very simple

I know I’ve complained in the past about the vague "terror alerts" coming out of the administration, but I’m not entirely sure what to do with the new "more specific" information. For those of you living under a rock, it was announced yesterday that various financial buildings in the NY metro area were being "targeted" by terrorists. And then they went ahead and named the buildings.

(Mine wasn’t one of them, but I do work in a midtown manhattan building named for a major international financial institution, so yeah, I’m a little bugged).

The Wall Street Journal, not exactly a bastion of liberalism, had this to say this morning:

But since there is not time frame for a possible attack, and since intelligence officals admit they are unsure whether the new information is current or outdated – some of the terrorists’ reconnaissance was done before the 9/11 attacks – the move represents a bit of a gamble because it threatens to leave some potential targets more thinly secured than others while flagging for the terrorists those where security has been beefed up.

I really just don’t know what to think about it. Part of me wants as much information as possible, but part of me thinks that these announcements, made in the same breath as statements that we should still go to work in these "targetted" buildings, are a waste of time. I’d rather have not announce on international TV that we know Al-Qaeda’s going to attack this one building (giving them a massive heads up that we’re on to them) – instead, they should be spending their time trying to catch the plotters in the act instead of ensuring that they’re going to run and hide until the chatter dies down.

But I just don’t know. It’s all just so much bigger than me.

Tags: current events