NYDailyNews: Stop Pressing the Panic Button

[liveoaktx]

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ideas_opinions/story/210183p-181144c.html

Memo to Tom Ridge: Ya know, pal, when you've got nothing to say, you're better off not saying it. All morning long yesterday, the American people were getting themselves solemnly braced for this imminently forthcoming appearance by Homeland Security Chief Ridge, slated to make some announcement of the gravest and grimmest national urgency. And what did we get? "We lack precise knowledge about time, place and method of attack."
Or, to put it another way, we don't know anything.

Even Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, ever the dependable administration drumbeater, had to allow that there's "no reason for panic or paralysis." Apparently not: Much more time was spent talking about the new bells-and-whistles Homeland Security command center than about the calamity everyone swears will befall us. Well, not everyone. Said Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly: "We do not think another attack is inevitable."

Look, Tom. The American people know there's a security threat. But this stuff - yup yup yup, credible reporting, operational phase, gonna have a terrorist attack probably, sometime, someplace, but we're not raising the threat level anyway - contributes not much to the dialogue. You know what it mostly does? It mostly just gives critics of President Bush, of whom there are many, more reason to think his administration is entirely willing to play the homeland-security card purely to glom a few headlines when the public is otherwise hearing about, say, Sen. John Kerry's choice of a running mate.

[greenbriar]

1. well said

and completely true

[Kathy in Cambridge]

2. Even a RW rag like TDN is skeptical

maybe the tide IS turning!

[Cassandra]

3. The Daily News is not RW.

It's the middle of the road alternative to the NYPost.

[wishlist]

4. Terror alert suspicious in the way it usurped front page bad news too

This terror alert was blatantly suspicious coming as it did in the middle of these other front page headlines that got less air time as a result:

Ken Lay being indicted

Kerry/Edwards getting lots of favorable media and voter approval

Many tragic U.S. casualties in Iraq violence this week

[ncteechur]

5. Georgie Bush--the boy who cried wolf!! nm