| Subject: Re: Shrub & Co. Are covering their BUTTS in case we get NUKED!!! |
Author:
Betty
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Date Posted: 12:11:56 05/23/02 Thu
Author Host/IP: 24.65.115.70
In reply to:
The Veeckster
's message, "Shrub & Co. Are covering their BUTTS in case we get NUKED!!!" on 08:25:11 05/22/02 Wed
>It makes me wonder what they know that we don't.
>
If we get nuked.there will "NO BUTTS" to cover!!
>Nation left jittery by latest warnings
>
>Alerts seem a return to generalized announcements
>post-9/11
>
>By Bill Miller and Christine Haughney
>THE WASHINGTON POST
>
>May 22 — Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told a
>Senate committee yesterday that terrorists will
>“inevitably” obtain weapons of mass destruction,
>issuing the latest in a series of warnings from the
>Bush administration about the likelihood of future
>attacks and leaving security officials and ordinary
>citizens wondering what to do.
>
> “IN JUST FACING the facts, we have to
>recognize that terrorist networks have relationships
>with terrorist states that have weapons of mass
>destruction, and that they inevitably are going to get
>their hands on them, and they would not hesitate one
>minute in using them,” Rumsfeld said.
> “That’s the world we live in.”
> Rumsfeld expressed similar concerns in the
>aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks. But his testimony
>before the Senate Appropriations Committee’s defense
>subcommittee came after several pronouncements from
>the Bush administration that began Sunday, when Vice
>President Cheney declared that another terrorist
>strike was “almost certain.”
>
> On Monday, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III
>said that suicide bombings like those taking place in
>Israel are “inevitable.” Homeland Security Director
>Tom Ridge declared yesterday that additional terrorist
>attacks are “not a question of if, but a question of
>when.”
> Bush, in an interview yesterday with Italian
>television before his departure for Europe today, said
>the warnings by Cheney and Mueller were general. He
>said that if any specific threat were made, the United
>States would respond.
> “The al Qaeda still exists, they still hate
>America and any other country which loves freedom and
>they want to hurt us,” Bush said. “They’re nothing but
>a bunch of cold-blooded killers.”
> The FBI also heightened anxiety levels in New
>York yesterday by advising officials that landmarks
>there could be terrorist targets. Officials said the
>advisory was based on the same kind of uncorroborated
>information that has led to other notices to law
>enforcement in recent weeks about threats to banks,
>nuclear power plants, water systems, shopping malls,
>supermarkets and apartment buildings.
> The latest warning came from captured al Qaeda
>fighters detained at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo
>Bay, Cuba, officials said.
> ‘It looks totally political to me. It appears as if
>the reaction is, “Now we’re going to tell everybody
>every time we’re worried about anything.” I grew up
>reading “The Little Boy Who Cried Wolf.”’
>— JANE L. CAMPBELL
>Cleveland mayor
>ALERT STILL ‘YELLOW’
> Despite the escalating talk about threats,
>officials have not raised the nation’s level of alert.
>It is at “yellow,” the midpoint of the five-level
>warning system established in March, and denotes a
>significant risk of attack.
> Ridge said the stream of intelligence has been
>vague. He and other officials said they needed
>corroboration or more details about dates, locations
>and methods of attack before the warning would be
>escalated.
> The new system gives federal officials the
>authority to put particular regions or industries on a
>higher state of alert, but there are no plans to do so
>at this time, according to administration officials.
>The next stage up is orange, which reflects a high
>risk of attack. The top level, red, is reserved for
>severe risk.
> The color-coded system was created after
>complaints from mayors and police chiefs about the
>generalized alerts announced in the months after the
>Sept. 11 attacks, warnings that urged the public to be
>vigilant while continuing normal activities. Local
>officials said those warnings were too vague to be
>helpful. Now, some mayors said, the administration
>seems to be returning to a failed strategy.
> “This was definitely moving in the right
>direction, and then came Sunday and it’s like, ‘Wait a
>minute,’ ” said Scott L. King, the Democratic mayor of
>Gary, Ind. “I don’t think it’s been good and it’s not
>useful. I think it represents backsliding.”
> King added, “Nobody will ever accuse the vice
>president or FBI director of being less than
>intelligent or astute, or, in the vice president’s
>case, politically savvy. Clearly they didn’t blurt
>this out. But what were they doing?”
>
>TRYING TO WEIGH SIGNIFICANCE
> Across the country yesterday, officials and the
>public were trying to weigh the significance of the
>new information. It became public days after the White
>House began facing questions from critics in Congress
>about what Bush, intelligence officials and the FBI
>knew in advance of the Sept. 11 attacks.
> “It looks totally political to me,” said
>Cleveland Mayor Jane L. Campbell, another Democrat.
>“It appears as if the reaction is, ‘Now we’re going to
>tell everybody every time we’re worried about
>anything.’ I grew up reading ‘The Little Boy Who Cried
>Wolf.’”
> In New York and elsewhere, many people said
>they are growing increasingly jittery. “What can we do
>besides run?” asked Jose Vazquez, 26, a photographer
>who comes in New York once or twice a week. “There’s
>not a sense of security. . . . I’m just waiting for
>something else to happen.’
> New York’s Rent Stabilization Association
>received a dozen calls about concerns that a tenant
>could blow up an apartment building. The calls were
>prompted by an FBI warning over the weekend that
>terrorists might stage such attacks. The association
>is setting up a meeting with the FBI, said President
>Joseph Strasburg.
> Others said the latest round of warnings is
>valuable.
> Stephen Push of Great Falls, whose wife, Lisa
>J. Raines, died on American Airlines Flight 77, which
>crashed into the Pentagon, last week criticized
>federal agencies for not sharing more intelligence
>with the public before Sept. 11. But now, he said, “I
>appreciate that the administration is being
>forthcoming about information about potential
>threats.” He contended that the public isn’t being
>unnecessarily alarmed.
>
>WARNINGS CALLED APPROPRIATE
> Maj. Gen. Timothy J. Lowenberg, who leads the
>National Guard and heads homeland security efforts in
>the state of Washington, also said the warnings are
>appropriate.
>
>
> “I think what everyone is experiencing right
>now is the frustration that there’s nothing more
>concrete that we can take action on,” he said. “But
>there is a certain value in reminding the American
>public that this is not a transitory phase. This is
>part of life in the 21st century. We just have to
>accept it as part of the environment.”
> Sue Mencer, a former FBI agent who heads
>Colorado’s homeland security efforts, described the
>bottom line this way: “Everyone needs to be wary.”
> In his testimony, Rumsfeld said terrorists have
>close links to Iraq, Iran, Libya, Syria, North Korea
>and “one or two others” developing weapons of mass
>destruction. He said terrorists would seek to obtain
>nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and
>ultimately would succeed despite U.S. efforts to
>prevent them.
> “We are going to be living in a period of
>limited or no warning,” he added. He said al Qaeda
>terrorists are in the United States, “and they are
>very well-trained.”
> White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said
>the administration’s statements in recent days reflect
>“the generalized level of alert and concern we have
>that’s been out there. And, of course, there has been
>a recent increase in the chatter that we’ve heard in
>the system, and that was reflected in what they said.”
>
>PUBLIC’S NERVOUSNESS RISING
> Polls indicate that the public’s nervousness is
>rising. A CBS News poll released yesterday showed 33
>percent of those surveyed said they believe another
>terrorist attack is “very likely.” A week ago, 25
>percent held that view.
> Fewer than half of those questioned in a
>Washington Post-ABC News poll said they are confident
>that the government could stop attacks - the first
>time since Sept. 11 that less than a majority
>expressed confidence in the government’s ability to
>protect them.
> “You have to crank it up to get us to pay
>attention,” said Chris Crandall, a psychology
>professor at the University of Kansas, who cited
>studies on human behavior. But doing so also raises
>the risk that the public will eventually tune out and
>grow cynical or complacent, he said.
> “Information that is not informative does not
>get paid attention to,” he said.
>
> Haughney reported from New York. Staff writers
>Mike Allen and Vernon Loeb contributed to this report.
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