Here we go again

Sometimes I think that the repeated "warnings" of vague "nonspecific" threats of terrorist attack are actually just bureaucratic CYA, with the Department of the Security of the Fatherland just throwing out anything it gets so that when and if an attack actually does occur, no one can point any fingers at the agency.

The rest of the time, though, I think the timing of the alerts is just too damned convenient. A few weeks before the DNC, we get warnings about dangers facing Boston and the media, resulting in clampdowns on protest and acceptance of wholesale violations of the 4th Amendment. Now, a few weeks before the RNC, which will face bigger protests, we get bigger, scarier warnings.

Security at financial sites in New York City, northern New Jersey and Washington, D.C., increased significantly Sunday after the Department of Homeland Security raised the terror threat level for those areas to orange, or high.

"Alarming" intelligence from multiple sources indicates that al Qaeda terrorists could be poised to strike financial institutions, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said.

The potential targets include the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in Washington, Prudential Plaza in Newark, New Jersey, and the Citigroup Building and New York Stock Exchange in New York.

The information apparently comes from computer files of a suspected al-Qaeda operative taken in Pakistan earlier this month. Documents and emails indicated there had been careful and extensive surveillance undertaken of several "iconic" buildings involved in finance.

However, Ridge was forced to admit that there is no time frame on the supposed threats.

Raising the threat level in specific areas will make the buildings more secure and the people in them more aware, Ridge said.

But he said the intelligence lacked specific information about when the strikes might occur and did not indicate whether they were imminent.

Meanwhile, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg

said the targets could be a deliberate attempt by terrorists to deceive authorities into focusing their resources on the targets, thereby leaving other targets vulnerable to attack.

He said it was not clear when the information was gathered.

"Some of this information could have been collected over the last few years," he said.

That is, to be particular, what we actually have at most is information that al-Qaeda people were at some point casing the buildings. But we don't know when such an attack is planned. We don't know if one is planned. Indeed, we don't even know when the surveillance was done. A US counterterrorism official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AP that

the scouting was going on before and after Sept. 11, 2001, but it's unclear how recently.

Even so, Ridge declared, "we don't have the luxury of guessing." So

[i]n New York, police stopped trucks and vans at toll booths.

Authorities banned commercial traffic from using the Holland Tunnel to travel from New Jersey into Lower Manhattan, and rerouted it to the Lincoln Tunnel and George Washington Bridge, which cross the Hudson River farther north of the financial district.

Officers with rifles and body armor patrolled the financial district.

What's more,

Police sealed off some streets in New York, put international-finance employees in Washington through extra security checks, and added barricades and a heavy armed presence in Newark, N.J., in response to a heightened terrorism alert aimed specifically at titans of the financial sector. ...

New York police closed several streets in midtown Manhattan....

In Newark, police set up metal fences surrounding the Prudential Plaza building, blocked off two city streets and toted assault rifles.

All of this, remember, is being done based on a supposed threat with no time frame. So are these "added measures" to remain in place forever? Or are we going to find the once the Republican convention, having gorged itself on how "secure" George "We are a nation in danger" Bushleague is going to make us, is safely past and the post-convention bounce secured, that we can relax a little while Still Remaining Vigilant? At one time, the NYPD was raising the possibility of wanting to have the authority to search everyone who came to the planned demonstrations. Is that going to be revived? Are the delegates' sensitive souls going to be even more insulated from dissent than already intended?

Are the warnings real? Are they legitimate? Quite frankly, it's impossible to tell. But the timing of the announcements damn well smells like nine-day old fish, and I’m certainly not the only one who’s gotten a whiff.

In an interview on CNN's "Late Edition," [Howard] Dean said he was "concerned that every time something happens that's not good for President Bush, he plays this trump card, which is terrorism."

"His whole campaign is based on the notion that 'I can keep you safe, therefore, in times of difficulty in America, stick with me,'" Dean said.

"It's just impossible to know how much of this is real and how much of this is politics, and I suspect there's some of both,"

CNN says. That was, of course, immediately denounced as "most cynical" by Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), the Senate majority whip, an opinion eagerly seconded by Tail-gunner Joe Lieberman, who insisted that no one "who has any fairness or is in their right mind" could possibly even imagine such a thing. The very idea!

Certainly, any such idea must be banned from the mainstream of right-thinking people, and McConnell, a reactionary ideologue happily doing the bidding of his political masters, is more than willing to do his part. As for Lieberman, I'm not sure if he secretly dreams of being Zell Miller but knows he couldn't pull that off in Connecticut or if he's just that big of an asshole.

Not that those are mutually exclusive.

Footnote: The UK, which was also given warnings based on the seized documents and computer files, was rather less impressed.

The Home Office in London, which is responsible for policing and security in Britain, said it didn't believe the computer seizure revealed a "specific threat" or that the British public needed to take any specific action as a result.

The department said the threat from terrorism is "real and serious" but it added and that its position was unchanged in the wake of the developments in Pakistan.

Then again, Tony Blair is not in a tight race for re-election.