New York to be alerted to possible attack
Credibility of the source is in question, but police will advise vigilance

NBC News and news services
Updated: 5:40 p.m. ET Oct. 6, 2005


NEW YORK - Police were preparing Thursday to warn subway riders of an unspecified threat to the subway system, NBC reported. Sources told NBC that the information came from a single informant of varying credibility.

Meanwhile, authorities were increasing security on the city’s subway system, a law enforcement official said.

The official, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity in advance of an official announcement, said the threat is “specific to place, time and method.”

“Obviously, this is a significant threat,” said Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee.

The informant said operatives would try to smuggle explosives onto the New York train system — possibly in baby carriages — in an imitation of the London and Madrid attacks, several sources told NBC.

Some officials told NBC News that they doubt the credibility of the threat. The source has apparently given some accurate information in the past, and some inaccurate, and there are reasons, they say, to doubt this new information.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter.

Nonetheless, because the source gave a specific time for the planned attacks — the second week in October — New York police had decided to make some of this information public and ask riders to be vigilant.

There are no plans to raise the terror threat level.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
© 2005 MSNBC.com

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9614242/

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Karl Rove?

I hope I'm not proven wrong...

Somewhere along the way, Fox News missed the memo that said these things must go up and down in order to have meaning.

The terror alert is useless even when they do remember to change it. Fucking paranoia.

Amen.

I want the next president to just come out and say, "let's get rid of this bullshit." What is the Apocalypse Threat Level at now? Or for the coastal cities, what is the Sea-monster Threat Level's color? Why is it I am more afraid of the people who scheme up these policies than I am of a terror attack? Does anyone have any answers for me? Am I alone? Am I dreaming?

You pinkos! If McCain hadn't been trying to stop Bush from torturing US prisoners, we would have already stopped this attack!

And his speeches get scary the more the press focuses on the white house corruption.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases ... 006-3.html

With the rise of a deadly enemy and the unfolding of a global ideological struggle, our time in history will be remembered for new challenges and unprecedented dangers. And yet the fight we have joined is also the current expression of an ancient struggle, between those who put their faith in dictators, and those who put their faith in the people. Throughout history, tyrants and would-be tyrants have always claimed that murder is justified to serve their grand vision -- and they end up alienating decent people across the globe. Tyrants and would-be tyrants have always claimed that regimented societies are strong and pure -- until those societies collapse in corruption and decay. Tyrants and would-be tyrants have always claimed that free men and women are weak and decadent -- until the day that free men and women defeat them.

this is by far the most ironic paragraph in the speech from the other day. I think I couls imagine someone saying the same thing about Bush. I sometimes wish I could sit in the audience and yell bullshit.

What ?

Oh, don't make me get out the bold highlighter on that whole speech. I read the transcript yesterday and literally could not believe what I was reading. The bubble separating the Bush Admin from the real world is really astounding.

I just get a kick out of the fact that the chicken littles here piss, whine and moan about how we might as well be living in Germany in 1936 due to the Patriot Act and the suppression of our civil liberties and how there's no way to stop terror attacks from happening. Then, our security and surveillance measures detect something and finally pay off and people here don't say a peep because it undermines or prejudices their arguments. How convenient.

Me thinks that had something actually happened on a New York subway this weekend, people would be lighting this board up about Bush, conspiracy theories, how Iraq didn't change anything, and the superfluous measures in the Patriot Act.

This thread is full of people who are against the Patriot Act and the Bush admin, and I see alot of talking about this recent threat. So the whole "not making a peep" argument is just flat out wrong. And the reason people are suspicious about these TERRORIST ATTACK! warnings are that they always seem to come at times when the White House is in trouble or in some sort of scandal. Although then again I guess its hard to find a time when this particular administration hasn't been involved in a scandal of some sort...

For the record, I complain about the civil liberties supression quite a bit, and I was the first to say that I thought this alert was bullshit manufactured by, well, by someone not a terrorist.

But if an actual attack were to happen here again, I would say:

a) no matter how many infringements on liberties, you can't stop every attack; and

b) the Iraq War has made us not only more vulnerable to attack (through the diversion of people and resources), but also more of a target due to the anger generated in the Islamic world.

I don't find this inconsistent or hypocritical at all. The war is a policy error that diverts attention and resources from doing actual things that could help secure the homeland, and those things that are being done are both unnecessary and unfruitful intrusions on the civil liberties of innocent Americans, but are also being done on the cheap, so they are additionally ineffective.

I don't know why there hasn't been a major attack here since 9/11. Clearly some good police work has been done by the FBI and associated agencies. Also, the Iraq War has likely drawn many potential militants to Iraq who would other wise be attacking elsewhere. But this is a short term solution that is both unethical, and in the end, will end up creating more militants than it destroys. I think the entire Bush presidency is becoming a series of short-term, politically expedient solutions to long-term problems, and his short-sightedness (or perhaps he and Cheney simply don't give a fuck what happens after they're not on the hook for it anymore in 2009) will make all kinds of things worse for the next guy.

The president is not a ruler, he is a steward of the White House and America. The job of a steward is to maintain his institution, and leave it better than he found it in as many cases as possible. Just as we are all stewards of the earth, not owners of it. This administration uses things up and throws them out when they're done, with no regard for the people who must inevitably follow them.

Sorry, I got a little off track there, but you get the idea.

I agree with everyone that disagrees with Chris_H_2.

You completely and utterly missed the point . . .

And I say again, that it is nonsensical to use this logic to support doing nothing (which is what a lot of people here seem to advocate).



The Islamic world's been pissed off at us well before the 2nd Iraq war. The fact we haven't had a terror attack since 2001 is amazing to me. The fact 9/11 was the first major terror attack on our soil linked to Osama Bin Laden since the first WTC attack in 1993 is equally amazing to me.



No, the inconsistency is when people bitch and moan about measures the government is trying to implement to prevent these kinds of attacks and use the logic that "they can't stop every attack" as a basis when, the very initiatives they railed against before may have actually stopped an attack, you hear nothing.

I distinctly remember the argument getting thrown around about how the Patriot Act hasn't done shit to stop terrorism. My counter is, you don't often hear of the things law enforcement unveil that does prevent terrorism. When reports such as the one in this thread surface, people change their arguments 180 degrees.



Either you're discounting the fact that there will always be threats, regardless of how we respond, or you're naive to believe that a one-stop initiative will solve the problem forever. This is a continuous fight.



This sounds a lot like a Clinton fiscal policy circa 1999 to me . . .

(This applies primarily with foreign policy, but its not like any domestic issues are in good order)

How can anyone pay any attention to politics without getting incredibly cynical?

But not me. I strongly advocate doing things to prevent terrorism at home, just not non-sensical, media-whoring things like "terror alerts" and searching random bags on subways. Those are all just show for the camera.


Exactly my point. The things that are, do, and WILL actually work to stop terrorism are not the things that you hear about on TV. The TV stuff is just that, TV, made to make someone look good, or someone else look bad. The important initiatives will get little to no media attention.


I think you know I'm not naive enough to expect a "one-stop" solution. There will always be threats. There will be future attacks of some sort, I'm sure of that. I think you just completely discounted my argument that the Iraq War, while it might possibly (and I'm not sure it even is at all) be preventing domestic attacks in the short term, it will be worse for us in the long term. We will never "defeat" the terrorists with an army in the Middle East, we can at best attract them to our army and away from our citizens. Eventually, that strategy will become unsustainable, we will have to withdraw from the Middle East, leaving behind quite probably a worse situation than we first found there, and then there will still be an Islamic terror threat aimed at the US, stronger and better organized than before.

I don't advocate doing noting at all, but the approach chosen by the administration was so wrong that it will end up making the problem worse than if we had done nothing at all.


Well, apart from the spunk he left on the carpet in the Oval Office, Clinton's policies did leave the place better than he found it, so I'm having difficulty detecting the insult in that statement.

my head hurts



yeah didn't we have this crazy thing called a surplus when he left office?

Touche.

I guess the question is, "Is it better or worse that the Bush Administration has no shame about the fact that they're doing this?"