomplished with an Executive Order, we can expect the next airplane attack will be successful and we cannot say how many hundreds of lives will perish."
The scary part is he is probably right! Visit his web site. It won't be taken down until Hoover's descendents murder him, like Fred Hampton, for telling us the truth.
michaelslevinson.com
carbonman1950
It sounds like you have confused the "Equal Time" rule [Communications Act of 1934 § 315(a)], which does not apply to broadcast time given to a "bona fide"..."on-the-spot news event" which the State of the Union Address is without doubt, with the "Fairness Doctrine" which was an FCC policy abolished in 1987. Who knows what you might mean by the "'equal opportunity' law".
Good luck with the 3rd party candidate thing.
orpheusckauszlawski
The State of the Union speech is hardly an on-the-spot news event. It is a carefully constructed "use" of the media to promote the president's continuation as president.
An on-the-spot news event, exempt, is the president getting off Air Force 1 and walking up to some microphones hastily set up by 3rd party news divisions to ask the president about his trip to Mongolia.
Were the State of the Union speech an "exempt" news event, than the networks would not be inviting a republican chosen by the republicans to give the (315 a) "response," another carefully staged set up, not a spontaneous news event, rather a "use" to express the republican party's point of view.
The speech on Health care was followed by a Dr. who was either a Senator or a Member of the House. (I forget which). He gave the response which was NOT a news event. The speech at West Point was a 'use,' also subject to an equal opportunity request.
Does this mean the president is hamstrung from Television appearances, as the fascist would surely argue, to confuse realities. Of course not. Relative to the West Point speech, all the president had to do was claim it was to be a press conference, and then, after his speech refused to take or answer questions from the press sitting in the first three rows, but instead of a "spontaneous" press conference it was a carefully staged TelePrompTer event. (Have you noticed they make-up the president's eyes with eye shadow for these "events")?
Press conferences are exempt!
The president calling for a press conference at West Point could / would be a news event. The president meets with the republicans in Congress and talks to them for an hour and they talk back. That is a news event. There is a point where the line is drawn, otherwise the only voices ever heard are the voices of incumbancy, money and power.
The White House is sloppy in their staging because the networks are not going to allow anyone at all to exercise their rights under laws they care not to enforce so they go overboard in their use of media.
The original idea behind the promulgations of these laws was limited bandwidth. Now we have hundreds of channels. There is plenty of room for other voices.
Were the two speeches to both Houses of Congress not "use" as defined by § 315 there wouldn't have been republicans invited to respond, and as long as there are 51% of the voters registered independent aren't the independent voters entitled to hear the response of an independent candidate?
The Fairness Doctrine was an FCC policy that applied to ideas. The part expressed in the Zapple doctrine applied to candidates and 315 is the statutory expression of that 'Fairness."
As the S.Ct has ruled:
"It is the right of the viewers and listeners, not the right of the broadcasters which is paramount . . . It is the purpose of the First Amendment to preserve an uninhibited marketplace of ideas in which truth will ultimately prevail, rather than to countenance monopolization of that market . . . It is the right of the public to receive suitable access to social, political, esthetic, moral, and other ideas and experience which is crucial here. That right may not constitutionally be abridged either by Congress or by the FCC."
Not withstanding the abolishment of the Fairness Doctrine, or FCC's proclamation that they would no longer enforde the doctrine, the above quote, is LAW.
On a personal note. The writing directly above is the writing of Michael Stephen Levinson, the independent candidate for president. Not me. I emailed him your comment. He emailed back his response for me to post though he could simply open an account and do his own posting.
The issue of his right to mass media access will reach the Supreme Court, sooner than these networks imagine and then all hell is going to break loose because the Highest Court is not going to rule against his First Amendment right, or the right of the people to be an informed electorate.
You are familiar with § 315. Then you must also know § 312(a)(7). I cannot let the cat out of the bag except to say Levinson will prove beyond any shadow all the networks are in willful violation of that law. You should lexus nexus his name and 312(a)(7). See what you get.
What the heck! All we are talking about is a mass media speech. Barack Obama does one practically every day.
Except our man Lev brings to the table a Vehicle for World Peace. You should visit michaelslevinson.com and play the vids. Peace my friend, and the means to deliver.
LostPatriot
If the USA wants to stop terrorism they need to start treating other people and countries the same way they'd like other people and countries to treat them. A start in that direction would be to shed themselves of their puppeteer Israel and began to respect other's human rights.
iamone3
maybe a group hug !
orpheusckauszlawski
carbonman 1950! How do you post the graphic by your comment? I want to put up a picture of me.
Thank you.
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