Politicizing the War

Now that it's out in the open, I think it's proper to comment. As a citizen.

When Director Ridge was accused of politicizing the War on Terrah in his announcement of elevated threat levels for some Northeastern regions (a nuance that I actually approve of), the reasoning behind it was his pointed crediting of the President's actions as necessitating the results. Look at it this way; when the police come to invsitgate a crime, do they ever pause to credit the mayor's leaadership in making thier arrival possible? If your house is ever on fire, look carefully on the sides of the fire vehicles and see if there's any sort of motto giving the local authorities credit for having the vision for it.

I trust my point should be clear by now. But if it's not, in my opinion, giving credit to the President for his leadership had no place in an announcement of an apparent threat to American citizens. I understand who put Director Ridge there, and if the action is a good one, I'm smart and humble enough to give credit where due. All credit (and blame) for actions of the Bush Administration must, perforce, obtain to President Bush.

Anything else is crass apple-polishing. A cynical attempt to garner credit. If it's about the public interest, then it's about the public interest only. If it's a problem alert, it should be about the problem.

And, on top of all that, we hear via the New York Times that the those unprecedentedly concurrent multiple intel streams that triggered the alert may have been no newer than before 9/11. Some of it, I hear, may be up to four years old.

This is all the evidence I need to show bad faith and cynicism on the part of the Bush administration.

But, as I said before, isn't the fact that we are still in so much danger prima facie evidence that the Bush crew aren't up to the job of protecting us?