More on the new threats from the Washington Post, :
The Bush administration believes more strongly than ever that al Qaeda terrorists plan to try to influence the presidential race with a massive preelection attack, a strike that is more likely to come in August or September than in October, a White House official said yesterday.The official ratcheted up administration warnings of an election-related attack on a day when President Bush and Vice President Cheney were on the campaign trail contending that Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) would be a weak commander in chief. Some Democrats accuse the White House of issuing repeated terrorism warnings to inspire fear so voters will hesitate to change leaders with the nation under threat.
The White House official, who spoke to reporters on the condition of anonymity, said the government had not gleaned any new information about political motives for an attack since the spring, when administration officials began saying they were concerned about an attack in conjunction with the Nov. 2 election. Nothing to date indicates "an imminent operation," the official said.Administration officials said over the weekend that they believe at least part of the plot has been disrupted with recent arrests and computers seizures.
Nevertheless, the official referred to "the preelection plot" and said the government has intelligence in which suspected terrorists "were talking about the election."
"The beat keeps building," the official said. "You will get intelligence which suggests they're targeting the election time frame. . . . In addition to that, you get other intelligence that suggests there is planning for an ongoing operation that may not specifically mention the election."
Lock & Load.
And vote! Not for appeasement, not for the UN to block.......errrrrr, i mean lead...the way, not for consultations with france & germany, not for a "sensitive" war on terror!
The president is damned if he does and damned if he doesnt....if he reports warnings, kerry is whining and moaning about that pressuring people to vote against him (as if I needed any pressure to vote against that loser...I am embarrased for him each time I see him trying to "fit in" with the regular guy on the campaign trail)...if he DOESN'T report a warning and there is an attack kerry will be screaming and yelling how the president let the country down by not warning them...personally I would rather be warned (and the fact that the warnings piss kerry off is just an added bonus!)
It is likely Terrorists WILL strike before Pre-election. Followers of Dustbin Laden have boasted and been emboldened by Spain's back down after Madrid bombings.
Big mistake. Americans aren't like the spanish.
From their point of view, it would blow back in their faces, give the election to Bush in a landslide, and give him a blank check to do what needs doin'.
If you aren't with us, then you're in our cross hairs.
Your grandchildren will be... wait a minute,
you won't have any grandchildren!
They've been wanting to kill Ariel Sharon for how long and have they been successful? Why should they be any more successful in the US?
>Big mistake. Americans aren't like the spanish.
From their point of view, it would blow back in their faces, give the election to Bush in a landslide, and give him a blank check to do what needs doin'.
The terrorists want Bush to win:
"Divide and conquer"
Bush has divided the West (Europe/US, even Canada/US) , and even divided the USA internally.
Perfect for Al qaeda's evil plans.
The terorrists WANT bush to win, so they will engineer a "reverse Spain" scenario.
Anyone who thinks logically on the issue realizes that the world needs a unified front to defeat a massive network in 66 countries. Emotionally, it feels good to say "my way or the highway". But emotion will get us nowhere.
I am sure that if there is an attack, successful or not, the Leftists will blame Bush.
The leftists do not actually sound all that different from the Islamists...One says, "The JEWS did IT!” and the other says "The Conservatives Did IT!”
Mega It is posts like yours that show the disconnected thinking of most Bush Haters.
BUSH divided nothing but the truth from the lies. How about placing the responsibility on the Proper people...Saddam and the UN divided the nations...Bush stood up and did the RIGHT THING and the world is better and SAFER as a result!
Choose you this day whom you sill serve Mega...Truth or LIES? If you choose truth, be prepared to be blamed for every rotten event that takes place after you make your choice!
In response to mega:
The most vocal international opposition to Bush is from the French and Germans. Although they hate Bush (and Republicans in general--which is nothing new--they hated Reagan too), and certainly think we should have listened to them when it comes to Iraq, this doesn't mean that aren't otherwise cooperating with us on the War on Terror as your "Divide and Conquer" statement suggests.
The West is not divided over fighting terror (at least through the use of intelligence and law enforcement agencies). The division is over Iraq specifically which stems in part from their opposition to using military power generally.
When it comes to using our military, especially unilaterally, it's almost impossible to avoid opposition from Europe, particularly France and Germany. With respect to France in particular, it helps to understand their agenda:
France believes that the unipolar world that exists today with the US as the world's sole superpower is an historical abberation and a bad situation for everybody. Without the Soviet Union to keep us in check, they see the world as being out of balance. Who to step in to correct this imbalance? Well, La France buttof cours! Except France is too weak to stand alone against the US. It's no surprise therefore that France is the biggest champion of the European Union (EU). France can leverage the framework of the EU (and its seat on the UN Security Counsel) to give this otherwise weakling of a nation the closest thing they could ever have to superpower status to challenge the US. It's no secret in France that one of the biggest pluses of the EU will be a greater ability to challenge the US in world affairs. In fact, in order to sell the idea of the EU to the French people, the French government years ago said that America was shaking in its boots over the prospect of an EU (which wasn't true of course--we wanted the EU to succeed). It's no wonder why they're such big fans of international regimes. France sees international regimes as enhancing their power while hopefully tying the hands of the US.
France wants to reclaim its historical status as a major player on the world stage. They can't stand the fact they've been relegated to "has been" status for the last 50+ years. Rather than enhancing their role in the world by partnering with the US like Great Britain, they want to define themselves by being in direct opposition to the US. Germany is behind France all the way, and would like to be more vocal themselves, but Germany still has to shake off some self-imposed baggage left over from WWII before they begin asserting themselves more on the world stage.
The point is that France's real motive for leading the international opposition to our invasion of Iraq is that they felt we acted unilaterally and thumbed our noses at the very international frameworks they see as enhancing their power while weakening ours. France was more concerned about how this precedent would affect the international regimes they depend on to exalt their power than they were about war itself.
So what's their ultimate agenda? To understand this, we have to delve into the theoretical realm: It's a battle over values—specifically, which socio-economic model is best--in other words, where should we be in the socio-economic continuum (where you have pure capitalism without regard for social conditions on one extreme and communism at the other extreme with various mixes of capitalism and socialism in between)? France is a social welfare state. The US is relatively closer to the pure capitalism end of the spectrum. Borrowing from Marxist thought, social-welfare states will have trouble competing in the world against countries that are closer to pure capitalism. Why? Because they need higher taxes to finance their social democracies. The more money going to government, the less there is to invest in new opportunities. This accounts for the US's disproportionate success in science & technology, Nobel prizes, ingenuity, etc--because we leave more money in private hands. This comes at a cost however--we're a more fast-paced, stressed out society; we work more hours, we have more social problems--this is a cost we seem willing to bear. This cost is too high for the French. They would prefer to slow things down under a social-welfare model and have more money to address social issues. This is harder to do if they have to compete in a global economy with the likes of the US. International frameworks will boost France’s (and Europe’s) power in the world vis a vis the US and give it the influence needed to promote its model over the US model.
My 2 cents worth…
>I am sure that if there is an attack, successful or not, the Leftists will blame Bush.
Accountability. Bush is in fact the President. As Truman put it, "the buck stops here". If Bush doesn't want to be responsible for the nation, he should probably find an easier line of work. Bush seems to want to avoid blame for anything. He is a typical boomer in this respect-- eternal adolescent who blames anyone else instead of acting like an adult and being accountable.
I don't "hate" Bush. I hate terrorists killing Americans. I judge any President and government by results. Reagan was successful because he helped bring down the Soviets and end the threat of nuclear war. Bush on the otherhand has captured only 3 of the top 22 Al Qaeda leaders (source: Economist) It's all about results, and frankly Bush is doing a bad job. He should be dividing the ENEMY! Instead, the enemy is dividing us! This is a failure of leadership, and he should be held accountable.
Response to Gregory
>The most vocal international opposition to Bush is from the French and Germans.
Have you been abroad lately? F & G represent political opposition. The governments opposed the US publicly. The real problem is that even when governments are supporting us (Italy, Spain, the UK)there is widespread opposition to Bush policies from most people.
>this doesn't mean that aren't otherwise cooperating with us on the War on Terror as your "Divide and Conquer" statement suggests.
That's a good point. Anti-terror cooperation is generally better than you might think. But the opposition from the people is important. It impacts political will. For instance, NATO is helping in afghanistan, but most of Europe doesn't want to take the risk of spreading lots of forces outside of Kabul. If a few of their soldiers get killed or kidnapped, the people back home will be asking "why do we have to die to help those jerks?" This is why Spain was such a bad allie in Iraq--no popular support.
I think it is a mistake to think that Iraq was the breaking point. Even after 9/11, much of the world was in fact unsympathetic. While some of that is jealousy/resentment, some of it was simple things like Bush sticking his middle finger to all 160 or so countries that were part of the Kyoto treaty. The guy has burned enough bridges, that's for sure.
Your analysis of France's motives are correct. But only reason France was able to be so loud about it was because it was popular to oppose the US, in France and the rest of the world. (Of course, in contrast, Iraqis have little fondness for France even if they are unhappy with the US occupation) This is the problem. Even if many Leftist French or Germans hated Reagan, the people in Eastern Europe believed him when he spoke about freedom. He was both strong and persuasive.
We are losing the battle of ideas. Even freedom and democracy are discredited by "Abu Ghraib", which nobody resigned for. It's an extremely frustrating situation--we are right that the Arab world would benefit from freedom, but nobody is listening to us anymore. We can't defeat Al Qaeda only by military means. Ask Israel Or Russia, if you want a second opinion. We must defeat the idea of Bin Laden's Islamic calliphate, and Taliban-like Sharia law. And our government is making almost no effort to explain US policies or spread our message. It's not enough to be right. We have to be persuasive. And we have to be successful. And as of today we are doing a miserable job in the "war of ideas" for hearts and minds.
>It's an extremely frustrating situation--we are right that the Arab world would benefit from freedom, but nobody is listening to us anymore.
I was thinking about this the other day. We assume that the freedom we're trying to promote in Iraq will sell itself, but it won't. We are indeed losing the battle of ideas. Don Rumsfeld was asked in an interview months ago why the US was so bad at selling its side of the story, his answer didn't satisfy me but he said we believe in our ideas so much that we don't feel the need to sell them. I disagree, we do need to sell them.
In run up to the November 2004 Presidential Election, we're going to see the Republicans and Democrats fight an aggressive, cut throat battle of ideas. Why can't we apply some of this energy toward fighting a battle of ideas in Iraq and other places?