Aren't you just a little curious about the timing of this terrorist threat?

Doesen't it seem odd that whenever there is an event that can be viewed as a negative for 'fearless leader' that there is suddenly, a terrible terrorist threat? Like the 'Gang that couldn't think straight' or the 'terrorist with a torch' who was going to 'destroy' the Brooklyn Bridge a cut at a time.

Sure, there are terrorists, and yes, they are to be guarded against. But why does it seem that they never appear except when Bush needs a boost?

Inquiring minds want to know:

Crooks & Liars: "I thought we were fighting them in Iraq so we didn’t have to fight them over here. Today’s news shows how ineffective Bush’s catastrophic foreign policy has been. I felt that we should have gone into Afghanistan, but after that we really needed to strengthen our Home Land security. When Bush decided to attack Iraq, it weakened what we could do to secure ourselves."

Larry Johnson Here: "In the back of my mind I worry that this threat might be trumped up in order to divert attention from the disastrous US and British policy (or lack of policy) in Lebanon. More likely, we have an informant in the UK that identified a potential plot that was in the dreaming stage but had not progressed to actual implementation. Rather than act like security professionals, the Brits are acting like panicked nannies. Very sad."

And Here: "Binary explosives, and their ready availability, have been a fact since World War II. And we're supposed to believe that George Bush, Tony Blair, and Michael Chertoff have just awakened to this fact? At a minimum, this is a further indictment of the incompetence of Bush and his cronies. They have done NOTHING, I repeat, NOTHING to deal with this threat even though security professionals have known and fretted about this for years.
I commented specifically on this two years ago on the Joe Scarborough show:"

Booman Tribune Here: "Today we get the terror alert that Steven D has been predicting for a nearly a year. I don't know the details of the terrorist plot. It may have been more serious than the man that wanted to use a blowtorch to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge, or it may be less serious than the three year old intelligence the GOP used to disrupt the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston. It's hard to say. All that is certain is that we have been predicting both a widening of the war in the Middle East, and an increase in terror threat reporting for this summer, and we predicted it starting last fall."

Here's Digby: "I know it's absurd to think that the Bush administration cynically uses the threat of terrorism for political gain and that by being suspicious of such a thing I'm unserious about national security. But this is getting ridiculous ..."

And although there are many more, I'll stop with Billmon: "Many of us have grown accustomed enough to the pointless politicization of color-coded alerts to be instantly skeptical. But the idea that Al Qaeda had a "big one" in the works -- and would have loved to have pulled the trigger in the middle of Israel's war on Lebanon -- certainly isn't inherently implausible. I've mentioned the possibility myself."

"On the other hand, none of the previous known plots hatched by the British wing of the movement have come anywhere close to the alleged scope and sophistication of this one. To expect a bunch of idiots who literally couldn't figure out how to set their own shoes on fire to pull off the simultaneous destruction of up to 20 planes using liquid explosives is a bit of a stretch."

As I left work today, in that extreme terrorist target, Little Rock, Arkansas, two people were talking about having to fly out tomorrow. They were lamenting the time lost to 'security' and the problems just driving in to the terminal. The problems with air travel these days is not trivial.

When we as a country are forced into such intrusive, non-productive, wasteful and authoritarian 'solutions', who is winning this fight? Sure sounds to me as if Osama is dictating the way you and I can travel, inside our own country.

Personally, after having read accounts of people being put on no-fly lists so that the security person could meet a quota, and a rant from Penn Jillette about his experiences with 'security', I'm not sure I wouldn't rather take my chances with the terrorists.

Add on:

Check out this headline at Democratic Underground: WH Official: "Weeks before September 11th, this is going to play big"