Damned If You do…
On October 31, 2001, the BBC reported comments from several of the leading newspapers in the states that the terror warnings issued by the administration were pointless and needlessly scaring American citzens, Here is a sampling of what the BBC reported observing in these papers of record:
Washington Times
“It is certainly a cause for worry when the attorney-general of the United States shows up on national television, ashen-faced and puffy-eyed, heaving heavy sighs before going into a hastily called news briefing on terrorism.”
USA Today
“No one was given information to guide rational decisions. Even some police agencies, which can do far more to thwart an attack, were complaining about the vagueness of the warning.”
“Yet despite the generalised anxiety such imprecise warnings induce, this almost certainly isn’t the last one the country will receive.”
The Boston Herald
“With each ambiguous warning, another wave of anxiety sweeps through an already jittery nation, causing many Americans to stay close to home and cancel travel plans,” the paper says.
“It’s generating massive amounts of anxiety,” local clinical psycologist Dr Thomas Tokarz tells the paper. “It’s the uncertainty of what will happen next,” he adds.
The New York Times
The New York Times believes that “the Bush administration must continue to keep the public informed, even when the information is unpleasant and unsatisfactorily vague.”
“There is, of course, the danger that too many warnings could become mere background noise, and that somewhere down the road the public would wind up ignoring the one that really matters,” it adds.
“But the nation is better off frightened and informed than left happily in the dark,” it concludes.
Shouldn’t the current administration be widely praised for refusing to panic New Yorkers with bogus stories about nuclear devices? Not according to Mr. Bloomberg.
I am taking bets as to how long it will be before Maureen Dowd uses this as evidence of the evil-doings of the ‘shadow government,’ or ‘secret government,’ as Idiot Extraordinaire and Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle is now fond of calling the contingency plan