Terror In the Morning…Terror In the Evening…Terror in Their Vitamins!?

The story leading both the Post and Times today reveals that the current terror threats on various financial buildings, breathlessly announced by Tom Ridge on Saturday and excitedly exploited by Bush and Cheney in their stump speeches, were actually based on information 3 to 4 years old. Nobody, in fact, is sure that any of the information is current.

Here’s an interesting tidbit from an article in today’s Post:

More than half a dozen government officials interviewed yesterday, who declined to be identified because classified information is involved, said that most, if not all, of the information about the buildings seized by authorities in a raid in Pakistan last week was about three years old, and possibly older.

"There is nothing right now that we're hearing that is new," said one senior law enforcement official who was briefed on the alert. "Why did we go to this level? . . . I still don't know that."

I think that quote probably gets right to the heart of the matter, and given the animosity between so many in the intelligence community and this current administration, probably fairly representative. It’s all about how the Bush administration chooses to “analyze” the intelligence given (or, more precisely, cherry-picked for) them, isn’t it?