Centerfield

This a not responsive to your question, but we should do away with the threat level assessments. They are meaningless to the public.

Todd- I agree. It was a result of the public looking for tangible results of the government's new War on Terror, and now can and should be retired.

Rick- In the mean time, we're stuck with the color system, and even though I'm just as suspicious of the administration as the next guy, I'm not sure it's good policy to suspect every move it makes. It seems to me if Ridge was going to manipulate the terror alert level he'd pick a better time than August. I mean, come on, the Republican National Convention was right around then, what more do you need? But if it was an attempt to boost Bush's numbers, it was very sloppily timed, not something I think Rove would ever allow.

I agree with Art and Todd above. I wish I wasn't suspicious of the Administration's moves - whether I agreed with them or not, yet more often than not, I am.

That's the problem with making everything political, as I think the admin is frequently guilty of. It severely damages the basic trust we need to have in them, and is some part of what has rendered the color scale moot. Now when our gov't tells us there's danger, or a real need to take action on something or the other, it just becomes more political pink noise to be filtered out. That's dangerous. Rove has been ham-handed in his machinations often enough that I believe less and less in his supposed political "genius." See Terry Shiavo for a good example.

They may be meaningless to the public, but as threat indicators coupled with specific intelligence they're very useful at the local/state level. Among other things they provide a consistent threat-level response and alertness framework for first responders and emergency personnel.

Among other things there are certain specific logistical plans and structures that can not be kept operating on a full-time basis, but would be crucial in an emergency.

I will not be more specific than that. If you really want to know more, volunteer for CERT or MMRS training in your community.

The creation of the color threat assessment system was driven by the public' s fear-based irrationality. It was done for symbolic reasons, to show governmental seriousness, to feed the public's hunger for doing something serious and organized in response to 9/11 fear. The public would have reacted VERY adversely to any attempt by the government to get us to accept that there are serious limits to what can be done to prevent a creative motivated terrorist from doing something awful somewhere, given the vastness of our nation, the giant number of potential targets, and our, what 12,000 miles of porous borders. but sensible people are forced to acknowledge this nevertheless. And that's OK, because acknowledging our reasonable limits is not an excuse to eschew vigilance.

The ratings system is simply a symbolic report card of overall status, and it's of very limited utility. But I don't really have a problem with it if it is simply a way to periodically signal that our intelligence has picked up chatter on some potential threat, so maybe everyone should be a bit more vigilant over the next weekend. What's the big deal?

I have far less problem with the color rating system for terrorist threat than I do with the practice of people routinely trafficking in pure speculation about the government's motives. (I felt that way when Clinton was prez, and I feel that way now.) Such speculation is too often based on the speculator's own fears and paranoias, and it inevitably gives the least possible amount of benefit of the doubt to political opponents. I think it makes sense to take any changes in the ratings at face value, and apply them to your personal lifes however you see fit, and not speculate about underhanded motives without direct proof. Try not to feed your paranoias, you'll feel better.

Otherwise, one is essentially just tossing out an insult about someone's character. In this case, saying that one thinks Tom Ridge could care less about doing the job he was hired for. Such behavior really says far more about the person trafficking than about the person being talked about.

Tully is absolutely right.

I'm a volunteer firefighter, and every time the threat level changes, our station undergoes substantive changes, from the number of personnel on our apparatus to the security around the building. There's no way to contact individual stations all over the country about possible threats. The best way to spread the word is through the media.

Even with my day job at the newspaper, our office building tightens up security whenever the threat level is raised. We have open doors during Yellow Alert, but we have to use our pass keys to enter the building during Orange Alert.

It's tough to know for sure if the Bush administration ever manipulated the Terror Alerts. I don't think he did, but nothing would surprise me at this point. Regardless, many people around the country still have to take the alerts very seriously.

Brian, I've been involved in emergency response logistics at various city/county/state levels since well before 9/11 (close on 20 years now) and I can assure you that while the threat level indicator does have that symbolic public/political utility, the revamped post-9/11 threat response system also has highly desirable direct application purposes in your community. With luck, you'll never notice them. And for very obvious reasons most are not mentioned in public forums with any specificity.

I will say that a side benefit of the post-9/11 system is a greatly enhanced level of inter-agency emergency response coordination for natural disasters. Besides, whatever anyone thinks of the threat indicator, can you imagine the public response if we tried to keep them secret instead of making them public?

That's a good point Tully. The symbolic value only applies to public perception. If I implied that was the only value of it, my bad. I knew it had some organizational value within planning and response agencies, but I didn't know any of the details.

Like I said, due to the number of possible targets and the vastness of our country, the utility is limited, but acknowledging this does not free us to throw up our hands and do nothing. That'd be an abdication.

I guess what it boils down to is that the system is only partially geared to prevention, for the obvious reasons. It is geared more towards vigilance and preparedness. That makes a ton of sense to me.

As Americans we should all be prepared to do what we can, even if it just means thinking about what might happen in given instances and how we'd respond, and letting our glances linger longer on someone hanging around a gas station or bridge or reservoir for no apparent reason. But to me it also means that we should have, if not low expectations, at least realistic expectations. If and when another domestic act of terrorism occurs, I hope the aftermath's focus is not primarily a finger-pointing festival assigning blame and examining how we could have prevented it by any means necessary.

I don't think the Administration specifically manipulated the threat alerts for political purposes. I think what happened is that it was afraid to not issue an alert because if something happened and there was no alert, it would have been criticized. In that sense, it was political but I suspect any administration would have done the same.

In some sense, you are damned if you do and damned if you don't. The problem with the alert system from my perspective is that there was really nothing a citizen could do. Whether the alert level was higher or lower, we still had to go to work and I still had to go on the Washington Metro. But I did not know about the issues with respect to police and fire; that was very interesting and I thank Tully and Staunch Moderate for talking about that. That makes more sense.

I agree with BK about the problem with people questioning the government's motives. But conservative Republicans bear a lot of the blame because they assume (or did until they got in power) that every government employee was venal and self-serving. After years of that kind of mentality, of course people questioned the government's motives.